People with
depression eat more chocolate, a mood food
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of
Medicine have found that women and men eat more chocolate as
depressive symptoms increase, suggesting an association between
mood and chocolate.
Results of this paper, co-authored by Beatrice Golomb, MD, PhD,
associate professor of medicine at UCSD School of Medicine, will
appear in the April 26 issue of Archives of Internal
Medicine.
"Our study confirms long-held suspicions that eating chocolate is
something that people do when they are feeling down," said Dr.
Golomb. "Because it was a cross sectional study, meaning a slice in
time, it did not tell us whether the chocolate decreased or
intensified the depression."
Golomb and her colleagues examined the relationship of chocolate
consumption to mood in an adult study sample of about 1,000
subjects who were not on antidepressant medications and did not
have any known cardiovascular disease or diabetes. Participants
were asked questions regarding how many servings of chocolate they
ate in a week, and were screened using the Center for Epidemiologic
Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) to measure mood.
The researchers found that both men and women who had higher
depression scores consumed almost 12 servings of chocolate per
month, those with lesser depression scores ate about eight servings
of chocolate per month, and those with no depression had five
servings per month. No differentiation was made between dark and
milk chocolate; a medium serving of chocolate was one ounce, which
is slightly less than an average chocolate candy bar.
"The findings did not appear to be explained by a general increase
in caffeine, fat, carbohydrate or energy intake, suggesting that
our findings are specific to chocolate," said Golomb. There was
also no difference in the consumption of other antioxidant-rich
foods, such as fish, coffee, fruits and vegetables between those
with depression and those without.
Golomb added that future studies will be required to determine the
basis of this association, as well as the role of chocolate in
depression, as cause or cure.
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University of California - San Diego
Thanks to University of California - San Diego for this
article.
