How a mocha can improve your attention span better than coffee

Forget skinny soya milk lattes, the best way to get ahead at work is to grab yourself a full-fat mocha.

That's according to scientists who studied the behaviour of people drinking coffee and hot chocolate over the course of a year, the Daily Mail reports.

They found that while coffee boosts your energy levels, hot chocolate helps to relieve anxiety - and combining the two is the best way to improve your attention span.

Psychologists from the University of Georgia and Clarkson University in New York devised a year-long experiment to work out how hot drinks affect our cognitive performance.

In the experiment, subjects were given brewed cocoa, cocoa with caffeine, caffeine without cocoa, and a placebo drink with neither caffeine nor cocoa.

The study was conducted double blind, meaning both the experimenter and the people taking part in the study were not aware of what drink was given to each participant. 

"It was a really fun study," said Ali Boolani, a professor of physical therapy at Clarkson University.

"Cocoa increases cerebral blood flow, which increases cognition and attention. Caffeine alone can increase anxiety. 

 "This particular project found that cocoa lessens caffeine's anxiety-producing effects - a good reason to drink mocha lattes."

During the experiment, the participants were asked to watch as letters flashed across a screen and note when an 'X' appeared after an 'A.'

They also had to point out when odd numbers appeared in a sequence, and were asked to subtract numbers from one another.

These tests were designed to test the participants' cognitive function and mood levels after having a hot drink. 

Researchers found that participants who had drank cocoa with caffeine performed the best. 

"The results of the tests are definitely promising and show that cocoa and caffeine are good choices for students and anyone else who needs to improve sustained attention," said Professor Boolani.

"I'll be doing some related and follow-up studies at Clarkson to look at differences in natural vs. synthetic caffeine, and other cocoa studies."

The study was published in the journal BMC Nutrition.

- Daily Mail