Chocolate Makes You Smarter. A Real Study. Not Making this Up

I've seen a lot of things in my time. The things in a person's diet that would kill us twenty years ago is now considered healthy. Do some research on coffee study findings since the 1960s and you'll know what I mean. Coffee was going to kill you, then it was just the caffeine that was going to kill you, then decaffeinated coffee was going to kill you, now coffee is good and fights off diseases. Does anybody but me realize, it's the same coffee? As if chocolate wasn't popular enough, researchers now say it can make you smarter. Really? I know some people who regularly consume large quantities of chocolate and are as dumb as a box of rocks. Maybe it only works for people who eat chocolate and drink coffee? Now there's one study that I would be a willing participant.


Below are excerpts from the story in bold. My valuable insights are in italics.

People who eat chocolate at least once a week see their memory and abstract thinking improve, researchers say. It's good for your heart, reduces the risk of strokes and even helps protect your skin from the sun. Now, another apparent benefit has been added to the list of chocolate's nutritional qualities: it makes you smarter.


Who knew that an easy way to get smarter existed by just eating chocolate? (Sarcasm alert) You may be obese, have diabetes and a variety of other health problems, but due to your dedicated consumption of chocolate, at least you're smart. Maybe we should require all elected members of the U.S. government to eat a certain amount of chocolate every day. By the way things are happening in our country right now, I'd say our elected officials are suffering from serious chocolate consumption deficiencies.

A study, published recently in the journal, Appetite, 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, told the Washington Post.
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.

(Sarcasm alert) Well, who knew that studying a thousand people from New York starting in the 1970s could lead to the discovery that chocolate makes everybody in the world smarter? This is especially impressive since this discovery happened when studying the relationship between blood pressure and brain performance. Did obese people show up for the study, and answer complex questions while their blood pressure was being taken only to provide the wrong answers? Was the blood pressure then taken as the obese people ate chocolate? They probably still had high blood pressure but could suddenly explain the Pythagorean theorem in detail. Some may have still wondered if there was a chocolate bar by that name, but I'm sure the researchers won't mention that aspect of the study.

About 15 years ago, he decided to ask participants of the Maine-Syracuse Longitudinal Study (MSLS) what they were eating, adding a new set of questions about dietary habits. 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.

Shouldn't this researcher from Australia be conducting a study to see if vegemite makes you smarter? What was the new set of questions? Are you stupid and do you eat chocolate? Do you feel more or less stupid after eating chocolate? Did people stop calling you an idiot after you started eating more chocolate? Are you stupid enough to participate in this study just so that you can eat chocolate?

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. The benefits, Ms 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".

Remembering a phone number, or the things on a shopping list equals superior brain function? Does this researcher have a decimal point in front of his IQ? I'd hate to be the one to tell him, but I've known people who could talk and drive at the same time. These are also the same people who struggle to tie their shoes unassisted. (Sarcasm alert) You'd be surprised how many of them get voted into public office. I think researcher Mr. Crichton needs to work quite a bit more chocolate into his diet before he does another study.

Here is a link to the story.

Chocolate Make You Smarter Study