Zero Hedge concludes the opposite. However, I'm going neutral on this and not dismissing "causation," one way or the other. Maybe chocolate is improving intelligence, or maybe "intelligence" leads to chocolate consumption. On health, the right kind of chocolate appears to confer benefits (Chocolate, a health food?):
"I think it's really quite convincing that eating the right kind of chocolate in reasonable doses at regular frequencies confers a meaningful net health benefit," Katz said.
Outside of the heart, chocolate has also been proven to have favorable metabolic effects. Last week, Beatrice Golomb, associate professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego, published a study in the Archives of Internal Medicine suggesting that chocolate may assist in weight loss. After surveying over 1,000 adults about their weekly food intake, Golomb discovered that more frequent chocolate consumption was correlated with lower BMI, a relationship not explained by any other health factors. The chocolate-eaters did not exercise more frequently or eat more fruits and vegetables, in fact, they ate more calories than other subjects. Despite that, they weighed less, she said. (Chocolate, a health food?)
Food For Thought: Why Correlation Better Not Be Causation
Courtesy of ZeroHedge
We can only hope that the chart below, which shows a rather disturbing linkage between consumption of chocolate (in kg/yr/capita) and Nobel prize laureates per 10 million of population, is simply a good confirmation of the old adage which everyone these days seems to forget (especially those who look at "black box" models and predict the outcome of the presidential election with 75.304% accuracy in hopes of signing even better book deals) that correlation most certainly is not causation. Of course, for the vast majority of people who have no idea where statistics ends and heuristics begins, there is nothing greater in life than a high R-squared, which is why we expect that the next generation of Americans will be even fatter (if that is even possible) for one simple reason: their proud parents will feed them intravenous chocolate in hopes of creating the next Economics Nobel prize winner.
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Researcher links chocolate eating to Nobel prizes (via AFP)
The more chocolate people in a country eat, the more Nobel prize winners the country produces per capita, according to a note published Thursday in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine. Flavonoids, antioxidants found in cocoa, green tea, red wine and some fruits, appear "to be effective…
