A Wonka Bar a day may keep the therapist at bay. I’m not kidding. A new study released last month says eating dark chocolate can help alleviate symptoms of depression.
Apparently J.K. Rowling was onto something. In the Harry Potter series, the titular wizard and his friends are encouraged to eat chocolate to lift their spirits when they encounter a soul-sucking, depression-feeding “Dementor.”
University College London, and the University of Calgary and Alberta Health Services Canada examined the chocolate-eating habits of 13,000 adults. Those who ate dark chocolate were less likely to be depressed. The study was published in the scientific journal Depression & Anxiety.
According to the study’s authors, past research has not included different types of chocolate and how each would influence the patient.
Researchers studied dark chocolate and light chocolate separately, using a Patient Health Questionnaire, a standard barometer of mood in the mental health community.
Eleven percent of the sample reported eating light chocolate. Just 148 people reporting eating dark chocolate.
Doctors learned there was no correlation between eating chocolate and depression, until they looked at dark chocolate results.
“Individuals who reported any amount of dark chocolate consumption had 70 percent lower odds of reporting clinically relevant depressive symptoms than those who ate no chocolate,” the study said.
People who ate the most chocolate had fewer depressive symptoms than those who ate none.
The researchers cautioned that “Further research is required to clarify the direction of the causation — it could be the case that depression causes people to lose their interest in eating chocolate, or there could be other factors that make people both less likely to eat dark chocolate and to be depressed.”
Chocolate ice cream. Chocolate truffles. Chocolate candy bars — pick your poison, but don’t go overboard says the researchers. They still need to determine the amount of chocolate that is a therapeutic dose.
