Food Life

“Remember to have some gelato for me!” my mom tearfully yelled, and I waved goodbye from a distance.

“What flavor?” I asked, but her answer was faded.

Nine hours later, I was off the tarmac and in Rome.

Everyone imagines study abroad as this surreal experience, but it’s actually hard. You’re in a foreign country, you don’t speak the language and, even if you do, you’re thousands of miles away from your family. Who are you going to talk to?
Studying abroad can be incredibly engaging, but it can also be isolating.

For most students studying with me in Rome, chocolate gelato boosted the mood during this four-month course.

“I owe it all to little chocolate doughnuts,” comic John Belushi said.

“Chocolate. Very, very dark chocolate,” former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said, crediting the dessert with helping her pass the 2009 health care legislation.  

Experts recommend that individuals eat 1.6 ounces of dark chocolate daily.

While I was abroad, I ate at least two scoops of chocolate gelato most mornings. I gained weight, as most of my friends did, because we exceeded the 1.6 ounce limit.

We were homesick, lonely and sometimes sad.

But why did we turn to chocolate when we were
upset?

Dr. Bankole Johnson, alumni professor and chairman of the Department of Psychiatry the University of Virginia, credits the appeal to tyramine and tryptophan, two chemicals the brain converts into feel-good dopamine and serotonin.

“It stimulates the brain’s pleasure centers,” Johnson said. “Even opening the wrapper and looking at the contents starts your serotonin fibers firing.”

These fibers fire, on average, for about 30 minutes. They produce a sugar high in which the individual feels emotional elation, confidence and happiness. After, serotonin levels drop, and the chocolate lover often feels stressed. People often revert to more sugar to combat these symptoms.

That would explain the two scoops.

It also explains why, after taking the Law School Admission Test this Saturday, senior Rachel Mauch reached for a Twix bar.

“I felt de-energized and kind of alone because I was talking to myself in my head for the whole LSAT,” Mauch said. “But when the chocolate set in, I felt a lot happier and energized.”

This energy was both mental and physical. Researchers at Michigan’s Wayne State University found that chocolate contains epicatechin, a compound that boosts muscle endurance in a way similar to training at the gym.

This training can be directly translated to traveling abroad. No matter how well you pack, no matter how much you plan, you’ll always be missing something and be alone and a little homesick. And, although my experience was filled with great friends and beautiful culture, eating that extra gelato proved to be as much for my mom’s sake as my own.

­— ntepper@indiana.edu