This yummy food boosts mental focus
New research reveals this food improves performance and attention.
A scientific study of 1,000 people over 40 years long has reveals something you have long suspected. Chocolate--it's not just good for you, it's incredible. Yes, trust your taste buds, because this research reveals that eating chocolate at least weekly is associated with boosting every day performance for common tasks like knowing where you left your keys, focusing, multi-tasking, staying organized, abstract reasoning and working memory.
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Post doctoral researcher Georgina Crichton at the University of South Australia came to this conclusion after taking a look at 40 years of data Merrill Elias collected. His original study was concerned with high blood pressure, but it tracked a lot of variables, thus creating a rich pool of information.
Optimal performance is a few bites away
The subjects kept journals, including detailing their diet. Surprisingly, one food--chocolate--was intensely correlated with optimal performance, even after controlling for other health and risk factors in the subjects. This is contrary to what the researchers expected, because the sugar in most chocolate is usually negatively correlated with mental performance.
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Crichton says it's clear chocolate consumption helps you perform better every day life 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."
Research can't claim that chocolate is causing this directly. "It's not possible to talk about causality, because that's nearly impossible to prove with our design," said Elias. "But we can talk about direction. Our study definitely indicates that the direction is not that cognitive ability affects chocolate consumption, but that chocolate consumption affects cognitive ability." In other words, it makes you smarter---it's not that smarter people like chocolate.
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Other studies on the effects of chocolate suggest that components in high quality chocolate, called flavanols, increase blood flow to the brain and boost mental performance. Perhaps that's why chocolate is one of the most "craved" foods in the world. For your shopping list, recommendations point toward the darkest, most natural chocolate you can enjoy and frequent consumption. The chocolate effect apparently peaks a few hours after you eat it and doesn't last long.
"People who eat chocolate at least once a week tend to perform better cognitively," said Elias. "It's significant."
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