When Dave-from-marketing's "quick afternoon meeting" turns into a two-hour PowerPoint presentation, it's hard not to reach for your third coffee of the day. But heaping spoonfuls of trusty Nescafé Gold into a Sports Direct mug might not be your best bet for keeping the yawns at bay.Researchers at Clarkson University in New York claim that the ideal drink for making your attention span last longer than your co-worker's monotone presentation skills is a mocha latte. Why? Because when it comes to staying alert, hot chocolate and coffee are a match made in heaven.The Clarkson scientists spent nearly a year studying the effects of brewed cocoa consumption on participants' attention span, cognitive ability, and feelings of anxiety. The subjects were asked to perform tasks and report mood before and after drinking a hot beverage. They didn't know whether they had been given brewed cocoa, cocoa with added caffeine, caffeine without cocoa, or a placebo with neither caffeine or cocoa.The results of the experiment, which were published in the BMC Nutrition journal, showed that participants who had drunk brewed cocoa exhibited a reduced rate of errors associated with attention deficit. After caffeine was added to hot chocolate, their cognitive effects were enhanced and the "anxiety-provoking" effects of drinking coffee alone were inhibited.Ali Boolani, co-author of the Clarkson study and assistant professor of physical therapy, said in a press release that a mocha was the ideal drink to order for improved attention: "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!"But don't get too excited about the supposed health benefits of combining hot choccy with an espresso shot. Clarkson's research was sponsored by The Hershey Company, the US confectioners who produce the sickly sweet Hershey's Kisses chocolates and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. Who wants to take bets that they'll be bringing out a coffee hot chocolate some time soon?For every expert bigging up chocolate's benefits, there's always another naysayer debunking the theories. Still, just in case the Clarkson guys are right, we'll make our fourth coffee of the day a mocha.
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