“The countries that drink MILK WIN more NOBEL PRIZES.”
Imagine my surprise when I opened the fridge for some milk to add to my coffee and was greeted by this statement. Puzzled, I couldn’t help but scoff as I poured the milk into my cup. Before returning it to the fridge, I of course snapped a picture to send to my friends.
I am no stranger to boxes of cereal or cartons of milk having silly messages on them. Quite frankly, I am a fan! They make for some nice, lighthearted morning reading. This sentence, though, rubbed me the wrong way. First of all, what does this statement really mean? Countries cannot drink milk. Second of all, there is a lack of quantifiers. If we were to accept this statement as a fact, then how much milk would be considered enough to make you a Nobel Laureate – and a laureate of WHICH Nobel, for that matter? And third, the carton did not cite a single scientific study to back up its bold claim. I considered this a whole bunch of nonsense.
Despite my rejection of this humorous, yet preposterous, statement, I decided to turn to the internet and do some digging. What I found was fascinating.
Dessert = Nobel Laureate?
Our story actually begins with a deliciously delectable treat: chocolate.
In 2012, a paper entitled “Chocolate Consumption, Cognitive Function, and Nobel Laureates” was published by the New England Journal of Medicine. The sole author of this paper, Dr. Franz H. Messerli, found a significant positive correlation between chocolate consumption per capita and the number of Nobel Laureates per 10 million people in each country. For example, Switzerland was the top performer in both categories: having the highest number of Nobel Laureates and the highest amount of per capita chocolate consumption.
The rationale for this investigation, according to Dr. Messerli, was that dietary flavonoids have been linked with improving cognitive function. Flavanols, a subclass of flavonoids, are present in cocoa, green tea, and red wine, and have been shown to slow down (or in some cases, reverse) cognitive decline due to aging.
While this could be convincing, a recently completed randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, 2×2 factorial trial called COSMOS, found otherwise. Notably, COSMOS, with over 21,000 participants, was the “first large-scale trial in women and men to evaluate the long-term effects of a cocoa extract supplement on cardiovascular health outcomes.”
Throughout this three-year clinical trial, numerous sub-studies were carried out with the study population to assess the efficacy of a cocoa extract supplement and a multivitamin supplement in influencing various health outcomes. COSMOS-Mind, one of the sub-cohort studies, found no benefit of cocoa extract on cognition among the 2,262 participants. What they did find, however, was that daily multivitamin-use improved cognitive function in participants. This was the first evidence from a large-scale study to demonstrate these effects of multivitamins. While more research is needed to validate these results, it opens the doors for a new frontier in cognition maintenance research.
While keeping in mind the limitations of this study–– such as the study only using one dose of cocoa extract in addition to the participants becoming familiar with the cognitive tests–– the results from this study should make us question the very premise that eating chocolate makes us smarter.
Got Milk?
So where then does milk fall into all of this? In response to Dr. Messerli’s findings, a letter was written by members of Gloucester Royal Hospital’s Department of Neurology suggesting that milk may have an even stronger correlation to cognitive function than chocolate.
Inspired by the fact that chocolate is not normally consumed alone, they took to analyzing the relationship between milk consumption and prevalence of Nobel Laureates. Linthwaite and Fuller, two of the doctors that wrote the letter, found a correlation of a similar strength to Dr. Messerli. The only difference was that they, unlike the case for Dr. Messerli, did not find Sweden as an outlier. In the original chocolate piece, according to Dr. Messerli’s results, Sweden should have only 14 Nobel Laureates, not 32 which is the actual number.
Linthwaite and Fuller suggest that milk being rich in Vitamin D is what plays a role in enhancing cognitive function thereby facilitating the achievement of a Nobel. However, the study that Linthwaite and Fuller cited was a systematic review that only included five observational studies. What’s more, the authors of the systematic review conclude that any association between vitamin D intake and cognitive performance is uncertain due to insufficient evidence.
Let’s just say I’m not convinced about milk’s ability to increase my chances of winning a Nobel.
What Now?
If these two models show us anything, it is important to interpret scientific findings correctly. We cannot accept correlation as causation, as convenient as it may be. (Of course, I wish that eating chocolate could make me win a Nobel!)
Whether we like it or not, we all engage with science in one way or another – whether you are reading about it or sharing something you’ve learned from the internet with your family at the dinner table. Let this be a lesson to not take everything you read at face value. If something seems too good to be true, question it. Do your own further research, because you might find something that puts into question the nice and polished article you just read. The danger of not doing this becomes the abhorrent spread of misinformation on, well, milk cartons!
As a final note, for both published pieces, in the Notes and Competing Interests sections, it says, and I quote, “Dr. Messerli reports regular daily chocolate consumption, mostly but not exclusively in the form of Lindt's dark varieties.” And for the open letter, “Milk taken with cereal; SL with coffee. Chocolate taken anytime.” It is important to remember that science, too, can be lighthearted and fun. Maybe this attitude is what propelled these articles into existence. But at the same time, this is what can clue us into being slightly more skeptical going forward.
Eva Kellner is a recent graduate from the Faculty of Arts and Science, with a major in Environment. Her research interests include urban green spaces, urban agriculture, and outdoor community spaces - all as promoters of climate resilience among city-dwellers.
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