Why we have a high old time on chocolate April 5, 2006 - timesonline.co.uk
People have always enjoyed the effect of cocoa. As the Easter egg season approaches, we explain why
Bacchus, the god of wine, is often linked with regeneration. Nothing looks as dead as a vine in winter, but come the spring few other plants look so bright and vernal. It is an annual example that out of death comes life. Whereas the followers of Bacchus had vines and wine as examples of everlasting life and annual renewal, we now have to make do with chocolate Easter eggs.
Every year spring is heralded by the appearance of Easter eggs at sweet shops, supermarkets, newsagents and garages.
If wine was Bacchus?s tipple of choice, the Aztecs and Mayans opted for cocoa. Scientists have been examining why these races thought that chocolate improved intellect without causing overstimulation, other than sexual desire. It was the Viagra of the day, but unlike Viagra it improved libido as well as performance. Scientists have found several chemicals in cocoa that might account for the effects that appealed to the Aztecs.
Chocolate contains traces of various drugs that have an effect on the brain. It has stimulants such as theobromine, caffeine, tyramine and phenylethylamine; this last constituent is thought to be the aphrodisiac. There are traces of anandamide which acts like a cannabinoid and, like cannabis, produces a feeling of wellbeing ? but it would require 25lb boxes of chocolates to give the same lift as a joint, by which time nausea and aversion will have displaced the feel-good factor.
Cocoa beans also contain flavonoids and polyphenols, the organic compounds found in a host of fruits including bananas, dates, cranberries, strawberries, as well as red wine, tea and coffee. These reduce the harmful effects of the non-cocoa fat in chocolate.
Perhaps the most interesting experiment has been not in the chemistry laboratory but in the scanning department using functional MRIs and positive emission tomography scans to study the brain after taking chocolate.
Neuroscientists have shown that eating chocolate increases blood flow to the same areas of the brain that are activated by addictive drugs, including cocaine. The research published in the journal Brain two or three years ago found that this effect occurred only with moderate amounts of chocolate; too much and another part of the brain lights up, and the desire for chocolate is replaced by aversion and nausea. This research by neuroscientists at the Northwestern University and at McGill University, Montreal, helps to explain why people become chocoholics but not addicted to it.
Two rules of chocolate nibbling. Stick to the dark, black chocolate with at least 70 per cent cocoa bean ? chocolates with a low cocoa bean content aren?t such a good antidote to the fat in a bar ? and balance the calories by excluding another calorie-rich food.
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