Official News page 8

REAL LIFE NEWS: SEE, I TOLD YOU CHOCOLATE WAS GOOD FOR ME!

by Hazed

A new study suggests that eating chocolate could improve the brain's ability to do maths. Volunteers who were given large amounts of compounds found in chocolate found that mental arithmetic became easier. They were also less likely to feel tired or mentally drained.

Prof David Kennedy from Northumbria University in the UK, a co-author of the study, said that the findings suggest that students who binge on chocolate when revising for exams may gain a real benefit from doing so. "For things that are difficult to do, mentally demanding things that maybe crop up in your work it could help," he said.

The compounds in chocolate are called flavanols, and they are part of a group of chemicals called polyphenols. They work by increasing the flow of blood into the brain.

For the study, 30 volunteers were asked to count backwards in groups of three from a computer-generated random number between 800 and 999. The findings show that after they had been given a hot cocoa drink that contained the flavanols, they could do the calculations much more quickly. They also didn't get as tired doing the calculations if they'd had the cocoa drink.

Excellent news - pass the chocolate!

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