40 years of research shows that we chocoholics are more capable!

Psychologist Merrill Elias

Psychologist Merrill Elias began monitoring human cognitive abilities in over 1,000 people in New York in the mid-1970s. The aim of his research was to establish the link between blood pressure and brain function. In the course of his research, he and his team of researchers later came to the conclusion that this link in the human body could also be influenced by people''s eating habits. Elias revealed an interesting pattern that was emerging: "We found that people who eat chocolate at least once a week actually have better cognitive abilities. This is an important finding because it touches on several cognitive domains."

They found significant positive associations of chocolate consumption with cognitive performance.

Elias, together with University of South Australia nutrition researcher Georgina Crichton and Luxembourg Institute of Health epidemiologist Ala''s Alkerwi, compared the results of various cognitive tests of participants who reported eating chocolate at least once a week and those who reported eating chocolate less often. They found significant positive associations of chocolate consumption with cognitive abilities (such as visuospatial memory and organisation, working memory, abstract reasoning) regardless of age, dietary habits and other factors.

Cognitive abilities in everyday life

Georgina Crichton explained that these cognitive abilities in everyday life are manifested, for example, in better memorisation of telephone numbers or shopping lists, and in better performance of two tasks at the same time, such as speaking and driving a car at the same time. Chocolate contains flavanoids, which have positive effects on the human brain - they are thought to speed up blood flow to the brain and can therefore improve its various functions.

However, the overall ''message'' of this research is not that we should start over-consuming chocolate. Elias says: "For now, I still think we can eat small amounts without guilt, as long as we don''t swap chocolate for a normal balanced diet". Nor is this research over yet. Merrill Elias, the principal investigator of this study, added: "We haven''t done the research yet for dark and milk chocolate specifically. Such a study could tell us much more about the topic. We also sampled people who never or rarely ate chocolate and, on the other hand, those who ate it at least once a week. But I am really interested to know what would happen if people ate a tonne of chocolate ...''.