Health news: Chocolate delivers an addictive high

Forget the tree, the carols, the family gatherings and the jolly old man in the red suit. Let's talk about what really makes people happy this time of year -- chocolate. According to a recent study, chocolate can make people happy -- really happy -- any time of the year.

The chocoholic's high
When chocoholics see or eat the cocoa confection, their brains react the same way drug addicts do when they take cocaine, the study (published in the August 2007 issue of the European Journal of Neuroscience) revealed.

Researchers Edmund Rolls and Ciara McCabe from the University of Oxford, showed 16 healthy female volunteers -- half cravers, half not -- mouth-watering photos of chocolate and then fed them fine chocolate while scanning their brain activity through functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

They found that brain activity increased in the regions associated with pleasure sensations, habit-forming behaviour and addiction, even more so in the cravers than the non-cravers.

Investigate your relationship with food
"Rolls showed that individuals differ in their reaction to something based on how much they like it," explains Dr. Marilyn Jones-Gotman, a professor in the department of neurology and neurosurgery at McGill University in Montreal. "It's not a property of chocolate, or of cocaine for that matter, but rather a property of the individual's relationship to that food," she explains.

It's important to note that the body mass indexes (BMI) of the cravers and non-cravers in the Oxford study didn't differ, and that food cravers aren't necessarily overweight, the researchers state. But they did find that brain response to a craved food may be linked to how much -- and how often -- a person consumes that food.

"It isn't a bad thing that the brain is reacting to chocolate. It's a bad thing when it's an addiction to tobacco and gambling and cocaine," explains Jones-Gotman.

Click to continue...

Page 1 of 2

Conquer chocolate overload: Out of sight, out of mind
Because the mere sight of chocolate caused changes in an area of the brain associated with reward, the researchers believe that dieters may be able to cut down on the intake of the sweet stuff by simply keeping it out of view.

"This should lead to -- and is leading to -- other studies on how the brain reacts to different kinds of food, and one would hope that we can learn something that can help us deal with obesity," says Jones-Gotman. She, and fellow neuroscientists from the Montreal Neurological Institute, conducted a study that measured chocolate eaters' brain activity to uncover how the body becomes addicted.

Their findings, which were published in the September 2001 issue of the journal Brain, also revealed information about how the brain responds when study participants continued to eat beyond satiety, which could lead to further research into overeating in people with certain eating disorders.

Brain power can lead to healthier choices
The greater brain activity with sight and consumption of chocolate may also mean, according to Rolls and McCabe, that there has been a certain amount of learning; increased activity to the mere picture is a conditioned response, whereas chocolate in the mouth is a direct reward. 

"We should be able to condition people to eat healthier foods," says Jones-Gotman, adding with a smile, "I do think people can learn to have the brain 'popping off' in great excitement to good broccoli and fabulous salads."

Page 2 of 2

Still looking for a chocolate-fix? Find out what you want to know in
All about chocolate.