Dark thoughts? chocolate won't cheer you up

Mar 29, 2006, 9:30 GMT

Sydney - For the stressed and clinically depressed, chocolate gives only a fleeting respite - and might even bring on a worse case of the blues, Australian scientists said Wednesday.

'It's true that chocolate acts on the same neurological system as serotonin,' Gordon Parker, from Sydney's Black Dog Institute, said. 'But you'd have to eat a truck-load of chocolate before you had the equivalent of one antidepressant tablet.'

Professor Parker's findings, to be published in the Journal of Affective Disorders, prick the popular belief that chocky cheers you up.

'Our review rejects any possibility that chocolate desired as a way of relieving stress or when feeling down has any antidepressant benefit,' he told national broadcaster ABC.

The team from the Black Dog Institute, a government-funded body that focuses on the study of depression, found that the motivation behind eating chocolate was what determined which neurotransmitters were activated and therefore the mood of the chocolate eater.

They identified two groups of chocolate eaters based on motivation: cravers, who consume chocolate as an indulgent pleasure; and emotional eaters, who use chocolate to try and lift their mood.

'Chocolate craving as an indulgent pleasure seems to stimulate the dopamine system in the brain and provides an enjoyable experience,' he said. 'But the emotional eaters, people who eat chocolate to relieve boredom, stress or clinical depression, are looking for an opioid effect to improve their mood.'

They might get a brief high, but very quickly become gloomy again - or even gloomier.