HOUSTON: Now, another apparent benefit has been added to the list of chocolate’s nutritional qualities: it makes you smarter.
A study indicated that people who eat chocolate at least once a week saw their memory and abstract thinking improve.
“It’s significant – it touches a number of cognitive domains,” psychologist Merrill Elias, one of the leaders of the study said.
Mr Elias began studying the cognitive abilities of more than 1,000 people in the state of New York in the 1970s, initially looking at the relationship between people’s blood pressure and brain performance.
Leading the analysis of the study, which was held between 2001 and 2006, was Georgina Crichton, a nutrition researcher at the University of South Australia. Ms Crichton recognised the study presented a unique opportunity to examine the effects of chocolate on the brain, using a large sample size of just under 1,000.
Examining the mean scores on cognitive tests of participants who ate chocolate less than once a week and those who ate it at least once a week, the researchers found eating chocolate was strongly linked to superior brain function.