Eating chocolate is associated with improved brain function

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/04/the-magical-thing-eating-chocolate-does-to-your-brain/

by mhb • 10 years ago

207 93 10 years ago

Gatsky5• 10 years ago

Self-reported chocolate intake? There are so many possible confounders here. It seens quite implausible that chocolate can acutely enhance cognitive ability. Alternative explanations are more likely, although not newsworthy.

I also think that nutrition science, which is deficient enough as it is, should not be mixed with epidemiology, which seems designed to detect spurious associations.

mystikal2• 10 years ago

There's caffeine and sugar in it, seems reasonable, plus the pleasure of it means more endorphins. That's like three direct up-regulators of brain function.

Gatsky5• 10 years ago

Well the researchers say in the article that sugar should impair cognition. Caffeine and feeling good are confounders, as they aren't unique to chocolate. The researchers are proposing that it is some kind of special ingredient in chocolate you can't really get anywhere else easily that enhances cognitive function.

im3w1l• 10 years ago

Also theobromine

leereeves2• 10 years ago

We should consider all research skeptically, but why does it seem particularly implausible that cocoa flavanols can enhance cognitive ability?

Other research:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=cocoa+flavanols+cogniti...

pps43• 10 years ago

I think the point here is not which prior to use for effect of chocolate, but how to account for the differences between actual and self-reported chocolate consumption, which itself might be correlated with cognitive ability.

Maybe people who ate chocolate but did not report it (because "eating too much chocolate is bad for you") tended to have lower cognitive ability - they did not realise that by reporting incorrect intake they introduced bias in the study.

winter_blue3• 10 years ago

Just as an FYI, I found a company recently that makes chocolate with zeor sugar, that's sweetened with Stevia: https://www.cocopolo.com/

I didn't like their dark chocolate, but their milk chocolate comes pretty close to regular milk chocolate.

DenisM2• 10 years ago

Are you conserved with sugar per se, or the insulin response? Cocoa causes insulin spike even when sugar-free, iirc.

winter_blue3• 10 years ago

Yup, I am concerned about the insulin response / glycemic index. Hmm...

wobbleblob3• 10 years ago

What is this current obsession with stevia? It has a very strong, pretty much unpalatable taste that even strong espresso can't mask.

ktRolster3• 10 years ago

It's natural, as opposed to unnatural things like sucralose and aspartame.

In the current zeitgeist, 'natural' is assumed to be better.

venomsnake• 10 years ago

Since "eat less" for weight control is too hard, we are on constant search for stuff we can stuff ourselves with with minimum weight gain.

briHass• 10 years ago

There seems to be a genetic component to how we perceive the taste of some of these artificial sweeteners [1]. Personally, I also think stevia is gross -- bitter and metallic aftertaste.

The best AS for me is sucralose (Splenda). I can't tell it apart from sugar. I've also never seen any results about it that would concern me, and it's been studied more than almost anything else we eat.

[1] http://news.psu.edu/story/284556/2013/08/20/research/multipl...

kccqzy• 10 years ago

I'm not disparaging the researchers here but really I couldn't help thinking of this: https://xkcd.com/882/

rdancer• 10 years ago

If you're wondering why you're getting downvoted: The figure of speech you're using is colloquially known as "no offence, but you're an arsehole"[0].

[0] http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=no+offense&pa...

at-fates-hands• 10 years ago

I have to take this with a grain of salt considering the guy who put out the fake research on how eating chocolate can make lose you weight was just revealed to be a huge hoax:

http://io9.gizmodo.com/i-fooled-millions-into-thinking-choco...

codeddesign• 10 years ago

"This article is brought to you by Nestle" ;)

brahmwg• 10 years ago

Previous thread; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11155532

nonuby• 10 years ago

This old chestnut has been published in mainstream media for decades, the Daily Mail in the UK much feature it at least once a year (on the odd day a cancer scare doesn't exist). I remember every exam been given chocolate to take with me, and we're going back to early/mid 90s here.

songzme• 10 years ago

From personal experience, every bite of chocolate provides me a moment of bliss and happiness. I think happiness is the real reason for improved brain function. I find myself most productive and most capable when I am happy.

toephu22• 10 years ago

That's called dopamine. The chocolate you eat probably has sugar in it (otherwise it tastes horrible; try raw cacao), and sugar is a drug associated w/ the release of dopamine in the brain.

ktRolster3• 10 years ago

   > otherwise it tastes horrible; try raw cacao

It's actually delicious, and each bean has its own flavor. If you live near Silicon Valley, head up to Dandelion chocolate and you can try some there (work up to it by getting used to the bitter chocolate first)

wapapaloobop3• 10 years ago

otherwise it tastes horrible; try raw cacao

Every luxury food or drug tastes horrible until you've learnt to enjoy it. Remember your first beer or coffee? My guess is sugar would initially taste somewhat foul ('sickly sweet') if one was brought up without it.

