The C word...Chocolate

Milk, white or dark, it's all fabulous.

All over the world Chocolate is celebrated for A)being severely yummy and B) by most men for keeping their girlfriends and wives sane through raging hormones.

Part of general girl code states that the minute a former relationship turns into your best friend screaming 'God he was such a waaaaanker!!! *cue crying*' then you are to descend with tissues and innumerable tubes of ice cream and a veritable hoard of chocolate.

It has always been said that Chocolate makes you feel better (at least that's my excuse I'm pretty sure I'm just a pig) but I always just thought it was some vaguely sciencey excuse used by woman to satisfy their cravings but apparently not.

There are in fact Endorphins in chocolate, 'happy hormones' as it were that do actually make us feel good (which is so going to be depleted once you step on the scales and realise just how much of that chocolate has landed on your ass).

In fact it would seem that there is something hard wired in our brain craving this wonder food. The royal college of psychiatry actually did a study on Chocolate cravings in the manically depressed. It would seem that out of the participants who listed cravings as one of their depressive symptoms the vast majority chose Chocolate with only 10% choosing another food (must admit I'm normally an Icecream girl myself)

Interestingly it was also a female majority that favoured the chocolate. Alex says its probably because we are all overtly hormonal (now who's generalising :P), who know's maybe we are more susceptible as women to 'happy hormones' probably just as well with all we have to put up with (men!)

Maybe I'm not a pig after all yaaaaaay!!

(The study for anyone interested was 'Chocolate craving when depressed: a personaliy marker by GORDON PARKER, MD, PhD, DSc and JOANNA CRAWFORD, BPsych. The link http://bjp.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/full/191/4/351)