Does chocolate really make you smarter?

(Baonghean.vn) - A recent study claims that chocolate can improve cognitive ability, prevent heart attacks and help you lose weight. However, digging a little deeper, it seems that chocolate does not have such real effects.

Does chocolate really make you smarter, thinner and healthier?

Increase intelligence

A study of nearly 1,000 people from New York found that chocolate has an impact on brain function, contributing to increased cognitive ability.

However, the conclusions of the study are ambiguous. It is possible that there is confusion here because intelligent people tend to like chocolate, not that chocolate makes people intelligent.

Helps lose weight

There were several studies in 2015 that showed that chocolate does indeed help with weight loss. However, the news that was spread in the media was actually inaccurate.

Scientist John Bohannon conducted a real-life experiment where some people ate chocolate and some didn't. The results were so surprising that John Bohannon had to say something miraculous happened when those who ate chocolate lost weight and the rest didn't.

Prevent strokes and heart attacks

There have been numerous analyses that have shown that chocolate has this function. However, a 2012 analysis of 37,103 Swedish men found that the rate of stroke in middle-aged and older men who abstained from chocolate was 17% lower than in those who ate a lot of chocolate, even after controlling for other factors. And eating a lot of chocolate is certainly one of the easiest ways to become overweight.

Improve health

Research at the University of California San Diego suggests that chocolate may act as a performance-enhancing drug — until you look at the details.

A 2011 study on a compound called epicatechin found in chocolate, in mice, showed that epicatechin significantly improved the mice's endurance while running on a treadmill.

However, the effects in humans have not been proven and may be reversible. Or at least only dark chocolate has such beneficial effects, because epicatechin is destroyed during the process of making milk chocolate.

Thanh Hien

(According to The Guardian)