
Eating chocolate is associated with improved brain function - mhb
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/04/the-magical-thing-eating-chocolate-does-to-your-brain/
======
carbocation
The study is here[1; non-paywalled].

A series of follow-ups might look like this:

1: GWAS to look for genetic association with chocolate consumption.

2: Mendelian randomization to assess whether an inherent predisposition for
increased chocolate consumption leads to increased cognitive function.

The same approach has been used to assess whether there is a dose-response of
alcohol on mortality (the answer appears to be "yes," and there is no U-shaped
curve).[2; non-paywalled]

This is mostly just to say that I'm not convinced by such tortured data in an
association study, but if there is enough interest in the hypothesis, then the
path forward to assess causality is clear.

1 =
[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0195666316...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0195666316300459)

2 =
[http://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g4164](http://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g4164)

------
Synaesthesia
Food companies distort nutrition science by funding studies. That's why we
have very specific titles like "Concord grape juice, cognitive function, and
driving performance," or, "Walnut ingestion in adults at risk for diabetes."
Usually the results are positive.

[http://www.vox.com/2016/3/3/11148422/food-science-
nutrition-...](http://www.vox.com/2016/3/3/11148422/food-science-nutrition-
research-bias-conflict-interest)

~~~
driverdan
That has absolutely nothing to do with this study.

~~~
cbd1984
It's the only reason this study exists, or got the results it did.

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have_faith
Reminds me very much of this:

[https://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com](https://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com)

A list of what the Daily Mail has reported will kill or cure cancer. I won't
spoil chocolates outcome.

------
Gatsky
Self-reported chocolate intake? There are so many possible confounders here.
It seens quite implausible that chocolate can acutely enhance cognitive
ability. Alternative explanations are more likely, although not newsworthy.

I also think that nutrition science, which is deficient enough as it is,
should not be mixed with epidemiology, which seems designed to detect spurious
associations.

~~~
mystikal
There's caffeine and sugar in it, seems reasonable, plus the pleasure of it
means more endorphins. That's like three direct up-regulators of brain
function.

~~~
Gatsky
Well the researchers say in the article that sugar should impair cognition.
Caffeine and feeling good are confounders, as they aren't unique to chocolate.
The researchers are proposing that it is some kind of special ingredient in
chocolate you can't really get anywhere else easily that enhances cognitive
function.

~~~
mystikal
Yeah, I agree that they should control for those things...

------
songzme
From personal experience, every bite of chocolate provides me a moment of
bliss and happiness. I think happiness is the real reason for improved brain
function. I find myself most productive and most capable when I am happy.

~~~
toephu2
That's called dopamine. The chocolate you eat probably has sugar in it
(otherwise it tastes horrible; try raw cacao), and sugar is a drug associated
w/ the release of dopamine in the brain.

~~~
wapapaloobop
>otherwise it tastes horrible; try raw cacao

Every luxury food or drug tastes horrible until you've learnt to enjoy it.
Remember your first beer or coffee? My guess is sugar would initially taste
somewhat foul ('sickly sweet') if one was brought up without it.

EDIT: I'm not recommending that people start snorting or imbibing cocoa
powder. However I think that if this were the only form of chocolate then one
would quickly learn to enjoy it.

~~~
Riesling
From my personal experience, I have to agree with wapapaloobop. I put a spoon
of raw cacao in my morning coffee, because I love the taste. However I drink
(and eat no) sugar whatsoever and found the taste disgusting (in the sense of
spitting it out) when I accidentally drank from my girlfriends coffee some
time ago.

~~~
matwood
I agree with you. I enjoy straight espresso and good black coffee. If I want
to 'sweeten' it I add some milk. When getting coffee at shops I have
mistakenly received one of those super sweet caramel, sugar whatever they are
called and almost had to spit out the sip.

I wonder if it is learned or if people who like sweets have different taste
buds than those who do not. I also like really hoppy beer and bitter candy.

~~~
dsr_
It is partially learned, partially a built-up tolerance.

