Ice cream haas long been thought of as a delicious comfort food that is notoriously bad for you, but a new study has found that it might actually improve your wellbeing by increasing your brainpower.

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The study was conducted in Japan by Professor Yoshihiko Koga at Tokyo’s Kyorin University. Koga asked his sample set of volunteers – who were no doubt eager to participate in one of the most awesome clinical trials of all time – to eat ice cream as soon as they woke up and compared their brain characteristics with those who didn’t eat ice cream.

The results were plain to see. The subjects’ brains exhibited an increase in high-frequency alpha waves – these are associated with enhanced alertness and reduced mental irritation. They were also required to perform a series of exercises using a PC, and those that had eaten ice cream displayed faster reaction times and superior information processing capabilities.

Now, I’m sure most of you are thinking that because these guys ate ice cream and because it’s cold the only effect that it actually had on the brain was in shocking it awake with its coldness or giving you a brain freeze, but Koga thought of this too and performed another experiment to test out that thesis. He did the exact same experiment with cold water instead of ice cream, and discovered that although he did notice some mental benefits, they were much smaller than when ice cream was the stimulus.

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So does this mean ice cream actually improves your brain power? It’s certainly possible but Koga is yet to isolate any special ingredient in it that increases brain power, so it’s equally likely that something enjoyable like playing video games or reading a book in the morning could produce the same reaction. We just don’t know for sure yet but I’m sure Koga will continue his experiments with his eager groups of volunteers.

Regardless of that though I think every time I have to take an exam or do something where I have to concentrate I’m going to eat an ice cream first. I mean it’s not like it’s going to hurt is it? Might as well.

For more ice cream, check out this new fried chicken ice cream that actually exists over in Japan. It looks gross.