Chocolate cravings may be a sign of a more serious health problem.
Researchers at UCSD and UC Davis studied nearly 1,000 adults who were not taking antidepressants.
The scientists discovered that those who ate the most chocolate scored the highest on depression tests. People with higher scores ate about 12 servings of chocolate a month.
Depression could trigger the need to self-medicate, and for many people, chocolate is the drug of choice, according to researchers.
"Our study confirms long-held suspicions that eating chocolate is something that people do when they are feeling down," said study co-author Beatrice Golomb, an associate professor of internal medicine at the UCSD School of Medicine. “Because it was a cross sectional study, meaning a slice in time, it did not tell us whether the chocolate decreased or intensified the depression."
The study was published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
