The positive effect of eating ice cream for breakfast

Eating ice cream for breakfast is every child’s dream, and every parent’s nightmare. Children around the world now owe a lot to one researcher – who’s proven the benefits of doing exactly that.

Yoshihiko Koga, professor at Kyorin University in Tokyo, has found that swapping cereal for ice cream could improve alertness and mental performance, according to Excite News.

Koga compared the brain activity of people who were given ice cream after waking up, with those who did not.

They were given a series of mental exercises to complete.

The ice cream-eating group had better reaction times afterwards and were better able to process information, and they also had higher levels of alpha waves, which are linked to alertness.

That could explain why Barack Obama wasn't impartial to the odd cone:

Picture: AFP/Getty / Yuri Gripas

Or... Paul Nuttall? We guess...

Picture: AFP/Getty / Chris J Ratcliffe

Koga repeated the test by giving people a glass of cold water instead of ice cream, and found that participants who had the ice cream demonstrated far higher levels of alertness and mental capacity.

But without wanting to burst anyone’s bubble, experts aren’t convinced by the study.

Katie Barfoot, a Nutritional Psychology Doctoral Researcher at Reading University, told the Telegraph that the findings could have simply been the difference between eating breakfast and not.

She said:

A possible explanation [for increased alertness]... is the simple presence of consuming breakfast vs. not consuming breakfast.

Our brain needs glucose to function, and a high glucose meal will aid mental capacity considerably compared to a fasted brain.

This, however, does not condone eating dessert for breakfast.

A study which explores the interaction between consumption of low and high GI foods, whilst including a fasted group, would establish a better understanding of this increased mental capacity.

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