Words Sophie Goddard.
Photographs iStock, Shutterstock
The average Brit eats three chocolate bars a week, with nearly half of us hiding the evidence (and that’s not even at Christmas!). But there’s good news – our beloved cocoa bean is a rich source of flavanols, which have a beneficial effect on our cognitive performance, a new Italian study shows. As well as improving memory and visual processing, they counteracted the effects of sleep loss in women – welcome relief during December. Here are some more reasons to get stuck into that advent calendar: