Good news for chocolate lovers: new research suggests that weekly chocolate consumption significantly enhances cognitive ability and is directly linked to higher brain function!
It has often become the bone of contention and for various reasons. The eighth deadly sin (in a manner of speaking), the consumption of chocolate, for some is directly linked to excessive calorie intake and for others – its so-called supporters, to the risk reduction of having a stroke. A new research claims that people who consume chocolate once a week see their memory and abstract thinking improve significantly!
The initiator of this research – published in the journal Appetite – and psychologist, Merrill Elias, came to this conclusion after studying for more than thirty years the relationship between blood pressure and brain performance. “It’s significant – it touches a number of cognitive domains”, he said to the Washington Post. Along with a nutrition researcher at the University of South Australia, Georgina Crichton, they decided to add a new set of questions about the dietary habits of the participants. According to the scores on cognitive tests of those who ate chocolate less than once a week and those who ate it at least once a week, the researchers found that consuming chocolate was strongly linked to superior brain function. “The benefits”, Georgina Crichton told the Washington Post, “would mean you would be better at daily tasks such as remembering a phone number, or your shopping list, or being able to do two things at once, like talking and driving at the same time”.
However, in order to see whether smarter people simply tend to eat more chocolate or if chocolate affects brain function, they studied 333 participants whose cognitive abilities were tested on average 18 years before they were asked if they were chocolate lovers. Thus, they have easily concluded that chocolate contributes to the development of cognitive abilities, but not that the developed brain function reveals a passion for chocolate.
Source: telegraph