EDIT: I'm not recommending that people start snorting or imbibing cocoa powder. However I think that if this were the only form of chocolate then one would quickly learn to enjoy it.

dorfsmay• 10 years ago

There are 90% and 95% cocoa chocolate that taste really good, you don't need a lot of sugar to take the bitterness off. Look for shops making their own dark chocolate, or smaller brands. The most well known brand people associate with dark chocolate tastes bitter and powdery (I suspect they use too much solid and not enough fat)

Note that cocoa itself makes the brain release large amount of dopamine.

GFK_of_xmaspast• 10 years ago

There's a huge difference between "dark chocolate" and "purestrain sugar".

daxelrod• 10 years ago

Anecdote: I find raw cacao nibs to be delicious.

yxitcti• 10 years ago

I long for the day when these correlation-digging studies with absurd claims will stop.

https://xkcd.com/882/

adenadel2• 10 years ago

You should take a look at the journal article. They comment on how they corrected for multiple testing

"In addition to MANOVA, the Bonferroni procedure was used to protect against multiple comparisons."

The Bonferroni correction is one of the most conservative ways to correct for multiple testing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonferroni_correction

Gatsky5• 10 years ago

The study is still 'correlation-digging'. Bonferroni won't fix the problem that these kinds of studies will throw up statistically significant associations that provide no insight into anything meaningful, due to confounders, biases, poor design etc. There is no equivalent xkcd however.

elchief• 10 years ago

Can we just have this one? It's chocolate, man.

chris_wot2• 10 years ago

Sure, eat your heart out. Just try not to eat your heart out.

vixen99• 10 years ago

Correlation-digging studies absurd or otherwise have led to an awful lot of peer-reviewed literature detailing a raft of <<molecular mechanisms>> by which flavonoids may be implicated in improved brain function.

To pick one at random: "Flavonoids exert a multiplicity of neuroprotective actions within the brain, including a potential to protect neurons against injury induced by neurotoxins, an ability to suppress neuroinflammation, and the potential to promote memory, learning and cognitive function. These effects appear to be underpinned by two common processes . . ."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2593006/

Most of us enjoy eating the stuff so it's no surprise that chocolate as a flavonoid-containing substance gets special attention.

noobie• 10 years ago

Can someone please explain to me the difference between p-value and the confidence interval?

user18572• 10 years ago

in my personal experience, eating chocolate has pushed me into IBS trouble, which i realized such a disease existed after 15 years. I stopped eating chocolate for the past 5 years. Now i am happy.

Brain is a sugar sucker. Eat food which has natural sugar (like fruits) and you still be happy. Chocolate is just one sour junk which sugar added to please your bain (which is the trick). I think eat the chocolate without sugar and see if it sill improves brain function

colanderman• 10 years ago

Bitter, not sour. Lemons are sour.

user18572• 10 years ago

forgive my english. its not my native.

goldenkey• 10 years ago

Its kind of cliche to target excess consumption of a rake and claim its terrible since you took the extreme cold turkey. All pleasures are best used moderately. Its an adage as old as good and evil itself.

a3n• 10 years ago

Why not eat unsweetened chocolate? Take it like a vitamin.

carbocation• 10 years ago

The study is here[1; non-paywalled].

A series of follow-ups might look like this:

1: GWAS to look for genetic association with chocolate consumption.

2: Mendelian randomization to assess whether an inherent predisposition for increased chocolate consumption leads to increased cognitive function.

The same approach has been used to assess whether there is a dose-response of alcohol on mortality (the answer appears to be "yes," and there is no U-shaped curve).[2; non-paywalled]

This is mostly just to say that I'm not convinced by such tortured data in an association study, but if there is enough interest in the hypothesis, then the path forward to assess causality is clear.

1 = http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0195666316...

2 = http://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g4164

_snydly• 10 years ago

It's better to wait for multiple, large randomized controlled trials to be performed before making claims about improved brain function.

But maybe, for now, we can eat more chocolate for another ~proven benefit: "Flavanol-rich chocolate and cocoa products may have a small but statistically significant effect in lowering blood pressure.."

http://www.cochrane.org/CD008893/HTN_effect-of-cocoa-on-bloo...

daljeetv• 10 years ago

is chocolate a nootropic?

