If you are a chocoholic, know that science stands by you. Do not shy away from the sweet indulgence next time; chocolate could actually make you smarter.Fourteen studies say chocolate actually makes people smarter. That’s what Italian researchers found in a review published this year in the journal Frontiers in Nutrition, where they took a hard look at what multiple clinical studies said about a link between chocolate and cognitive performance.
They looked specifically at the effects of the powerful flavanol antioxidants found in cocoa beans to see if they really had any effect on measures of “general cognition” such as attention, processing speed, and memory.The general theory was that depending on your age and overall health, flavanols in chocolate could improve your brain’s ability to react better to mental pressure.
After reviewing the evidences, scientists concluded that “the cocoa flavanols can be effective at sustaining cognitive performance.” In other words, chocolate really is brain food.The review says, “Acute administration of cocoa flavanols could result in immediate cognitive-enhancing effect, sustaining performance, especially in cognitively demanding states like fatigue and sleep loss.”
Yes, not only can chocolate give you a performance boost, there’s evidence that it could also give you a lift when you’re extra tired. Particularly for women, chocolate flavanols seemed to help with bouncing back from fatigue and brain fog after a sleepless night.