"Who’s going to get her some chocolate?"
The night I broke up with my boyfriend I had no idea the conversation that was going on directly above me. All of my housemates had heard the incessant sobbing through my closed door and were sitting in the living room plotting their plan of attack.
"I’ll kill him," one of them said.
"Someone has to go out and get her chocolate," another one said. They all knew it was the only answer. The one thing I needed more than anything was a bar, of chocolate.
But according to a study published today in the Archives of Internal Medicine, high consumption is associated with people developing depression.
The study did not find out whether eating the chocolate is a result of the depression or depression is a result of the chocolate. According to the study, people who show signs of depression eat on average three more servings of chocolate per month than people who don’t have signs of depression. People with severe depression eat 6.4 more servings. The real question lies in whether this supposed aphrodisiac triggers depression or depression triggers a craving.
I would vote for the second option, but as an avid chocolate lover I may be biased. Chocolate is a small pleasure. When everything else in the world does not make sense, chocolate is something tangible that will produce the desired affect. Maybe my cocoa covered glasses are not entirely scientific. I am not saying chocolate makes someone happy, but it definitely creates a pleasurable moment.
The study did look into other eating habits of the people being studied and found that there was no link to an overeating in other areas when linked to depression. Chocolate was the only culprit.
A few days after the tearful night in my room I ran into one of my housemates. He reassured me that "I was better off without him" and that there were serious efforts that night to find me chocolate.
I am not claiming that one night of incessant sobbing constituted as depression, but on bad nights and sometimes just off nights I know that chocolate is normally my go-to food.
I am not worried about the new research and what it could mean for chocolate consumption. In fact I hope they do the research. Scientists have hardly skimmed the surface when it comes to the reasons behind our consumption of foods and even the foods themselves. Of course I’m rooting for the chocolate on this one, but whatever future studies find I hope that when I’m sobbing in a fetal position on my bed someone has the decency to find me some chocolate.
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