Chocolate Consumption Linked To Depression, Study

Women and men eat more chocolate as depressive symptoms increase, suggesting an association between mood and chocolate, say researchers at the University of California School of Medicine in San Diego.

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. Read more