Too Good to Be True: Chocolate Makes You Smarter!
The other day in our blog, we talked about new research that shows that chocolate boosts your immune system. Well, it turns out that chocolate is not only good for your body: it’s good for your mind too. The latest research on dark chocolate shows that it improves cognition. The world just keeps getting better: eating chocolate makes you smarter! . . .
This double-blind study gave ninety elderly people three different chocolate drinks. The first was high in the flavanols that are responsible for much of chocolate’s health giving powers. This chocolate drink had 993mg of flavanols per serving. The intermediate flavanol drink had 520mg of flavanols, and the low dose placebo drink had only 48mg of flavanols. The study lasted eight weeks.
The people who got more chocolate flavanols did better on tests of cognition. Trail Marking Tests A and B are important tests that measure visual search speed, processing speed, mental flexibility and executive function. The time taken to complete test A decreased by 8.6 seconds and the time taken to complete test B decreased by 16.5 seconds in the high flavanol chocolate group. In the intermediate flavanol group, the times decreased by 6.7 and 14.2 seconds. Both of these improvements were significantly better than in the low flavanol group who had no significant improvement.
Improvements in the Verbal Fluency Test were also significantly better in the high flavanol group than in the intermediate or low flavanol groups. This test assesses cognitive impairment in conditions like ADHD and Alzheimer’s Disease.
Importantly, overall, cognitive function improved significantly in the high and intermediate flavanol groups but not in the low dose placebo group.
The researchers concluded that dark chocolate can improve cognitive performance in elderly people and that eating dark chocolate can play an effective role in countering the cognitive changes associated with aging.
So, go ahead: enjoy that luxurious piece of dark chocolate!
Am J Clin Nutr 2015;101:538-548