Researchers found that blocking chocolate’s opiate effect cut snacking on Snickers and M&Ms in half, and Oreo snacking fell by 90 percent.3
Give Me Chocolate or
Give Me Death:
The Chocolate Seduction
Chocolate is an affair. It’s decadent, it’s sinful, and—let’s face it—for many, many people, it’s simply irresistible. We crave it, dream about it, and ultimately savor it, all the while knowing no good will come from it.
Why such passion about chocolate? After all, it is a gooey bean extract, not a romantic dream come true. Researchers have tried to nail down the chemistry behind the attraction—and so have chocolate manufacturers, hoping to sustain the affair as long as possible. It’s clear that the secret is not simply chocolate’s sugary taste. After all, a dedicated chocoholic would never be satisfied with a box of plain Domino sugar. It is also not merely a source of some vital nutrient, like magnesium, as some have suggested. The fact is, there is quite a lot of magnesium in figs, tofu, and spinach, too, but you don’t hear of people craving them very often.
The truth is that chocolate is, in essence, an addicting drug. It targets the same spot on your brain as heroin or morphine. As we saw in the Introduction, the opiate blocker naloxone dramatically reduces chocolate’s attractiveness. When University of Michigan researchers infused the opiate blocker into volunteers’ bloodstreams and then presented them with a tray of snack foods, naloxone did not change their taste for popcorn—it was as popular as ever. Same for breadsticks and crackers, suggesting that an opiate rush is not what anyone is looking for from those foods. But everything was different when it came to the chocolate items on the tray. Blocking chocolate’s opiate effect with naloxone cut snacking on Snickers and M&Ms in half, and Oreo snacking fell by 90 percent. In other words, chocolate’s sweet taste and creamy texture are pleasant, but its real attraction depends on its effect on your brain. When that brain effect is taken away, chocolate is no longer the kind of food anyone would crave.1
Researchers found that blocking chocolate’s opiate effect cut snacking on Snickers and M&Ms in half, and Oreo snacking fell by 90 percent.
Don’t panic. Yes, chocolate acts like a drug, but this does not mean that you’re going to knock over a convenience store to get your fix. Chocolate does not stimulate opiate receptors to anywhere near the degree that narcotics do. But it does affect the brain, and that is important to remember. Taste, smell, and “mouth feel” are all nice, but it’s what happens inside your brain that keeps you coming back.
Jennifer, a thirty-four-year-old bank vice president, adored it. She had come to our office for an interview about joining a diet study, and before long the conversation turned to chocolate. She was worried that it was adding more calories to her diet than she could afford. Her favorite was a small chocolate bar imported from England that had tiny bits of nuts and fruit in it. But she was happy with virtually any kind of chocolate. And it seemed to call out especially loudly at certain times. She had an especially insistent taste for chocolate when she was fatigued or, for some reason, after she had eaten something spicy. And it virtually screamed out at her during the two or three days before her period. Her friends knew the feeling all too well, too. They had all experienced it, and they knew there was no reason to argue with it.
This compulsive quality was what bothered Jennifer the most. She was a dedicated label reader, and she knew how many calories there were in a chocolate bar, but there didn’t seem to be any way to keep it from ending up in her stomach, and she found that disconcerting. After all, she had managed her education, her career, her finances—and her bank’s and customers’ money—but she couldn’t handle this darn little drug in a shiny wrapper. As she gradually gained weight over the years, she wanted to get a handle on her chocolate cravings.
Well, she was not alone. The opiate effects hidden in a chocolate bar work their magic on millions and millions of people. Before we come back to Jennifer’s situation, allow me to describe in a few paragraphs what chocolate actually does inside your brain. Its chemical actions go beyond its opiate effect.
