Chocolate intake is associated with better cognitive function | Hacker News Reader

Chocolate intake is associated with better cognitive function

sciencedirect.com

79 pointsbrahmwg36 comments

I haven't read the study yet, but I'm immediately reminded of the great chocolate p-hacking article from last year: http://io9.gizmodo.com/i-fooled-millions-into-thinking-choco...

io9 used to be such a good site. Gawker's merger of io9 and gizmodo is messier and less useful than even the rest of their sites.

Of course smart people are better at accumulating chocolate.

What else did anyone expect?

Kale consumption associated with better cognitive function.

Winning competitive chess matches associated with better cognitive function.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

Note that it says chocolate as in cacao, not sugar and milk fats.

As a fine chocolate connoisseur (ahem), I recommend sticking to 70% cacao minimum. 90% is usually disgusting. Always check the ingredients. A decent commercial international one is the Lindt 70% black. And I don't work for Lindt.

> As a fine chocolate connoisseur

> 90% is usually disgusting

Tsk tsk. Amateur.

Semi-related topic - hot chocolate (the drink). Am I the only one who actually prefers the taste of the non-dutch (non-alkali-processed)?

If it's processed, it loses all its kick. Also I suspect processing reduces whatever benefits it may provide.

Where can I get some of the hot chocolate you describe? I've never had it and it sounds interesting.

raw cacao nibs, 100% cacao

https://nuts.com/nuts/cacao/organic-nibs.html

Dutch process neutralizes the acidity of the chocolate, which might be what you perceive as losing the kick; in any case, there's plenty of debate as to which makes better hot cocoa -- you certainly aren't alone in preferring natural to dutch process for that use.

I'm not sure if that's available in the UK. But I have tried many different cocoa powders, including some expensive ones, and by far my favorite is Cadbury Bournville. It's lighter colored than most and has a stronger flavor. Maybe it is non-dutched, or at least less so than usual?

How does one make "non-Dutch" cocoa?

Gotta work up your tolerance. You'll get there.

I was talked into trying 100% cacao once. If I wasn't told what it was, I would never have thought chocolate could taste like that.

What form was it in? Was it just a cacao bean?

lindt chili chocolate, good stuff.

http://cdn2.blisstree.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/lindt-e...

Yup! If you like chocolate sweet, then you don't like chocolate. I actually buy choco beans and eat them raw.

I love 90%. Lindt 90% with sea salt is the best.

Himalayan rock salt baby. Pink. Crystals, not powdered.

Just make sure the product has a high percentage of cocoa solids even 70%, 85% or 90% doesn't necessarily mean there is it's just the total of cocoa butter plus solids added together.

I now stick to milk chocolate not dark since I am allergic to chocolate the dark stuff makes me sneeze but milk chocolate seems to buffer the allergic effect.

No, it is not "chocolate as in cacao". The study says this:

"Most clinical trials have used dark chocolate as the source of cocoa flavanols. In 2012, the distribution share of chocolate in the United States by favourite chocolate type was 57% milk chocolate, 35% dark chocolate, and 8% white chocolate [1]. We can therefore make the assumption that the majority of chocolate consumed in this sample was dark or milk, both containing cocoa flavanols to varying degrees"

But given this, another recent study comes in my mind: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/oped40/Lustig.pdf (which just tells that sugar kills you with or without cacao)

Yes high cocoa content from Lindt is disgusting, but that's not true of smaller good quality brands, or actually if you're in Canada Loblaws' organic no-name "brand".

I don't claim to be a specialist but I suspect the big difference co.es from cocoa fat vs solid percentage.

Doesn't chocolate contain caffeine? Would that fact explain this result? Ie. Is there a similar effect from just consuming the equivalent amount of caffeine.

Chocolate contains theobromine, which is a distinct alkaloid from caffeine, although they are both xanthines.

Chocolate doesn't have that much caffeine as normally eaten. An entire bar of dark chocolate has less caffeine than a cup of coffee, but people generally eat much less.

https://www.google.com/search?q=caffeine+in+coffee+vs+chocol...

