MONDAY, April 26, 2010 (Health.com) — When Dina Khiry is feeling a bit down, she reaches for chocolate. “I like Reese’s peanut butter cups, Hershey’s bars, and chocolate cake batter,” says the 24-year-old public relations associate. “I feel better in the moment—and then worse later on, when I realize that I just consumed thousands of calories.”
Khiry’s emotional relationship with chocolate isn’t uncommon, new research suggests. According to a study published this week in the Archives of Internal Medicine, people who feel depressed eat about 55% more chocolate than their non-depressed peers. And the more depressed they feel, the more chocolate they tend to eat.
Although gorging on chocolate and sweets to beat the blues has become a cliché thanks to sitcoms and romantic comedies, there’s been “little prior scientific literature linking chocolate and depression,” says the lead author of the study, Beatrice Golomb, MD, a professor of medicine at the University of California at San Diego School of Medicine. The study, she says, provides evidence to support “the popular perception that when people need a pick-me-up, they pick up chocolate.”
It’s unclear, however, whether depressed people eat more chocolate simply because they crave it, or whether chocolate consumption itself somehow contributes to a depressed mood.
In the study, Dr. Golomb and her colleagues surveyed more than 900 people about their weekly chocolate consumption and their overall diet. They also gauged the moods of the participants using a standard questionnaire used to screen for depression. (People who were taking antidepressants were excluded from the study.)
The men and women who were considered to be depressed ate 8.4 servings of chocolate per month, while their counterparts who weren’t depressed consumed just 5.4 servings each month.
Study participants who scored higher on the depression scale ate even more chocolate, nearly 12 servings per month, the researchers found. (An average serving was defined as one small chocolate bar or one ounce of chocolate candy.)
To zero in on the chocolate-mood connection, the researchers took into account a range of other dietary factors, such as calorie, fat, and carbohydrate intake. These measures were similar in the depressed and non-depressed people, which suggests that the link between chocolate and depression is unique in some way, according to the researchers.
While popular culture usually depicts women as emotional chocoholics, the study shows that men, too, may reach for chocolate when they’re down and out. Seventy percent of the participants were men, and the results were similar in men and women.
Next page: Does depression or chocolate come first?
