Eating chocolate could improve the brain’s ability to do maths,
a new study gives chocolate lovers more excuse to stay with
their diet. How eating chocolate can help improve your maths
Mental arithmetic became easier after volunteers had been given
large amounts of compounds found in chocolate, called flavanols,
in a hot cocoa drink. They were also less likely to feel tired
or mentally drained, the findings, presented at the British
Psychological Society annual conference in Brighton show. Prof
David Kennedy, director of the brain, performance and nutrition
research centre at Northumbria University, and a co-author of
the study, said that chocolate could be beneficial for mentally
challenging tasks. The findings suggest students who binge on
chocolate when revising for exams may gain a real benefit from
doing so. The findings also show that the volunteers did not get
as tired doing the calculations if they had been given the cocoa
drink, despite being asked to do them over and over for an hour.
The researcher