Chocolate is Our Friend
Want More of This? Get Some Brain Food Every Week.
Dark chocolate has flavanoids that are good for your brain.
Flava what?
A flavanol is a natural compound with neuroprotective effects. And guess where you can find loads of them? Chocolate. Well, actually the cocoa bean to be precise.
The flavanol effect
In a test, people that had ingested flavanols showed an increase in working memory performance and improved visual information processing several hours later.
In elderly individuals, cognitive performance is improved by a daily intake of cocoa flavanols. Factors such as:
Attention
Processing speed
Working memory, and
Verbal fluency
This was extra true in elderly individuals who were already experiencing mild cognitive impairments.
Is all chocolate created equal?
Definitely not. You need the good stuff. Look for dark chocolate with a high (75+) percentage of cocoa. All chocolate is going to have some sugar in it and a little caffeine, so just don’t hit the dark chocolate bunnies too hard and you’ll be fine.
YUM
In a previous blog post, I gave pumpkin marketers a tagline for pumpkin seeds and this week I have an idea for chocolate marketers. CogChoc. Pro-cognition chocolate. Would you buy it? In the meantime, here’s some Easter bunny chocolate high in flavanoids.
FOR THE NERDY: Pro-chocolate research. [Source: Frontiers - Enhancing Human Cognition with Cocoa Flavanoids]