Regular dietary intake of cocoa flavanols — naturally occurring substances found in cacao beans — improves general cognition, attention, processing speed, and working memory. That’s according to a review of previous studies, published recently in the journal Frontiers in Nutrition.

In the review paper, a team of Italian researchers examined the available literature for the effects of regular consumption of cocoa flavanols on different cognitive domains; in other words: what happens to your brain up to a few hours after you eat cocoa flavanols, and what happens when you sustain such a cocoa flavanol enriched diet for a prolonged period of time?

“Research on the effects of cocoa and chocolate on human cognition, although at its preliminary stage, converges at pointing to cocoa as a new interesting nutraceutical tool to protect human cognition and counteract different types of cognitive decline,” the scientists said.

“Participants showed, among others, enhancements in working memory performance and improved visual information processing after having had cocoa flavanols.”

“And for women, eating cocoa after a night of total sleep deprivation actually counteracted the cognitive impairment (i.e. less accuracy in performing tasks) that such a night brings about.”

“Promising results for people that suffer from chronic sleep deprivation or work shifts.”

The effects depended on the length and mental load of the used cognitive tests to measure the effect of acute cocoa consumption, according to the authors — researchers from the Universities of L’Aquila and Rome.

For example, in young and healthy adults, a high demanding cognitive test was required to uncover the subtle immediate behavioral effects that cocoa flavanols have on this group.

The effects of relatively long-term consumption of cocoa flavanols — ranging from 5 days up to 3 months — have generally been investigated in elderly individuals.

“It turns out that for them cognitive performance was improved by a daily intake of cocoa flavanols,” the researchers said.

“Factors such as attention, processing speed, working memory, and verbal fluency were greatly affected.”

“These effects were, however, most pronounced in older adults with a starting memory decline or other mild cognitive impairments.”

“And this was exactly the most unexpected and promising result.”

“This result suggests the potential of cocoa flavanols to protect cognition in vulnerable populations over time by improving cognitive performance,” the authors said.

“If you look at the underlying mechanism, the cocoa flavanols have beneficial effects for cardiovascular health and can increase cerebral blood volume in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus. This structure is particularly affected by aging and therefore the potential source of age-related memory decline in humans.”

“So should cocoa become a dietary supplement to improve our cognition? Regular intake of cocoa and chocolate could indeed provide beneficial effects on cognitive functioning over time,” the scientists said.

“There are, however, potential side effects of eating cocoa and chocolate. Those are generally linked to the caloric value of chocolate, some inherent chemical compounds of the cocoa plant such as caffeine and theobromine, and a variety of additives we add to chocolate such as sugar or milk.”

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Valentina Socci et al. Enhancing Human Cognition with Cocoa Flavonoids. Front. Nutr, published online May 16, 2017; doi: 10.3389/fnut.2017.00019