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Chocolate craving, from deep in the gut

Washington: If that craving for chocolate sometimes feels like it is coming from deep in your gut, that is because may be it is.

A small study links the type of bacteria living in people’s digestive system to a desire for chocolate. Everyone has a vast community of microbes in their guts. But people who crave daily for chocolate show signs of having different colonies of bacteria than people who are immune to chocolate’s allure.

That may be the case for other foods, too. The idea could eventually lead to treating some types of obesity by changing the composition of the trillions of bacteria occupying the intestines and stomach, said Sunil Kochhar, co-author of the study.

It appears in the peer-reviewed Journal of Proteome Research. Mr. Kochhar is in charge of metabolism research at the Nestle Research Centre in Lausanne, Switzerland. — AP

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