The Science Behind: Our Love for Chocolate

When you were younger, did anyone else have a trade meeting with their siblings after trick-or-treating? (Image Credit: The Pioneer Woman).

Like any rational human being, I love chocolate, and with Halloween, what better food is there to write about? Throughout history, chocolate has had a startling effect on people. From being used as currency to having a holiday just for giving it to children, chocolate has quite the background. But why is it so good?

Another recently discovered, and interesting, possible reason for why we love chocolate so much is that milk chocolate’s fat to sugar ratio is like that of breast milk (Image Credit: Chicago Tribune).

One simple answer is that it tastes, smells, and — when it melts in your mouth — feels heavenly. As we enjoy a piece of chocolate, the neurotransmitter dopamine is released. As a part of the reward system, dopamine helps create a connection between rewards and actions. This way, your brain is more likely to make you perform a positive action again for the same reward, in this case, chocolate. Once your brain has created a positive association with chocolate, dopamine will give you a surge of anticipation as you walk by, smell, or imagine chocolate, which creates a chocolate craving.

Craving yet? (Image Credit: Giphy).

Our love for chocolate may also be affected by chocolate’s other ingredients. Chocolate contains anadamide, tyramine, phenylethylamine, theobromine, and caffeine. Anadamide is a neurotransmitter that stimulates the brain like cannabis. Tyramine and phenylethylamine have effects similar to amphetamines. Theobromine and caffeine energize you. However, these ingredients are present in trace amounts and may have only a very small effect on your chocolate cravings. In a study from the 1990’s, volunteers were given either milk chocolate or a pill containing theobromine, tryptophan, caffeine, and pheylethylamine. The pill alone did not satisfy the volunteers or create a strong craving.

So, your brain isn’t hardwired for chocolate’s special ingredients alone but chocolate in its entirety (Image Credit: Hartford Courant).

A chocolate craving can be intensified even further by your emotions and experiences. If you eat chocolate while feeling a positive emotion or during a positive experience, your brain will connect chocolate with good feelings. The opposite is also true. If after eating chocolate you have the worst day of your life, you may never feel the same way about chocolate again.

Emotions and chocolate mix together so well (Image Credit: Giphy).

Your emotions also affect your chocolate cravings in the moment. If your brain has been overworked prior to eating, you are more likely to make poor and impulsive food choices. This is because after your brain works hard, it needs to recharge with glucose, which is found in foods, so it really wants to eat anything and everything, right now. And, when your brain is tired, it becomes overwhelmed and can’t allocate as much processing space to think about food choice. To combat this, if you’ve spent hours working hard, take some time to relax before you eat, and when you do eat, try to stay in the moment and not get carried away with mentally planning the rest of your life.

What are you being for Halloween? (Image Credit: WiffleGIF).

Finally, since its Halloween, here are some Halloween fun facts:

· Some animal shelters don’t allow the adoption of black cats around Halloween for fear that the cats will be sacrificed.

· When stacked and organized to form a ring, candy corn will look like an actual ear of corn, hence its name.

· Some cities ban trick-or-treating for kids over 12.

· Halloween comes from a Celtic festival celebrated over 2,000 years ago on October 31 called Samhain.

· Trick-or-treating began in the United Kingdom and Ireland in the Middle Ages with poor people going door-to-door asking for food in exchange for prayer.

Works Cited

Albers, Susan. “Why Do We Crave Chocolate So Much?” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, 11 Feb. 2014, www.psychologytoday.com/blog/comfort-cravings/201402/why-do-we-crave-chocolate-so-much. Accessed 21 Oct. 2017.

“Halloween Facts.” The Holiday Spot, www.theholidayspot.com/halloween/facts.htm. Accessed 29 Oct. 2017.

Major, Mandy, and Katina Beniaris. “18 Fascinating Halloween Facts You Didn’t Kno.” Woman’s Day, Hearst Communications, 28 June 2017, www.womansday.com/life/g485/15-fascinating-halloween-facts-124464/?slide=15. Accessed 29 Oct. 2017.

Moreno-Dominguez, Silvia, et al. “Experimental effects of chocolate deprivation on cravings, mood, and consumption in high and low chocolate-cravers.” Appetite, vol. 58, no. 1, Feb. 2012, pp. 111–16. Science Direct, doi:10.1016/j.appet.2011.09.013. Accessed 21 Oct. 2017.

Mosley, Michael. “The secret of why we like to eat chocolate.” BBC News, BBC, 24 Feb. 2017, www.bbc.com/news/health-39067088. Accessed 21 Oct. 2017.

“Why Do We Love Chocolate?” Scientific American, 12 Feb. 2014, www.scientificamerican.com/video/why-do-we-love-chocolate/. Accessed 21 Oct. 2017.

— Isabella S., Pennsylvania

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