GF ANZAC's and Chocolate Makes You Smart

Gluten free coconut oat (ANZAC) cookies

I hope your weekend was better than mine which was pretty uneventful, revolving around eating, working and watching videos. Few days ago I posted a recipe for sugar free, butter free and egg free cookies. This time it is a flour less cookie. It is also gluten free but please double check the ingredients just to make sure. I adopted the recipe for ANZAC cookies, replacing flour with oat flour. Its that simple. The gluten free coconut oat (ANZAC) cookies were light, crispy, chewy and very delicate. It had to be handled with extreme care. The recipe is available here.

Gluten free coconut oat (ANZAC) cookies

Today's Favourite Photo

Source: Camemberu

Dong Po Pork

Today’s Favourite Blog

Source: BBC

A recent study by Franz Messerli of Colombia University suggests that eating more chocolate improves a nation's chances of producing Nobel Prize winners. Messerli compared the number of Nobel Prize winners in a country with the country’s chocolate consumption. 

The chart shows a close relationship between chocolate consumption and number of Nobel prize laureates per capita. Switzerland leads the pack, while Sweden has a high number of Nobel laureates but lower chocolate consumption. Messerli’s explanation is that "The Nobel prize obviously is donated or evaluated in Sweden [apart from the Peace Prize] so I thought that the Swedes might have a slightly patriotic bias.” “Or the other option is that the Swedes are excessively sensitive and only small amounts stimulate greatly their intelligence, so that might be the reason that they have so many Nobel Prize laureates."

Christopher Pissarides from the London School of Economics won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2010. Since he was young he ate chocolate on a daily basis. He says "To win a Nobel Prize you have to produce something that others haven't thought about - chocolate that makes you feel good might contribute a little bit. Of course it's not the main factor but... anything that contributes to a better life and a better outlook in your life then contributes to the quality of your work."

It is interesting to see that most of the top chocolate consuming countries do not grow cocoa, and the leading growers do not appear on the list. Perhaps chocolate is exported to countries where consumers have the ability to pay? Or other factors contribute towards winning a Nobel Prize.

You decide whether eating chocolate makes you more intelligent or not. This could be simply data mining, using all sorts of statistics to find relationships. For example we can see that the top countries are in Europe, and Northern Europe is over-represented. Mulled wine is more common in these countries than elsewhere in the world. Maybe drinking mulled wine makes you smarter? These countries are also colder than most other countries – perhaps cold makes you think harder? If its cold you are less likely to be running around outside, instead you are indoors working? I am not trying to discourage you from eating chocolates but don't be disappointed if you eat chocolates and don't win the Nobel Prize.