the-BA : Chocolate

By Liz Newton

Culture, not chemicals, accounts for addiction to chocolate, said Professor Peter Rogers of Bristol University at the BA Festival of Science on Tuesday.

"What's unique is our cultural approach to chocolate," he said.

The idea that chocolate is "nice but naughty" implies that chocolate is a treat or a reward, a food that should be eaten with restraint.

The cravings associated with chocolate are therefore the result of attempts to resist eating it, rather than the cause.

Describing chocolate cravings as an addiction also provides a socially and personally acceptable explanation for the feelings of desire associated with chocolate. This helps to remove responsibility from the individual, instead blaming the chocolate itself.

Chocolate craving can be viewed as a "specific appetite", which no other foods will satisfy. Specific appetites are common in everyday life, from eating cereal at breakfast to eating popcorn in the cinema.

"That's not to say of course that chemical effects do not have a role to play," said Rogers.

There is indeed a cocktail of psycho-pharmacologically active compounds in chocolate, including caffeine, serotonin, phenylethylamine, anandamide and theobromine.

Theobromine is chemically related to caffeine and has many of its stimulant properties, and is found in uniquely high concentrations in chocolate – one 50g bar of dark chocolate contains over 300 times the amount found in a cup of tea.

Phenylethylamine is also a potent substance, which has amphetamine-like effects on the brain, and anandamide targets the same receptors in the brain as the active component of cannabis.
Serotonin is involved in the regulation of mood and a lack of it leads to symptoms of depression, with the commonly prescribed anti-depressant Prozac simulating serotonin in the brain.

However, this does not mean that chocolate has the combined effects of Prozac, amphetamines, cannabis and caffeine, which is probably fortunate. Many of the active substances can be found in far higher concentrations in other, much less appealing foods: pineapples and blue cheese, for example.

Studies have shown that while chocolate can indeed have psychoactive effects such as increased concentration and mild euphoria, these are no greater than those gained from drinking a cup of tea.

The average British person eats around 10kg of chocolate every year, and it is the most widely and frequently craved food. However, it is not certain that this craving fits the medical definition of addiction as "an extreme state in which control over substance use is lost".

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