Think about how less depressing and oh-my-god-I-want-to-rinse-my-eyes-out-with-oven-cleaner Requiem for a Dream would have been if all the main characters were addicted to Russell Stover box chocolates and, instead of wanting to open a coffee shop, wanted to save up for a blow-out trip to Hershey Park. If Darren Aronofsky had access to the latest research linking the urge for rats to stuff their whiskers full of chocolates with an opium-like chemical produced by their brains, well, you can bet he would have made that movie about a fun trip to Hershey and all the wacky antics that ensue after Jared Leto loses his arm to a chocolate fish in the chocolate ocean below the chocolate village presided over by Mayor Cocoa Chocolaton. Chocolate.
Researchers at the University of Michigan may have discovered why it’s all but impossible to stop eating delicious chocolates — they activate the neurotransmitters that drive drug addiction or binge eating. Alexandra DiFeliceantonio led a team of intrepid scientists into the eating habits of the earthbound rat, and discovered that a drug boost straight to the neostriatum brain region made rats eat more than twice the amount of M&Ms than they would have otherwise gorged on. Researchers also found that a natural drug-like chemical produced in the neostriatum called enkephalin surged whilst the rats nibbled on M&Ms. According to DiFeliceantonion, her team’s findings point to a larger set of “systems” within the brain that facilitate overconsumption: