It is food news guaranteed to put a smile on your face. Scientists have found that eating dark chocolate appears to lower the risk of depression by a quarter. While 7.6 percent of the 13,000 people surveyed reported depressive symptoms, just 1.5 percent of the chocolate eaters did.
The study is the first to examine the association with depression according to the type of chocolate consumed. The team assessed data from 13,626 adults from the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. A range of other factors including height, weight, marital status, ethnicity, education, household income, physical activity, smoking and chronic health problems were also taken into account to ensure the study only measured chocolate's effect on depressive symptoms.
After adjusting for these factors, it was found that individuals who reported eating any dark chocolate in two 24-hour periods had 70 percent lower odds of reporting clinically relevant depressive symptoms in the previous two weeks than those who reported not eating chocolate at all.
Chocolate contains a number of psychoactive ingredients which produce a feeling of euphoria. It also contains phenyl ethylamine (苯乙胺), which is believed to be important for regulating people's moods, Dark chocolate also has a higher concentration of flavonoids (类黄酮), alternative when choosing chocolate.
However , British scientists urged caution about the findings, suggesting that the decision to eat dark chocolate could be linked to other health factors. For example people who choose dark chocolate may be more health conscious in general, which is known to protect against depression. Depressed people are also more likely to crave more sugary fatty foods and so could be less likely to pick a dark alternative when choosing chocolate.