Anecdata: About three years ago I drastically reduced my intake of
carbohydrates, including all forms of sugar and starch. After around two
months, I tried tasting some things that I had stopped eating -- fruit juice,
a bit of pie -- and discovered that they were horribly sweet to my tongue.

~~~
stcredzero
The amount of sugar going into foods has increased. I remember there being
around 20 grams of sugar in most sodas. Now, there is typically about twice
that amount, and Honest Teas are "lower in sugar" with 19 grams. The US food
industry's tactic is this: foist lots of sugar on people when they're kids and
don't know any better. Then, when they're adults, you can get away with plying
them with lots of high fructose corn syrup, which is super cheap due to
subsidies.

------
_snydly
It's better to wait for multiple, large randomized controlled trials to be
performed before making claims about improved brain function.

But maybe, for now, we can eat more chocolate for another ~proven benefit:
"Flavanol-rich chocolate and cocoa products may have a small but statistically
significant effect in lowering blood pressure.."

[http://www.cochrane.org/CD008893/HTN_effect-of-cocoa-on-
bloo...](http://www.cochrane.org/CD008893/HTN_effect-of-cocoa-on-blood-
pressure)

------
nonuby
This old chestnut has been published in mainstream media for decades, the
Daily Mail in the UK much feature it at least once a year (on the odd day a
cancer scare doesn't exist). I remember every exam been given chocolate to
take with me, and we're going back to early/mid 90s here.

------
brahmwg
Previous thread;
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11155532](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11155532)

------
alexchamberlain
There is a radio program in the UK called More or Less, who''s (whom's?) motto
is "Correlation is not causation". Admittedly, I have neither read the paper,
nor did I fully understand the section on proving the direction of influence,
but I can't help but feel this research makes pretty poor use of statistics
and logic, however much I wish to believe the result. Is all nutritional
research this bad?

~~~
leoedin
You haven't read the original paper, don't even understand the methodology
they used to reach their conclusions and yet you "can't help but feel this
research makes pretty poor use of statistics and logic"?

It seems something is bad here, but I don't think it's the nutritional
research. If you can't be bothered to actually read the paper, why do you
think you're able to critique it?

~~~
wapapaloobop
Cos it doesn't work with an explanation. Science is about explaining things.

~~~
PeterWhittaker
Hmm, yes, that is true. But "science" doesn't pull explanations from the air
(that would be religion or superstition, ya know).

Science first finds unlikely or unexpected correlations, unlikely or
unexpected measurements, and seeks to understand from whence they came. Are
they artifacts of the observation process? Tainting of the measurement
process? Or spurious correlations, such as the one between height and spelling
ability (both of which are strongly correlated with age, up to a certain
point)?

This particular research announces an unexpected correlation and goes to pains
to show that it is real, and not spurious. This is the observation phase, the
_oh, didn 't expect that_ phase. Explanation will come later, likely after
someone designs a more accurate and precise experiment to better correlate
chocolate consumption and cognitive ability.

~~~
wapapaloobop
If you go outside with a measuring tape and a stopwatch you'll discover
there's an unlimited number of measurements you can make. So that can't be how
scientists operate. They are guided by prior theories.

>[science] doesn't pull explanations from the air

Well, people think about problems and then ideas sometimes pop into their
heads. No one understands how yet. So explanations _do_ come out of the air,
metaphorically speaking! That doesn't make them false. It's what happens
afterwards that counts. Most ideas are rejected by criticism and a few go on
to be tested.

~~~
PeterWhittaker
_you 'll discover there's an unlimited number of measurements you can make_

Absolutely correct.

 _So that can 't be how scientists operate_

I'm torn between writing "citation needed" and "unwarranted conclusion from
stated premises" so I'll go with both.

The head of the department where I did my physics undergrad spent years,
decades, measuring everything there was to measure about plasma: Energy input,
energy output, temperature of the phase change (plasma is a distinct phase of
matter), spectral distribution, etc., etc., etc.

