IF you ever needed an excuse to eat a bit of chocolate then look no further.

“Cocoa is one of just a few food substances that will act on your happy hormone, serotonin,” explains Jeanne Kelley, owner of the Chocolate Studio in Colchester.

“Other foods can affect your endorphins, a bit like exercise does, but cocoa affects the seratonin levels in your brain.

This leads the person eating the chocolate to feel good.

“The only other times your serotonin levels are affected in this way is straight after a woman has had a baby, which is why women can get the highs and lows after childbirth, and after orgasm,” adds Jeanne.

With National Chocolate Week last week celebrating all things cocoa, it is the perfect time to indulge in the treat, which has been part of ancient cultures for thousands of years.

An Aztec king first cultivated cocoa beans and used them as currency, believing cocoa gave him his power.

Jeanne says: “It will have given him lots of vitamins and minerals naturally found in cocoa, which is why is probably felt so good.

“But the Mexicans and the Mayans and civilisations across all of South America used it, and still do to this day, to flavour savoury dishes. It’s wasn’t until cocoa was made into a chocolate bar 150 years ago that the preservatives, fats and sugars were added.

“If you want quality chocolate then look for it in the chiller of a shop because it will have all the cocoa butter and creams in it and no preservatives.”

The Chocolate Studio carries out chocolate workshops in schools across the region including Colchester and Southend, focusing on maths, geography and history with primary school children. Jeanne also runs parties, events and team building events around chocolate.

Jeanne says there is a good reason women seem to crave chocolate.

She says: “Cocoa is the highest natural source of magnesium and often our diets lack magnesium. Just like some pregnant women eat coal because the body is craving a mineral there is contained in coal, craving chocolate is probably linked to craving something found in cocoa, which we are lacking.

“Usually the kind of chocolate women reach for is the Cadbury sort which contains added fats and sugars, but getting the magnesium and the serotonin rush isn’t about eating quality chocolate necessarily. It’s about eating cocoa.

“Of course the higher the cocoa content the more minerals are feeding the hormones to produce seratonin, but you are talking about chocolate containing at least 70 per cent cocoa.”

Industry magazine Psychology Today reported premenstrual cravings for chocolate are common, saying chocolate and other fatty, carbohydrate-rich foods trigger the production of seratonin at this stage of a woman’s cycle.

The properties of cocoa and its link to seratonin was recognised in England has far back as Victorian times, when doctors would prescribe chocolate to rich women who’d suffered a broken heart.

“Cocoa was very expensive so only women who could afford to go to the doctors would get it, but it was recognised then that there is something in cocoa that lifts moods,” adds Jeanne.

The Chocolate Studio 01206 501592.