The countries that consume the most amount of milk and dairy products are also those that have received the most Nobel prizes throughout history. This is the conclusion reached by scientists from the Gloucester Royal Hospital (United Kingdom) after analyzing data on milk consumption per capita in 22 countries. Sweden , which is at the top of the ranking with 33 Nobel laureates for every 10 million citizens , is also the country that consumes the most milk, reaching 340 kilos per person per year . The inhabitants of Switzerland, with 32 Nobel laureates, also ingest huge volumes of milk. As for China, located at the other end of the ranking with very few Nobel prizes awarded to date, it consumes only 25 kilograms of milk per citizen each year.
Is milk consumption perhaps a reflection of a good educational system ? It is the question that the authors ask themselves in view of the results in the journal Practical Neurology . And they suggest that there could also be a biological explanation for the relationship between the number of awarded “intellectuals” in a country and the habit of drinking milk, since this product is rich in vitamin D, an ingredient that recent studies show improves cognitive functions .
Last year, other research published in the New England Journal of Medicine identified a direct relationship between the average consumption of chocolate in a country and the number of Nobel laureates of that nationality, speculating that it could be attributed to the high content of chocolate. cocoa flavonoids enhance intellectual performance.