He wrote many papers, primarily on his measurements, and also on how he
refined and improved the measurement process. I don't recall at all well, but
I don't believe there were overmany hypotheses, let alone theories. He was
about data, not models.

There are theorists who spend the bulk of their time with pens and
imagination, occasionally - for some, rarely - checking in with the
empirically real world.

A very few of these have names we celebrate for changing the shape of the
world - Darwin, Newton, Einstein. And these particular luminaries knew the
shape of the real world, knew existing theory didn't fit. (Newton is famous
for saying he stood on the shoulders giants. Kepler was one such. Kepler
measured and measured and measured and devised a relation. No theory, just a
relation to link his measurements.)

Without the many scientists who do nothing but measure, measure, measure,
scientists many of us would consider tedious drudges, these luminaries could
never have known that theory didn't fit data. Or that data didn't fit
intuition. Or that data was just plain weird.

Science does indeed proceed this way, bottom up, from measuring anything and
everything of interest (to someone - maybe not to most of us, but to someone -
I invite you to read _The Map that Changed the World_ ).

Science also proceeds from the top down, from theory to measurement. But often
because there was another theory that failed to align with existing
measurement. Think general relativity and its better prediction of the motion
of Mercury, which failed to align with Newtonian Gravitation, which itself
would never have arisen had Kepler not spent so many hours measuring,
measuring, measuring. (And general relativity was a generalization of special
relativity, which was created to explain a particular vexing measurement, the
constancy of C. Einstein did not set out to reinvent gravity, he started
simply explaining how C might be constant. He got to gravitation when he
generalized relativity to non-inertial reference frames (that's what the
_special_ meant: inertial reference frames only).

We measure first. Just because we are that curious.

------
at-fates-hands
I have to take this with a grain of salt considering the guy who put out the
fake research on how eating chocolate can make lose you weight was just
revealed to be a huge hoax:

[http://io9.gizmodo.com/i-fooled-millions-into-thinking-
choco...](http://io9.gizmodo.com/i-fooled-millions-into-thinking-chocolate-
helps-weight-1707251800)

------
sarreph
I remember there was a similar headline to this — comparing the high ratio of
chocolate-eating to non-chocolate-eating Nobel laureates — in the Fall of
2012.

My Quantitive Methods lecturer used it as a perfect example of the
correlation/causation fallacy; it was certainly a good way of lightening the
mood at a 9am Friday lecture :)

------
yxitcti
I long for the day when these correlation-digging studies with absurd claims
will stop.

[https://xkcd.com/882/](https://xkcd.com/882/)

~~~
adenadel
You should take a look at the journal article. They comment on how they
corrected for multiple testing

"In addition to MANOVA, the Bonferroni procedure was used to protect against
multiple comparisons."

The Bonferroni correction is one of the most conservative ways to correct for
multiple testing.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonferroni_correction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonferroni_correction)

~~~
Gatsky
The study is still 'correlation-digging'. Bonferroni won't fix the problem
that these kinds of studies will throw up statistically significant
associations that provide no insight into anything meaningful, due to
confounders, biases, poor design etc. There is no equivalent xkcd however.

~~~
Adabenflaben
There's more to it than just the things you mentioned, and I'd argue that it's
an even bigger problem. The fact studies are adaptively chosen and performed
based on the results of past studies on the same (or related) data leads to
increased instances of false discovery. This is something that is directly
addressed in some very recent recent work (not uncoincidentally making
reference to this exact XKCD comic):

[http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-reusable-
hold...](http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-reusable-holdout-
preserving.html)