Chocolate also contains caffeine, although not nearly as much as coffee or tea. A 1.5-ounce Kit Kat has 5 milligrams of caffeine, a 1.4-ounce Nestle Crunch bar about 10. For comparison, a serving of tea has 36 milligrams of caffeine, and you would have to eat an entire cup of chocolate chips to get as much caffeine as in a typical cup of coffee (100 milligrams).2
Chocolate is far richer in a related chemical, called theobromine (literally, “food of the gods”). Theobromine is a stimulant similar to caffeine in both its chemical structure and its “upper” effect, although it is much milder. If you have a dog you may have heard of theobromine—it is the reason chocolate can be poisonous to your canine friend. Dogs cannot readily break down and eliminate theobromine, which can damage their hearts, kidneys, and nervous systems. All chocolate products have hefty amounts of theobromine.
Chocolate also contains phenylethylamine, or PEA, an amphetamine-like chemical (although only about one-tenth as much as is found in cheddar cheese or salami3,4). It also harbors traces of compounds similar to THC, the active ingredient in marijuana.
What’s this about chocolate being like marijuana? Here’s what scientists have discovered: Brain cells normally produce a chemical called anandamide, which is related to marijuana’s active ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC. Certain chemicals in chocolate apparently delay the breakdown of anandamide in the brain, so that its pleasant brain effects persist a bit longer than normal.5
So the bottom line is, chocolate is not just a single drug-like compound—it’s basically the whole drugstore: traces of mild opiates, caffeine, amphetamine-like components, and the equivalent of a slight whiff of marijuana, all wrapped into a smooth, sweet taste. Medical researchers have accepted its addictive potential for decades. In a 1999 study, researchers compared chocolate addicts to people who weren’t especially hooked on it, and showed that the reaction is physically noticeable. The researchers gave them pictures of chocolate to look at, and then bowls filled with Cadbury chocolates. Chocoholics really do show a quickening of the pulse and start salivating when they smell, taste, or even see a picture of chocolate, and these reactions are much stronger than for other people. Just to be objective, the researchers also tested their responses to automobile magazines, which elicited no big reaction in either group.6
Quite apart from any chemical effects chocolate has, some researchers have suggested that its smell, taste, and texture alone would make it addicting. It certainly is possible for sensory experiences to be so overwhelming that they hook some people, as is the case for compulsive gambling in people with the low-D2 gene. Their reactions to the sudden shifts of risk, unexpected wins, and crushing losses are dramatically different from those of other people. Similarly, chocolate presents a sensory mixture that is unlike that of any other food. As we’ll see shortly, the mere taste of sugar touching the tongue appears to send a signal to the brain that triggers a virtually instant opiate effect, and chocolate very likely does the same, in addition to the effects of its chemical cornucopia.
No single component of chocolate—cocoa powder, cocoa butter, or sugar—quells cravings the way chocolate itself can.7 This, of course, does not discount a physical basis for chocolate addiction. Just as smokers ought to be satisfied with a nicotine patch but generally are not, once they have become accustomed to the feeling of inhaling tobacco smoke, chocolate lovers come to associate all the sensations of chocolate with the subtle and pleasant feelings it provides, and no chocoholic would be satisfied with simply smelling and tasting chocolate. When you want it, you want to practically inhale it.
But Does It Make You Happy?
Does chocolate really make us feel better? Well, sort of. A study of self-described chocolate addicts found that they felt a definite sense of contentment after eating chocolate. But their pleasure was tainted by a big dose of guilt, something occasional chocolate eaters do not experience.
Jennifer felt this acutely. Although she thoroughly savored each bite, and it did seem to make her feel good, about halfway through a chocolate bar she started to feel a sense of regret, and she sometimes threw the rest away. And she then started to calculate how much exercise it would take to burn off the calories she had just eaten.
She also experienced something else that this research study had shown: Her cravings were not driven primarily by hunger. Yes, hunger could make them worse, but she also binged on chocolate when she was full, which turns out to be a very common experience.8
What is Chocolate, Really?
