I don’t know about everyone else but for me I need some sort of chocolate in my day. Whether it be chocolate milk, a little Hershey kiss or a big king size chocolate bar I need chocolate to get through the day. Although this may be frowned upon when you consider the amount of sugar you’re consuming it really isn’t all that bad for you. Chocolate has been proven to make you happier.
People have been indulging in chocolate for over 4,000 years. But only 2,000 years ago when the invention of the chocolate press, by Casparus Van Houten, was invented did it allow them to separate roasted cocoa beans into cocoa butter. From that point on it was history.
Chocolate is made up of chemicals. The most well known of those being caffeine it “works by counteracting the natural neurotransmitter adenosine, resulting in an increase in heart rate and muscle contraction.” Theobromine is also a chemical found in chocolate. Theobromine is the chemical in chocolate that makes it toxic to dogs; this chemical also is a stimulant that like the caffeine increases your heart rate. The next key chemical in chocolate is serotonin. Serotonin is “a natural neurotransmitter which controls many functions in the brain, including mood and behavior. The body makes it from the natural amino acid tryptophan. Chocolate contains both serotonin and tryptophan.”
Along with the chemicals listed above there are two more anandamide and phenylethylamine. Anandamide was recently discovered less than 20 years ago, it has been proven to lift your mood. Phenylethylamine “is a naturally occurring substance with a structure that is closely related to synthetic amphetamines, which of course, are also stimulants. It is often said that our brain produces phenylethylamine when we fall in love.”
So next time you’re feeling sad grab a chocolate bar! The chemicals will lift your mood in no time.
I find this topic very interesting because I love chocolate and over the years I’ve often heard people say that chocolate makes you happy. From your blog, I learned that the reason we feel happy after consuming chocolate is because of the chemicals inside the chocolates. However, I would suggest you adding an experiment into your blog to strengthen the point that chocolate increases overall happiness. According to this website http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/chocolate-high3.htm in 2007, study surveyed 1,367 respondents to see if chocolate improve happiness. As the result, people eating chocolate had lower frequencies of depression. However, this experiment does not prove there is a correlation between chocolate and happiness because the study is gender biased, age biased and there are confounding variables. If you want to examine this study further, I would suggest you check out the site I mentioned before.
Not only can chocolate improve your mood, as you have suggested, it also can improve cognitive function. So, your chocolate eating habits may positively correlate with your grades. It has been shown that students who eat chocolate before a test perform better than students who did not. Chocolate has even been shown to have positive effects on the brains of people with ADHD, allowing them to focus better. I say we all grab some Hershey’s bars before the next class test!
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006322306005336
I love this blog post probably because I love chocolate! I’m positive chocolate makes me happy but I never knew that there was actually something in the chocolate that had that effect. Heres another article I found about this topic http://www.divinecaroline.com/self/self-discovery/real-story-chocolate-and-mood