Synaesthesia• 10 years ago

Food companies distort nutrition science by funding studies. That's why we have very specific titles like "Concord grape juice, cognitive function, and driving performance," or, "Walnut ingestion in adults at risk for diabetes." Usually the results are positive.

http://www.vox.com/2016/3/3/11148422/food-science-nutrition-...

gjm11• 10 years ago

True and important. But this particular study doesn't seem to be an instance of that phenomenon. So far as I can tell, no one involved was funded by the food industry, and what they did was to look broadly for connections between diet and cognitive function and this turned up.

Now, there are other problems with that sort of data-mining and determining whether they've successfully avoided them all is highly nontrivial (and I haven't tried). So this might still be bad science. But it doesn't appear to be funded-by-vested-interests bad.

driverdan• 10 years ago

That has absolutely nothing to do with this study.

cbd19842• 10 years ago

It's the only reason this study exists, or got the results it did.

SoleSoul• 10 years ago

'L' would approve.

alexchamberlain2• 10 years ago

There is a radio program in the UK called More or Less, who''s (whom's?) motto is "Correlation is not causation". Admittedly, I have neither read the paper, nor did I fully understand the section on proving the direction of influence, but I can't help but feel this research makes pretty poor use of statistics and logic, however much I wish to believe the result. Is all nutritional research this bad?

ktRolster3• 10 years ago

  >Is all nutritional research this bad?

No, but media reports of nutritional research tends to be.

leereeves2• 10 years ago

Since you seemed to ask: whose

leoedin• 10 years ago

You haven't read the original paper, don't even understand the methodology they used to reach their conclusions and yet you "can't help but feel this research makes pretty poor use of statistics and logic"?

It seems something is bad here, but I don't think it's the nutritional research. If you can't be bothered to actually read the paper, why do you think you're able to critique it?

wapapaloobop3• 10 years ago

Cos it doesn't work with an explanation. Science is about explaining things.

alexchamberlain2• 10 years ago

That wasn't quite what I said. I read and understood the first part, but I didn't understand how they tried to justify it in the second half without a causal link.

greendestiny_re• 10 years ago

"whose" sounds about right.

kotach3• 10 years ago

All food is healthy. Diets can be unhealthy. It really is interesting that the whole science is concentrating on a single ingredient.

astrange• 10 years ago

All food is healthy.

Except for the food with cyanide in it.

lucideer• 10 years ago

Like apples

kotach3• 10 years ago

Yeah, that's exactly the food I was thinking of.

Cheeseburger + chocolate milk shake. Quinoa with kale.

What would you say is more healthy? The comparison is idiotic.

If a person suffers anorexia their whole diet is unhealthy and has to become healthy. Their relationship with food is also unhealthy.

The former is much more suitable meal for someone having difficulties meeting their caloric needs. If they have it couple of times a day every day, then we know the diet is unhealthy.

The latter can be a nice addition to a healthy diet.

The amount of downvotes on my first comment means that quite a lot of community here have an unhealthy relationship with food.

https://atheismfaq.quora.com/Is-this-food-healthy

Checkout the link above. I hope it'll improve your relationship with food.

imaginenore• 10 years ago

Would you like some polonium tea?

dang• 10 years ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11232835 and marked it off-topic.

kotach3• 10 years ago

This comment is on-topic. Everything else is off-topic.

Improve that precision!

sarreph• 10 years ago

I remember there was a similar headline to this — comparing the high ratio of chocolate-eating to non-chocolate-eating Nobel laureates — in the Fall of 2012.

My Quantitive Methods lecturer used it as a perfect example of the correlation/causation fallacy; it was certainly a good way of lightening the mood at a 9am Friday lecture :)

louwrentius• 10 years ago

So smart people have a knack for chocolate?

have_faith• 10 years ago

Reminds me very much of this:

https://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com

A list of what the Daily Mail has reported will kill or cure cancer. I won't spoil chocolates outcome.

steve371• 10 years ago

I won't even argue if the study is bias or not. Let's just say chocolate is good for the brain. But is it advisable for people to consume them in certain amount daily? Well, back in the days, there were numeric studies about benefit of tobacco too.

dagurp• 10 years ago

Just in time for easter

delinka• 10 years ago

Those with 'improved brain function' generally eat more chocolate. Now I can say with impunity "I prefer chocolate because I have improved brain function."

Chocolate improves brain function. Now I can say with impunity "Chocolate is improving my brain function."

krzyk• 10 years ago

Would be good to make a longer study that takes into account that cocoa contains cadmium, which is quite toxic and probably might increase a chance of cancer.

Pxtl• 10 years ago

Wasn't one of these health-benefits-of-chocolate papers revealed to be a deliberate prank?

thatusertwo• 10 years ago

Some of the characters who are suppose to be super smart in 'Death Note' are always eating sweets / chocolate.

cbd19842• 10 years ago

Does anyone really believe this wasn't paid for by a chocolate maker?

Eating chocolate is associated with improved brain function

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