Despite the passions aroused by chocolate, including an often-pointed finger of blame as our waistlines expand into unexplored regions, chocolate could well plead innocent. Seductive, it may be, but it is not the Devil. Here is the truth about this botanical black gold:
Chocolate comes from the beans of the cacao tree. In prehistoric Central America, Aztecs turned these beans into a drink called chocolatl, meaning “warm liquid.” Montezuma, living in what was eventually to become Mexico, was particularly keen on chocolatl and served it to the early Spanish explorers. Christopher Columbus had already brought cocoa beans back to Spain, but their bitter flavor made them a tough sell in Europe, and King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella saw no commercial potential. It was not until a bit of added vanilla and cinnamon made the drink a hit.
Solid chocolate as we know it today did not exist until the mid-nineteenth century. That was when chocolatiers made a key discovery. They found that, if they extracted cocoa butter from the beans, they ended up with cocoa powder, so useful in baking. More importantly, if they added extra cocoa butter to the beans, they produced a creamy chocolate that goes perfectly in a candy wrapper and has been a hit ever since. It is surprising to imagine that the buttery, dark brown concoction we now know as chocolate candy did not exist until the mid-1800s, but the truth is that chocolate is a strictly modern product.
Today, making chocolate means cultivating the delicate cacao trees and cracking open their bean pods to reveal a couple of dozen cream-colored beans, which are then fermented, dried, roasted, and crushed to produce chocolate liquor, from which cocoa butter can be extracted. White chocolate is made from cocoa butter, milk solids, sugar, and vanilla.
The world’s most serious aficionados are the members of France’s Le Club des Croqueurs de Chocolat (croqueurs means “crunchers”), which meets four times a year to rate the latest entrants to the market of brown ambrosia. If you’d like to join, you’d better be patient—membership is limited to one hundred and fifty people, and someone has to die or resign to give you a space. You’ll need to study up, too, because the interview includes questions like, “If you were to buy chocolate in a supermarket, what would you look for on the label?” (The answer is not the price tag or sell-by date. The croqueurs want to hear that you’ll scan the label for a cocoa percentage of 60 percent or better and the country of origin of the beans.) If you’ve made it that far, they’ll try to zing you with “What does criollo mean to you?” The answer is not “It really burns when you spill it on a cut,” or “We keep it under the sink.” Rather, it’s a type of cocoa tree in Central and South America that produces the very best chocolate. If you’d like a bigger taste of the Le Club des Croqueurs de Chocolat, check out www.croqueurschocolat.com.
Is It Good to Break a Chocolate Habit?
If your chocolate “habit” means the occasional candy bar, there is little reason to worry. It is not terribly likely to pack on the pounds. But if it is more than occasional it could spell trouble. For starters, it may contribute more fat than you can afford. A typical chocolate bar is a roughly fifty-fifty mixture of fat and sugar, with about 200 calories and 10-15 grams of fat, which is, well, plenty.
Chocolate can do more than fatten you up. Along with dairy products, red wine, meat, and a few other foods, chocolate is a common migraine trigger.* It can also affect your mood in a not-so-helpful way. Some women find that it aggravates irritability in the premenstrual week, which is, unfortunately, exactly when you’ll crave chocolate most. Its effects differ from one person to the next, so you’ll want to pay attention to what it does to your mood.
The Chocolate Pushers
Every five years, representatives of the Chocolate Manufacturers Association make an absurd trek. They march into government hearings in Washington, D.C., where a federal panel is redrafting the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the blueprint for a healthy diet that we looked at earlier. The chocolate industry joins the Sugar Association, Salt Institute, and every other healthy and unhealthy food lobby to make a case that all these foods should be included in the diet.
The Chocolate Manufacturers Association has nine members, including Hershey, M&M/Mars, Nestlé, and other lesser-known brands, which, all together, control 95 percent of the chocolate production in the U.S., which is worth billions of dollars every year. Now, compared to the dairy and meat industries the chocolate lobby is minuscule. It has yet to convince the government to include a chocolate group in the Food Guide Pyramid or to feature chocolate in school lunches. Still, the Chocolate Manufacturers Association issues reassuring press releases, such as “Chocolate Supplies are Ample” and “Chocolate Contains ‘Healthy’ Antioxidants.” The only major controversy the industry has stumbled into is a dispute over exploitive child labor practices in West Africa. The problem is serious, involving thousands of children in slavelike conditions. The industry has begun to address the problem, but it is far from being solved.
