Brain Food and Bacteria
More or Less
BBC
4.6 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 19 November 2012
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
There's not an obvious link between chocolate and Nobel prizes, but this did not stop news outlets around the world reporting the amount of chocolate a country consumes influences the number of Nobel prizes they will win. In many cases the scientific study was reported without question or comment. Ruth Alexander asks what this story tells us about the way the media reports scientific studies, and why the correlation between the two might be so strong. Also – it's often said that chopping boards or dishcloths have many more bacteria than toilet seat but is this really true?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Thank you for downloading from the BBC. |
| 0:03.0 | The details of our complete range of podcasts and our terms of use |
| 0:07.0 | go to BBCWorldService.com slash podcasts. |
| 0:13.0 | Hello and welcome to more or less on the BBC World Service, |
| 0:17.0 | a little nugget of numerical nutrition. |
| 0:20.0 | I'm Ruth Alexander and on the menu today. |
| 0:22.0 | Does chocolate make you smarter? |
| 0:24.0 | A study suggests it might. |
| 0:26.0 | Chocolate produces brain power. |
| 0:28.0 | Study links eating chocolate to winning no bells. |
| 0:32.0 | These headlines from around the world are reporting a paper |
| 0:35.0 | published in the New England Journal of Medicine. |
| 0:37.0 | The author of the study, a professor of medicine at Columbia University |
| 0:41.0 | in the United States, Franz Misselli, says the starting point was some research |
| 0:45.0 | which suggested that cocoa had health benefits. |
| 0:48.0 | There was a study published in the Journal of hypertension |
| 0:53.0 | looking at cognitive function in elderly subjects |
| 0:59.0 | who did actually have mild impairment. |
| 1:02.0 | And they put these patients on regular cocoa intake. |
| 1:08.0 | And they concluded that regular consumption of cocoa flavonols |
| 1:11.0 | might be effective in food recording function. |
| 1:14.0 | There is data in the rats actually showing rats live long |
... |
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