~~~
Gatsky
Freedman's paradox refers to adaptive data analysis within one dataset. The
reusable holdout is designed to permit adaptive analysis on the same dataset
without inflating the false discovery rate. The problem doesn't apply if you
are collecting new data and testing the hypothesis, that's the ideal scenario.

~~~
Adabenflaben
Yeah, Freedman's paradox is definitely part of what I'm alluding to. The other
aspect is that for widely studied phenomena, some groups are likely to come to
wrong conclusions just due to statistical error. E.g., if 100 groups
independently investigating whether "Eating chocolate is associated with
improved brain function" (and we'll assume it's false, just to make my point),
a few are likely going to come to the conclusion that it's true. Even worse,
some studies with "expected" results may not be published (either by choice of
the investigator or by the reviewers); instead, the "interesting" or
"exciting" results will get published.

------
winter_blue
Just as an FYI, I found a company recently that makes chocolate with zeor
sugar, that's sweetened with Stevia:
[https://www.cocopolo.com/](https://www.cocopolo.com/)

I didn't like their dark chocolate, but their milk chocolate comes pretty
close to regular milk chocolate.

~~~
wobbleblob
What is this current obsession with stevia? It has a very strong, pretty much
unpalatable taste that even strong espresso can't mask.

~~~
briHass
There seems to be a genetic component to how we perceive the taste of some of
these artificial sweeteners [1]. Personally, I also think stevia is gross --
bitter and metallic aftertaste.

The best AS for me is sucralose (Splenda). I can't tell it apart from sugar.
I've also never seen any results about it that would concern me, and it's been
studied more than almost anything else we eat.

[1]
[http://news.psu.edu/story/284556/2013/08/20/research/multipl...](http://news.psu.edu/story/284556/2013/08/20/research/multiple-
genes-manage-how-people-taste-sweeteners)

~~~
wobbleblob
It may also be a matter of getting used to it.

Oddly enough, after so many years, I don't like the taste of sugar any more,
it seems 'off'. Aspartame is fine.

------
dagurp
Just in time for easter

------
delinka
Those with 'improved brain function' generally eat more chocolate. Now I can
say with impunity "I prefer chocolate because I have improved brain function."

Chocolate improves brain function. Now I can say with impunity "Chocolate is
improving my brain function."

------
steve371
I won't even argue if the study is bias or not. Let's just say chocolate is
good for the brain. But is it advisable for people to consume them in certain
amount daily? Well, back in the days, there were numeric studies about benefit
of tobacco too.

------
krzyk
Would be good to make a longer study that takes into account that cocoa
contains cadmium, which is quite toxic and probably might increase a chance of
cancer.

------
thatusertwo
Some of the characters who are suppose to be super smart in 'Death Note' are
always eating sweets / chocolate.

------
cbd1984
Does _anyone_ really believe this wasn't paid for by a chocolate maker?

------
Pxtl
Wasn't one of these health-benefits-of-chocolate papers revealed to be a
deliberate prank?

------
kccqzy
I'm not disparaging the researchers here but really I couldn't help thinking
of this: [https://xkcd.com/882/](https://xkcd.com/882/)

~~~
rdancer
If you're wondering why you're getting downvoted: The figure of speech you're
using is colloquially known as "no offence, but you're an arsehole"[0].

[0]
[http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=no+offense&pa...](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=no+offense&page=2)

------
codeddesign
"This article is brought to you by Nestle" ;)

------
louwrentius
So smart people have a knack for chocolate?

------
daljeetv
is chocolate a nootropic?

------
SoleSoul
'L' would approve.

------
kotach
All food is healthy. Diets can be unhealthy. It really is interesting that the
whole science is concentrating on a single ingredient.

~~~
astrange
> All food is healthy.

Except for the food with cyanide in it.

~~~
lucideer
Like apples

~~~
chris_wot
And walnuts.

------
user1857
in my personal experience, eating chocolate has pushed me into IBS trouble,
which i realized such a disease existed after 15 years. I stopped eating
chocolate for the past 5 years. Now i am happy.

Brain is a sugar sucker. Eat food which has natural sugar (like fruits) and
you still be happy. Chocolate is just one sour junk which sugar added to
please your bain (which is the trick). I think eat the chocolate without sugar
and see if it sill improves brain function

~~~
colanderman
Bitter, not sour. Lemons are sour.

~~~
user1857
forgive my english. its not my native.