Industry scientists have dedicated a great deal of effort to finding exactly the right ingredient balance to keep you coming back. It turns out that when sugar and fat are just about a fifty-fifty mixture, chocolate reaches its point of maximal irresistibility. However, the mix has to be adjusted slightly, depending on the customer. Taste scientists have found that small children prefer tastes that are a bit too sweet for adults. Overweight people tend to choose higher-fat foods, while thinner people really do follow a bit of Jack Sprat’s lead. Men go more for higher-protein, high-fat, salty foods (steaks, burgers, and the like), while women tend toward sugar-fat mixtures, like doughnuts, ice cream, and, of course, chocolate.9
The candy industry takes all this into account in order to capture as much of the market as it can. For the high-sugar market, M&M/Mars makes 3 Musketeers, which packs 40 grams of sugar in a single bar, with about twice as many sugar calories as fat calories. For the high-fat market, Twix and M&Ms Peanut variety have more fat calories than sugar calories. And the company markets Milky Way and Snickers for those whose tastes lie in between.
When a chocolate bar is made with a fifty-fifty mixture of sugar and fat, chocolate reaches its point of maximal irresistibility
A Word about Medications
Just as industry scientists are working to keep you hooked on chocolate, health researchers are trying to find ways to free you. Some have turned to medications to knock out chocolate cravings, and, to a degree, they work. As we saw earlier, naloxone blocks cravings, reducing the tendency to binge, and cuts food consumption overall. The more enticing the food—that is, the stronger its effect on the brain’s pleasure center—the more naloxone blocks the binge. But it is not the only drug to have this effect:
Bupropion (Wellbutrin) is an antidepressant that reduces chocolate cravings for some people. A fifty-six-year-old woman, for example, had chocolate cravings nearly all her life and was eating up to two pounds of chocolate per day when, having lapsed into depression, her doctor put her on bupropion to raise her spirits. Almost immediately, her chocolate cravings ceased. Chocolate simply had no appeal. In just the first month of treatment, she lost seven pounds. The benefit is not simply due to the drug’s salutary effect on mood. It knocks out cravings, even when you’re feeling fine. Perhaps bupropion works because it is chemically similar to phenylethylamine (PEA), which, as we saw earlier, is an amphetamine-like compound found in chocolate, cheese, and sausage.10
Topiramate (Topamax) is used to treat seizures. After researchers found that the drug also seemed to reduce appetites and even caused weight loss, they tested it in people with serious binge-eating problems to see if it might help. It does. After a few months of treatment, the average participant had lost about twenty-five pounds.11
A note of serious caution, however. All drugs have side effects. Naloxone can cause liver problems, and topiramate can cause glaucoma. In contrast, the side effects of diet changes are all positive—weight loss, reduced cholesterol, lower blood pressure, and others.
Most people can get into a better relationship with chocolate without medications. If you need to, you can make a clean break of it, or perhaps you’ll simply turn a destructive preoccupation into a more platonic relationship. Part II gives you the steps that will take you there.
The Bottom Line
• Chocolate addiction is real. Health researchers have identified a surprising number of natural compounds that contribute to chocolate’s subtle, pleasant brain effects. However, its taste alone triggers opiate effects in the brain. The same drugs that block the effects of heroin and morphine also knock out chocolate’s appeal.
• Yes, chocolate really is as high in fat and sugar as you may have feared. But chefs have discovered tricks that keep the flavor while trimming the fat, as we’ll see in the menu and recipe section.
• If you’re looking to get a grip on your cravings, the steps in part II were designed with you in mind. If you’re a young woman, you’ll notice that the desire for chocolate can change with your monthly cycle, and a diet adjustment easily balances the hormones responsible for these cravings, as we’ll see in chapter 9.
*Other common migraine triggers include eggs, citrus fruits, wheat, nuts, tomatoes, onions, corn, apples, and bananas. For details on how foods contribute to migraines, see my book Foods That Fight Pain (Harmony Books, 1998).