Chocolate Runner’s Blog

Posted By Jon on March 3, 2006

I think I’ve got this thing under control. Thanks to the patch.

This is the 90% Cacao patch, for those that need extra control.

I did a quick search about why we crave chocolate and there’s a TON of information out there. there are three chemicals in chocolate that get alot of press: theobromine, phenylethylamine, and anandamide.

Theobromine. This is an alkaloid similar to caffeine, which is also present in chocolate in very small amounts. Theobromine has a much weaker effect on people than caffeine and many believe it most likely does not contribute to the “happy chocolate feeling”. This is the alkaloid that dogs cannot metabolize, and can make them very sick or kill them.

Anandamide. Have chocolate on the brain? You might. This compound is in chocolate and is already in your brain. It is a naturally ocurring cannabinoid. Yes, just like THC in pot. But you probably shouldn’t go smoking your chocolate, just the same. What it tells us is that since there are receptors in your brain that are designed to accept this specific chemical, ingesting it would be expected to have an effect on how you feel.

So can I get high off chocolate? Maybe. Eat 10 pounds and you might. There isn’t much anandamide in the chocolate. BUT what there is in the chocolate are two little chemicals that inhibit the metabolism of anandamide. That means it hangs in your brain longer, creating a prolonged “happy feeling” effect both from ingested and locally-produced anandamide.

Phenylethylamine. The loooooove chemical (remember those show promos?). Anyway, phenylethylamine also occurs naturally in your brain and it interacts with dopamine, a neurotransmitter. Neurotransmitters control how you feel and think. They are the chemicals that your brain uses to communicate within you body (because brains don’t have Wi-Fi yet).

Phenylethylamine allows the release of dopamine in your brain which produces that feeling of pleasure. There may be activities in your life that may produce extreme…ahem…pleasure, and during that time you probably had a boatload of dopamine floating in your brain. Good stuff. Dopamine deficiencies can lead to all kinds of awful things like depression, memory loss, and schizophrenia.

Now for the bad news. It looks like almost all the phenylethylamine in chocolate is metabolized long before it reaches your central nervous system. Worse than that, there isn’t much in there to begin with.

So why is there the craving? It might relate to B. F. Skinner. Skinner did studies with rats and how they learned. One experiment he did used a food reward for the rat pressing a bar on a box. The rat pressed the bar, and a food pellet came out. The pellet reward gave the rats a pleasurable feeling (hey, its a food pellet!). Skinner found that the rats would press the bar faster and faster, hoarding the pellets, continuing to exhaustion or until the pellets ran out, presumably, unable to control the drive to continue that feeling of pleasure from reward. The Skinner Boxes can be found today in many places, such as gambling casinos, those crane/stuffed animal games, and a broken soda machine at my college that spit out soda for only a nickel if you kicked it right. Students lined up for 5 cent diet soda even though they didn’t like it.

Chocolate has the unique property of melting at mouth temperature. Put that chocolate in your mouth and suddenly, it melts and you have instant flavor without much effort. And its CHOCOLATE flavor! Sweet, fat, and chocolate all rolled into one taste. Then its gone. But your brain remembers how easy it was to get such an intense flavor instantly, and specifically it remembers the pleasure feelings (dopamine!) that came from that small action. That’s when your body will crave more.

Ok, now that’s it time for lunch and I’ve been thinking about reward and chocolate and all that good stuff. I’m going to have my cold tuna sandwich and carrot sticks. Yea.

Day 3. Still strong.

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