MATH is getting easier and easier. All you have to do is either chew gum and/or drink chocolate milk and you'll get smarter in math. Imagine that. How do you suppose scientific researchers came up with findings that made a direct hit on the bull's eye of what kids love to put in their mouths -- chewing gum and chocolate milk. And what parents worry about -- flunking math. It's a miracle! Do you believe it?
I'm not sure I buy it either. In fact, that's what I think is happening. They want you to buy it. There's some manipulation going on, some conflict-of-interest that makes one question the legitimacy of the research findings. Could it be that those behind the research, the sponsors who put up the money to pay the researchers, want to sell product?
CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSE-AND-EFFECT
And remember, correlational studies prove nothing except a correlation -- no evidence of cause-and-effect.
Ethic Soup first wrote about this mouth-to-brain-research, Chew on This, just five days ago after results of Wrigley gum-funded research by Baylor University of Medicine were released with much ballyhoo. The sensational and clamorous claims seemed suspect -- teenagers who chewed Wrigley sugarless gum in class during a math test were smarter (scoring higher) than the kids who didn't chew any gum.
Were the positive results really a result of chewing Wrigley's sugar-free gum? Could suddenly getting smarter at math be a result of chewing any old gum? Or, was it a result of just chewing anything, relieving stress? How about none of the above.
Come to find out, the gum-chewing kids did better on one standardized achievement test, but not on another standardized test. This suggested to us that how well the teens did depended more on the test than whether or not they chewed while taking it.
CHOCOLATE MILK MEANS MATH SMARTS?
And then just five days later comes news of another, although smaller, study where findings were presented at the British Psychological Society annual conference. (The Wrigley/Baylor University study was presented at an American Society for Nutrition meeting. What? Is chewing gum now a nutritious food stuff?) The second study is very similar. However, the protaganist is flavanol-rich chocolate milk, not chewing gum. The trade publication Confectionery News says: "Chocolate makers seeking to leverage sales through health-positioned products could find a fresh direction with new research from the UK suggesting cocoa drinks rich in flavanols could help consumers do maths." (Their spelling, not ours.) Perhaps a little chocolate milk with flavanols would help in spelling too.
CAN YOU COUNT BACKWARDS? WOW!
In a small study of 30 adults, UK's Northumbria University found that high levels of cocoa flavanols anchored in chocolate improved cognitive performance in arithmetic tests -- the more flavanols the better the cognitive performance.
"Foods containing high levels of cocoa flavanols, found in chocolate, have been shown to increase cerebral blood flow," said Crystal Haskell at the Brain, Performance and Nutrition Research Centre at Northumbria University. "And it has also been proven that consumption of plants that have these properties improves performance on mentally demanding tasks."
The example researchers gave as one of the mentally demanding tasks given to adult subjects to complete -- counting backwards from 999 in threes.
Even though I always tested higher in verbal achievement than math, I could count backwards in threes with no sweat by the 5th grade.
TO READ "CHEW ON THIS: WRIGLEY RESEARCH CLAIMS GUM MAKES TEENS SMARTER," CLICK HERE.
By Sharon McEachern
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