The start of another school year is fast approaching! Teachers and students alike are groaning a little bit, but I suspect there is at least some excitement for the start of a new year too. Parents have mixed feelings about the start of the school year too. Some parents are glad to get the kids out of the house and back to the regular school routine. On the other hand, for a lot of middle school parents, the start of another year of school means that the annual science fair is just around the corner! Science fair projects can certainly be fun, but they can also be stressful to students, parents, and of course, teachers!
Our kids were required to participate in science fair in both 7th and 8th grade. It was always a lot of work for our family, but we tried to make the projects fun. We had some really good projects that involved reading and recall ("Do sight readers or phonics readers have better short-term memory?"), alertness and test-taking performance ("Does eating a peppermint right before a math test improve performance?"), and growing plants in space ("What is the effect of centrifugal force on plant growth?"). One of our daughters tested the immediate effects of chocolate on blood pressure. As it turns out, eating a sugar-free chocolate candy results in an average reduction in systolic blood pressure by 10 mm Hg!
So, speaking of chocolate...I recently came across an interesting study that looked like it should have been a science fair project! The study was referenced in a book I am reading right now about customer service at Disney ("The Experience: The 5 Principles of Disney Service and Relationship Excellence"). The authors, Bruce Loeffler and Brian Church, mentioned a company called Intentional Chocolate that is using a technique that they call "embedding good intentions" with their product. If you look on the company's website, they state that their core mission is to do no harm and benefit others. They go on to state that their strategic advantage is an innovative technology that embeds the intentions of advanced meditators into chocolate and bridges the gaps between spirituality and science. In other words, one of their expert "meditators" places good thoughts and vibes into each and every piece of chocolate that the company makes and sells.
The company actually tested their process in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized study with 62 participants (see "Effects of intentionally enhanced chocolate on mood"). Study participants were assigned to one of four groups and recorded their subjective mood every day for a week. On days three, four, and five of the study, participants ate a piece of chocolate at two times during the day (the time was prescribed by the study protocol). Subjects in three of the four assigned groups ate chocolate that was intentionally treated by three different techniques (basically different "experienced meditators" as used by the company, "Intentional Chocolate" - in one of the three groups, the meditators were Buddhist monks), while the subjects in the fourth group served as control and ate just regular chocolate. By the third day of eating the chocolate, mood had significantly improved in the three "intention conditions" compared to the placebo. Subjects reported decreased fatigue and increased vigor. The investigators concluded that "the mood-elevating properties of chocolate can be enhanced with intention."
I know what you are thinking - it sounds kind of kooky. I thought the same thing when I first read the passage in the book describing this company and this study. I think it is pretty well accepted by traditional science that mind-behavior techniques such as prayer, meditation, yoga, etc can improve both emotional and physical wellbeing. All good, but even more interesting is that there is a growing body of literature that links these kinds of techniques with better emotional and physical wellbeing in others. In other words, you can certainly improve your own wellbeing through meditation and spiritual prayer, but these studies are showing you can use these techniques to help improve the emotional wellbeing of bystanders (check out a similar study using tea enhanced with "good intentions" here)!
I am not sure I am ready to purchase stock in "Intentional Chocolate" just yet. However, there is certainly a lot about the mind-body connection that we do not fully understand. I think it would be naïve to discount some of these studies, and I am definitely interested in learning more. It is, after all, all about the chocolate.
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