There are a lot of things we tell ourselves about chocolate in order to eat it on a frequent basis. It's great for headaches, it's good for the heart, it's better than other things I could be eating! But what if we told you it's been proven to make you smarter too? Hot diggity-dang!
A recent study shared by the folks over at NPR claims that chocolate is responsible for winning the Nobel Prize. After charting which countries have the largest chocolate consumption versus which ones have the most Nobel Prize winners, the Swiss cleaned up shop while the Chinese were left behind.
Here's a quote from the piece:
After being asked to peer review an article on flavanols, the substances found in tea, wine and chocolate, among other things, that seem to help slow down or even reverse the mental slowdowns of aging, he began to toy around with a silly idea: If chocolate consumption could boost a septuagenarian's brain power, might it also boost an entire country's?
One rainy afternoon, while stuck in a Katmandu hotel, Messerli got to playing around with the data. When he plugged in numbers from 23 countries, they made a neat linear plot on the page: Not only was the correlation between chocolate consumption and Nobel Prize winners very significant, but the probability that the distribution was due to chance — what researchers call the "p-value" — was tiny.
No real tests have specifically been done on chocolate making folks smarter in general, but we're sure it's in the works. For now, we're going to call those few moments a day when we unwrap those tiny chocolates our preparation for our Nobel Prize. Want to read more on the story?
→ Read More: The Secret To Genius? It Might Be More Chocolate from NPR
Related: Nigella Lawson's Lovely, Ravishing, Mesmeric Chocolate Pots
(Image: Flickr member Tim Sackton licensed for use by Creative Commons)
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Correlation is not causation.
(signed, a chocolate lover)
Well, apparently its substances found in chocolate and tea and the Chinese came at the bottom, which just proves that the theory is wrong, since their tea consumption should have secured them a higher position if the theory was right. I think its more that chocolate is a luxury product, so rich countries will eat more, have better education and universitites and therefore more Nobel prizes.
Dark chocolate certainly tickles my brain ;o)
"No real tests have specifically been done"
All the more reason for me to keep tasting this theory ;)
@mschatelaine - but the p value!
Love this article!
Perhaps there is a relationship between national wealth & access to chocolate? And national wealth and Nobel prizes? Nah! It has to be the chocolate that does it.