Chocolate for Breakfast

Most of us do not need another reason to enjoy chocolate at any time of the day. For many chocoholics, which includes most of the post-menopausal women in the world, the presence of stimulants in chocolate, including sugar, phenethylamine (think amphetamine) and theobromine (think caffeine), can interfere with falling asleep if consumed prior to bed time. A recently published study discovered that eating a little chocolate for breakfast may lead to better sleep at night.

Good sleep is a rare experience for most of us. Worse, the quality of sleep slowly and progressively worsens as we get older. Scientists have discovered that sleep quality is the first brain function that decays with normal aging. We all slept our best at puberty; our sleep quality has been decaying ever since. Furthermore, our modern society, with its constant activity schedule, leads to disrupted daily sleep-activity rhythms. Not sleeping well at night leads to impaired cognitive performance during the day. Shift-workers, and frequent air travelers who suffer from jet-lag, usually exhibit the greatest disruptions to their sleep-wake schedules. Altered circadian rhythms increase the risk of obesity, metabolic diseases, cardiovascular disorders and cancer.

Good health requires good sleep.

Your brain pays attention to when, as well as what, you eat. For billions of years, brains have evolved with the firm knowledge that it will have access to food at the beginning of its activity cycle. This link is so ancient and profound that when significant caloric intake is synchronized with becoming active in the morning it exerts beneficial effects on the body’s circadian rhythms that are essential for good health. This explains why so many recent studies have concluded that it is healthier to eat a really big breakfast and a really small dinner.

Shift-work chronically desynchronizes circadian rhythms. Chocolate for breakfast prevents the desynchronization of critical circadian rhythms associated with shift-work. In the current study, a daily piece (about 5 grams) of chocolate, consumed at the beginning of the day’s activity cycle, somehow retuned the circadian system by acting directly upon the brain’s biological clock. The mechanism underlying this benefit remains unknown. Chocolate contains a complex variety of chemicals that when considered in aggregate exert compound effects throughout the body and brain.

In summary, there is now clear evidence that daily chocolate at breakfast has multiple beneficial effects on many different body systems, including those that control body weight, that may counter the negative effects of our modern lifestyle.

© Gary L. Wenk, Ph.D. Author of Your Brain on Food, 3rd Edition, 2019 (Oxford University Press)