For what it worth - in the span of 1998-2000 I was participating in national programming competitions between high school students in Belarus. On a day of actual event every participants were given bar of chocolate. Can't say if it helped my cognitive function or not, but it was nice to have chocolate snack before working on solving problems :)

And remember that dark chocolate is better for you than milk chocolate.

> "Chocolate intake was self-reported, and therefore subject to inherent reporting error. The dietary questionnaire used did not require the respondent to differentiate between dark, milk or white chocolate. ... We can therefore make the assumption that the majority of chocolate consumed in this sample was dark or milk, both containing cocoa flavanols to varying degrees."

It would be cool to have a study looking specifically at the effects of dark chocolate.

At first the cynic in me thought, "Scientists find that people with higher cognition like to habitually eat chocolate?"

But from the article: "Benefits to information processing speed and working memory were observed in these studies within hours of consuming cocoa flavanols or dark chocolate. Less research has examined the effects from the longer-term consumption of chocolate or cocoa."

But it could influence the longer term effect that they're studying. They address this issue in the section "Secondary Analyses":

> In a secondary analysis, we asked whether cognitive performance predicted chocolate consumption rather than the other way round. This analysis was conducted on a sample of participants who had completed a cognitive assessment in waves 1-4 of the MSLS, but also completed the dietary questionnaire at wave 6, a mean of 18.0 years later. Cognition was assessed using the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)... There were no significant associations between chocolate intake and the total WAIS...

Seems like the chocolate eaters weren't more intelligent to begin with.

Before an interview I make sure that I have caffeine and chocolate while driving to the interview. I always seem to communicate better when I do this.

So are blueberries .. much better!

B.S Nutritional study.

We have simply got to stop taking submissions of preliminary research findings from low-impact factor primary research journals for discussion on Hacker News. Let's first of all see a neutral review of the issue by an active scientist or (better still) a competent science journalist (that's a rare kind of person) to see what of methodological problems there may be in this study, and how well it represents the prior literature on the topic.

I'm not really qualified to comment and I didn't spend very much time analysing the paper. However, I'll comment a bit since reading nutrition papers used to be a hobby of mine. First, the sample size is relatively good - nearly 1000 people, taken from a similar area and over a long period of time (30 years). What's missing is any obvious mention of how the participants were chosen, so it's hard to see if there is any selection bias. However, I didn't look at the links provided, so hopefully it goes into more detail there. I mention this because I have often seen papers published in this area with obviously flawed sample selection. This seems better than most.

The main things that stand out for me is that they did not attempt to measure how much chocolate people consumed, nor the type of chocolate consumed. They simply measured the number of times a week "chocolate" was consumed (which could have been a large variety of things). The other main point is that they mention that there was a significant reduction in alcohol consumption in the groups that ate the most chocolate, however they did not try to correct for this. Just scanning through the data they present, I don't think it is possible to tell if the increased cognitive performance is related to chocolate intake, or a lack of alcohol intake.

So, it is an interesting paper, but I wouldn't go out and start eating chocolate because of it.

I disagree. First of all "Appetite" for which this article was accepted is decently ranked (whatever you think of these rankings). It's in Q1 for both Nutrition and Psychology. H-Index of 80 is pretty solid. It's the 179th ranked Psychology journal which isn't bad for such a niche journal. For Nutrition it's ranked 23rd [1]. So as far as food related cognitive science is concerned I'd call this a pretty decent journal. Since it is accepted it has gone through a successfull review process already.

More importantly though...why is it bad that unpublished research is linked to on HN. I'd rather read it and make up my own mind than wait for it to go through a review process. The topic at hand is at least tangentially related to core HN content, too as eating chocolate might make you a better programmer/entrepreneur.

[1]: http://www.scimagojr.com/journalsearch.php?q=29994&tip=sid&c... It has a (whatever you think of these is another matter)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com