Chocolate Addiction

by
Hetherington MM, MacDiarmid JI
Department of Psychology,
University of Dundee,
Scotland.
Appetite 1993 Dec; 21(3):233-46

Definitions of chocolate addiction and its potential relationship to dieting and problem eating were investigated in 50 individuals who identified themselves as "chocoholics". Respondents were interviewed and completed a battery of questionnaires on food cravings, eating, weight, dieting and depression. On average this sample consumed about 12 (60-g) bars of chocolate per week and craved chocolate about six times per week. Cravings and amount consumed were not significantly related but amount consumed was significantly correlated with disinhibition (r = 0.3). Most (76%) respondents had definitions of chocolate addiction that centred on a lack of control around chocolate and regarded the "addictive" factor in chocolate as orosensory (i.e. taste, smell, texture). Unlike most others, dieters and secret eaters experienced negative affect following consumption of chocolate. Consumers who preferred to eat in secret reported a higher degree of aberrant eating. The extent to which the behaviour of "chocolate addicts" resembles that of eating disordered individuals and other addictions remains to be clarified.

Chocolate in French History

by
Paternotte S, Labrude P.
Faculte de pharmacie, Nancy.
Rev Hist Pharm (Paris). 2003; 51(338): 197-210.

Rapidly after its appearance in France, interesting properties were attributed to chocolate and it was used in medicine,often wrongly, to treat digestive, pulmonary, nervous, even infectious diseases, and also for its nutritive and aphrodisiacal capability... But it was already charged with insomnia or constipation. During the XIXth century, chocolate was used as food and as an excipient for dissimulation and transportation of drugs. Medicinal chocolates were essentially nutritive and analeptic, pectoral, stomachic, purgative or anthelmintic. All of them have disappeared today, but the pharmacological interest of chocolate remains with its antidepressive activity and the promising proposes of some of its components. However, chocolate is still considered to be responsible of constipation, headache or pimples.