Lifestyle

Why most women love chocolate more than men

Published by Tope Fakinlede on August 12th, 2023.

Why most women love chocolate more than men

According to many research studies about most women cravings for chocolate. It seems to correspond to hormone changes (menstruation, pregnancy etc). Women also suffer a serotonin decrease in the week before menstruation that leads to a fall in other hormones in their systems this in turn leads to a craving for chocolate.

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Furthermore, chocolate doesn’t just tingle the tongue; it’s a soup of many compounds that affect the brain, including caffeine and theobromines. And it’s true: chocolate does affect women differently than men, says Anthony Auger, an assistant professor of psychology at UW–Madison.

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Auger, who studies sex differences in the brain, agrees that women have a stronger craving for chocolate. This distinction can be found as far down the evolutionary ladder as rats, where females also have a stronger craving for the blessed bean. The difference is probably rooted in the female’s cyclic rise and fall of estrogen and progesterone, Auger says.

Why most women love chocolate more than men

A new study showed that chocolate also affects brains differently after it’s eaten. Magnetic resonance (MR) images of brains showed that the hypothalamus was less active in women after they consumed large amounts of chocolate. Since the hypothalamus helps regulate food intake, this could explain why chocolate is more likely to reduce a woman’s hunger, or at least her motivation to eat more chocolate.

News.wisc.edu