(Image: Paul McDevitt)
IS CHOCOLATE the key to cognitive success? Curious about the much-heralded benefits of flavonoids, found in chocolate as well as wine, Franz Messerli of St Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital in New York collected data on average chocolate consumption in various countries and compared it to those countries’ per-capita share of last year’s Nobel prizes.
Switzerland stood at the top of both rankings, and when Messerli plotted the numbers for other countries, they showed an impressively strong correlation, in the New England Journal of Medicine (vol 367, p 1562).
“The minimally effective chocolate dose seems to hover around 2…
