Cocoa extract has cognitive benefits: new study

Fans of chocolate, rejoice! Here’s another win to celebrate, and just in time for the holidays.

Cocoa extract has been shown to have cognitive benefits for older adults, according to new research.

Earlier studies have suggested that cocoa extract might have a protective effect on brain health, but the results from some studies have been weak or inconsistent.

The new study suggests that cocoa extract supplements containing 500 mg a day of cocoa flavanols had cognitive benefits for older adults.

The study, published today in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and conducted by researchers at Mass General Brigham, included 573 older adults who underwent detailed, in-person cognitive testing.

The benefits were seen among seniors who had a poor-quality diet at the time of enrollment in the study. However, cognitive benefits weren’t significant among participants who already had a healthy diet.

One caveat: Don’t try to get 500 mg of cocoa flavanols a day from chocolate. You’d need to eat about 600 calories’ worth of dark chocolate to get that many cocoa flavanols, according to Consumer Reports.

That’s nearly one-third of the 2,000 recommended daily calories for an adult woman, and that much dark chocolate would lead to weight gain and a lack of nutrients (as well as making you sick of chocolate).

Instead, try other flavanol-rich foods such as tea, citrus fruit and juices, berries, red wine, apples, beans and other legumes.

The study is one result of a larger, long-term research effort known as COSMOS (or the Cocoa Supplement and Multivitamin Outcomes Study).

COSMOS is a clinical trial led by Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and funded in part by Mars, the maker of Snickers and other chocolate candies. More than 21,000 older women and men enrolled in COSMOS across the US to participate in studies of cocoa extract.

And in case you missed the news, chocolate and cocoa have been heralded in a number of studies for possible health benefits.

It might help people who suffer from multiple sclerosis, according to a 2019 study, which found that people with MS who quaffed a high-flavonoid cocoa drink had a 45% increase in alertness, plus an 80% jump in their walking speed.

And Penn State researchers have identified cocoa powder as a potential wonder drug for the health of those suffering liver damage due to obesity, according to experiments done on mice fed a high-fat diet.

An earlier study compared the “mental energy” effects of four different hot beverages: one with cocoa, one with caffeine, one with a combination of the two and the final as a placebo.

Each day, the participants drank one of the four drinks and were asked to complete a “mental energy test.” People who drank the caffeine-cocoa concoction had higher accuracy than those with the cocoa drink.

Along with the concentration boost, the research showed that cocoa lessened “caffeine’s anxiety-producing effects.”

But those results come with a caveat: When compared to the placebo group, people who had only caffeine in their drink were angrier. Fortunately, consuming cocoa along with the caffeine weakened those feelings of anger, along with reducing anxiety.