Seriously? Really?

You can do a lot of funny studies in science, I knew that before. You can also do studies that are... interesting but maybe not so very helpful.

There has been a recent one about chocolate consumption. Even if you are not reading up on the newest health insights regularly, you stumble across stuff. I only snap up things from time to time and more or less by chance - such as that coffee has now become a very healthy drink that might even reduce the risk for depression), but only if you drink enough (as always) and not too much. (And do they realise there's a difference between US coffee, normal coffee and Swedish coffee? As in one cup of Swedish coffee probably equals ten cups of US coffee?)

But this is the weirdest study I have seen in a while. Someone (an M.D., to be precise) actually tried to link a nation's collective cognitive functions to chocolate consumption, on something that is not a very wide or, in my opinion, good database. Erm. I would not have drawn the same conclusions as the author from the results of the study as shown in the graphic. I'll just say "too little data error". Getting a Nobel Prize is, moreover, definitely not only a result of superior cognitive functions. Anyone else think publications, politics, luck? And what about the collective cognitive function in those countries where there is no record about chocolate consumption? And what about consumption of the other flavonoid-containing foodstuffs listed right at the start of the article? Gah.

Anyways - one of the studies cited in that article had really come to the conclusion that cocoa (and thus, chocolate, in a way) improves cognitive function under certain circumstances. So... should I print out that article abstract to use as an excuse when I have a chocolate binge? Or should I just continue as always? Oh, the choices science gives us...