Do you like chocolate? If your answer to that was ‘yes’ you’ll be happy to know that a recent study conducted by University College London has found that eating dark chocolate can affect your mood positively, and relieve some symptoms of depression, which brings the term ‘soul food’ to mind!
Data was analysed from nearly 14,000 adults whose chocolate consumption was compared with a Questionnaire that assesses depressive symptoms. Another study was then conducted, which ruled out confounding factors such as exercise or smoking that may have impacted the findings.
The study found that people who ate dark chocolate in two 24 hour periods had 70% less likelihood of reporting clinically relevant depressive symptoms, compared to those that did not report eating any chocolate at all. Those chocolate consumers who ate the most chocolate of any kind were less likely to report depressive symptoms than those who did not eat any chocolate at all.
More research will need to be done in order to establish whether it is indeed the chocolate consumption that causes this effect, or whether other things could also be influencing the results, however; if a study is suggesting eating chocolate can actually be good for you, we don’t need to be told twice!
Obviously, we recommend that even dark chocolate be eaten in moderation and as part of a balanced diet and active lifestyle, as it can still be quite unhealthy, however, this is one food I think we can all agree would be a pleasure to eat for a more positive mood.
Journal reference: Sarah E. Jackson, Lee Smith, Joseph Firth, Igor Grabovac, Pinar Soysal, Ai Koyanagi, Liang Hu, Brendon Stubbs, Jacopo Demurtas, Nicola Veronese, Xiangzhu Zhu, Lin Yang. Is there a relationship between chocolate consumption and symptoms of depression? A cross‐sectional survey of 13,626 US adults. Depression and Anxiety, 2019; DOI: 10.1002/da.22950
