Like most chocolate lovers, I tend to like the stories about the salutary effects of the food on health a lot more than stories that suggest it's bad for us.
But journalistic balance requires stories on the other side of the issue be noted as well.
To that end, it is my sad duty to report that some researchers have observed a link between chocolate and depression.
The research was published in the Archives of Internal Medicine which makes an abstract or summary of the paper freely available on line.
As NPR's Joanne Silberner reported for the network's newscast:
Researchers from the University of California looked at the food habits of 931 people, and counted up their depressive symptoms.
People who had the fewest symptoms ate the least chocolate, an average of five small chocolate bars a month. Those who had a few symptoms had eight servings a month. And the average chocolate intake for people with probable major depression ate 12 servings a month, they report in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
But the researchers don't know what's behind the association. It could be that depressed people are trying to self-medicate. It could be that chocolate causes depression, though they note this is unlikely. Or there could be some sort of complex, as yet unidentified chemical association between something in chocolate and symptoms of depression.
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