When it comes to happy foods, give me slabs of chocolate, cheese, and all of the other upper foods that help effect serotonin and dopamine, the two neurotransmitters in the old brain. Dopamine is related to pleasure and euphoria while serotonin has to do with mood, memory, and sleep. Both of these pathways can be stimulated by food, as well as by exposure to light and exercise. No food, of course, should replace prescribed medication for serious depression (unless your doctor and nutritionist sign off on it). But for many of us, who are only slightly depressed from the realities of life, they can provide a little boost as well as antioxidant properties and nutritional fiber.
To compile a list of those happy foods, I went to Mindy Dopler Nelson, a post-doctorate research fellow at Standford University specializing in nutrition biology. Before handing over her list, she told me not all foods affect people the same way. “What gives you comfort is going to vary across culture, age, gender, and psychological factors as a result of your life experiences,” says Nelson. “Each hormone or neurotrasmitter in the brain has to bind to something to make it active. What it binds to are called receptors and they aren’t the same in everyone.”
Researchers have found that if you are exposed to high fat and sugar early in life, you tend to develop more of a craving for it to boost your spirits. There also is a genetic factor. Some of us (35 percent of the population) simply don’t have as many receptors and tend to be overweight due to a need for more happy foods to get the same effect as those with ample receptors. In other words, you might be satisfied with just one piece of California Brittle from a box of Sees Candies while gluttons like me must devour the box.“One food across the board everyone is going to agree with is chocolate,” adds Nelson. “ That’s because it contains the chemical phenylethylamine, which releases dopamine.” The compound is thought to be responsible for the high you experience after eating chocolate because it releases natural feel-good chemicals called endorphins in your brain. According to All Chocolate, PEA is released by the brain when people are falling in love, and this might explain why chocolate and Valentine’s Day are so closely linked.
Nelson’s Breakdown of What You Can Choose to Beat the Blues:
Chocolate
Chocolate is a stimulant that will release the dopamine that creates that pleasure feeling. It’s in the cocoa. There’s more of it in dark chocolate than in milk chocolate. But there’s something about the fat in the milk that also will make you feel good. Some people associate a comfort food with a high-fat food. There also are antioxidants in the dark chocolate, but watch the dosage! Excess can be harmful for your liver and pile on the pounds. Dopamine has an amphedamine effect, hence the term chocoholic. You also cannot ignore the fact it contains mucho caffeine that will keep you up at night. (And if you don’t get enough sleep it will affect your serotonin level.)
