Our Verify team is tacking a story that is being shared all over social media. It says a study found that chocolate can help improve memory, especially as you age.
While it sounds delicious, our Verify fact checkers decided to take a closer look. Here's what they found:
- The first red flag was the study was sponsored by Mars Inc., the company that makes everything from Snickers to M&M's.
- Also, the research was only done on 37 people. They were not given chocolate, but cocoa Flavanol supplements.
- While research found improvements in the area of the brain associated with memory, it only looked at participants over a three month period.
While Flavanols in chocolate may help you memory as you age, we can verify this study was too small and too short to say that for sure.