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Smelling Chocolate May Boost Workout Performance
Confirmed
In Short: A study finds that the scent of chocolate can help men complete more leg extensions during workouts.
In a small experiment, researchers at the University of Malaya found that men who smelled chocolate completed more leg extensions than those who smelled water.
For the study, 23 healthy men who had trained with weights regularly for at least two years participated.
During one session, participants smelled a preparation containing 90 percent dark chocolate, while in another, they smelled a mixture of chocolate and milk that the researchers called milk chocolate.
With the dark-chocolate odor, participants completed 18 more repetitions in total, on average, than they did with the water-based control.
The milk-chocolate preparation added about nine more repetitions compared to the water control.
Before exercising, the men reported less hunger and desire to eat, and greater fullness, in the dark-chocolate condition.
With the milk-chocolate preparation, they reported a greater desire to eat than with the control, but no clear differences in their other measures of hunger or fullness.
When the men later guessed which condition they had received, they identified the control much more readily than either chocolate condition.
What this adds
The study, published in Frontiers in Physiology, suggests that the scent of chocolate may serve as a learned cue for a rich, bitter, and highly satiating food, which tricks the system into an anticipatory state of fullness.
Senior author Mohamed Nashrudin bin Naharudin, an exercise physiologist at the University of Malaya, noted that the study provides preliminary proof-of-concept evidence rather than a recommendation for people to use chocolate odor to improve their workouts.
Background
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What's confirmed
- The study was published in Frontiers in Physiology.
What's still developing
- Your legs are tiring, and another set sounds unappealing.
- Imagine catching the scent of chocolate just as you are deciding whether to keep going.
- Previous research involving young women found that smelling dark chocolate was associated with reduced appetite.
- "Appetite is a plausible mechanism, but the present study cannot establish causality," senior author Mohamed Nashrudin bin Naharudin, an exercise physiologist at the University of Malaya, told ScienceAlert.
- "I would therefore describe this as preliminary proof-of-concept evidence rather than a recommendation for people to use chocolate odor to improve their workouts," Naharudin said.
- "Exposing moderately trained men to chocolate odors right before and between sets of resistance exercise significantly increased their overall training volume without increasing their perceived exertion," said senior author Dr. Mohamed Nashrudin bin Naharudin, an assistant professor at the Faculty of Sports and Exercise Science at the University of Malaya.
- "We know olfaction is powerfully wired into the brain's appetite and emotion networks, but surprisingly, no study has systematically looked at the three-way interaction between smell, appetite, and actual resistance exercise capacity," said Nashrudin Naharudin.
- "The dark chocolate scent serves as a learned cue for a rich, bitter, and highly satiating food, which essentially tricks the system into an anticipatory state of fullness," said Nashrudin Naharudin.
- A tough leg day may have an unexpectedly simple boost: the smell of chocolate.
- "Seeing a substantial increase in repetitions without the athletes feeling like they were exerting themselves any harder is a fascinating psychobiological outcome." The study included 23 healthy men in their early to mid-20s who were moderately trained.
- Researchers separated them into three groups and exposed each group to one of three samples: liquified dark chocolate containing 90% cocoa, liquified milk chocolate containing 60% cocoa, or water as a control.
- The two chocolate aromas influenced appetite in notably different ways.