A health writer got sick of seeing stories regarding miracle weight loss tricks, so he decided to see how easy it was to change bad science into a fake diet headline.

So, he got a silliest idea possible of trying to convince people that consumption of a bar of chocolate per day helps in losing weight. He got alarming results.

What he saw was, 'Chocolate Can Help You Lose Weight!' screamed headlines across the world. 'Good news slimmers!', 'Need a 'sweeter' way to lose weight? Eat chocolates!'

All these were from major publications, including the Huffington Post, Daily Mail, Daily Express and Daily Star. Even dedicated health magazines like Shape and Men's Health were taken in by the hoax.

This fake research was even got discussed on TV shows. They were translated into around six languages in over 20 countries. The research even made the front page of Europe's biggest daily, Bild, published just under their update on the Germanwings tragedy.

So, John Bohannon through an article on i09 revealed just how easy it was to fool everyone. For this, he styled himself as Johannes Bohannon PhD, the lead author of a groundbreaking German study and research, and the director at The Institute of Diet and Health, for which he created a worryingly simplistic website.

He came up with quotes like, 'The best part is you can buy chocolate everywhere', printed in Bild.

It is interesting to know that he and a team actually carried out an experiment. Bohannon wrote, "It was, in fact, a fairly typical study for the field of diet research. Which is to say: It was terrible science. The results are meaningless, and the health claims that the media blasted out to millions of people around the world are utterly unfounded".

German documentary-makers Peter Onneken and Diana Löbl asked Bohannon to do so. They were working on a film regarding the junk-science diet industry.