Does chocolate really make you smarter?

(Baonghean.vn) - A recent new 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

Research based on nearly 1,000 people from New York shows that chocolate has an impact on brain function, contributing to increased cognitive ability.

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

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 not accurate.

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 more 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 can act as a performance-enhancing drug—until you look at the details.

A 2011 study on mice found that Epicatechin significantly improved the mice's endurance while running on a treadmill.

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

Thanh Hien

(According to The Guardian)