Smelling chocolate before and during exercise could help improve performance without increasing feelings of fatigue, according to research released this Tuesday by the press office of the publisher Frontiers.
The study, published in the journal Frontiers in Physiology, involved 23 healthy men aged 20 to 25 who were moderately trained and had fasted for at least ten hours. Participants were exposed to the aroma of 90% cocoa dark chocolate, 60% cocoa milk chocolate, and water, which served as a control.
The results showed that inhaling the aroma of dark chocolate immediately before and between sets of resistance exercise allowed for about 18 additional repetitions of leg extensions. With milk chocolate, the increase was around nine repetitions compared to the water used as a control.
The researchers also observed that the scent of dark chocolate reduced feelings of hunger and increased satiety. Based on this, they hypothesized that certain familiar aromas might cause the brain to anticipate food intake and alter motivation or the perception of effort.
According to researcher Mohamed Nashrudin bin Naharudin from the University of Malaya, the aroma of dark chocolate acts as a signal that induces an "anticipatory state of satiety" in the body. Despite these findings, the team cautioned that further studies are still needed to determine whether this effect occurs in other groups of people or with other foods.
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