Chocolate and Tea, what are you doing to me?

Figure 1: A lovely looking snack of tea and chocolate cake!

Nicubunu. (2012). Black tea and chocolate cake. [photograph]. Retrieved from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tea_for_two.jpg

Do you have a mild (or major) addiction to chocolate? Do you enjoy a cup of coffee, tea, or pop on a daily basis? Then you happen to be just like me! You also happen to be ingesting a chemical called theobromine, which belongs to the same family as caffeine, and has many of the same effects as caffeine, though it is about 10 times weaker¹. It has been known to decrease calmness², increase focus on study tasks², act as a cough suppressant¹, and even lower blood pressure²! Some people are even looking into its uses in treating tooth sensitivity³.

It would seem theobromine has many uses, but it isn’t often used in medicine because other chemicals with very similar structure are more potent and therefore more useful⁴. These include caffeine, which most people know about, and theophylline (even more potent than caffeine), which is a common asthma medication, has more of an affect as a bronchodilator to help people breathe⁴.

Theobromine is found in highest concentration in dark chocolate¹. It is what gives dark chocolate its bitter taste that some people dislike¹. It is also what is toxic to dogs and why dogs should not be allowed to consume chocolate⁵. A dose as low as 90mg/kg of bodyweight has been recorded as lethal⁵!

Humans, however, metabolize theobromine more effectively and as such would need about 0.8g to feel any effect, which may include sweating, trembling, or headache⁴. The average milk chocolate bar is 45g, and 1 gram of milk chocolate typically only has 1.5mg of theobromine⁵. This means you would have to eat almost 15 chocolate bars in a day to even start to feel an effect; that’s a lot of chocolate! So you and I are safe to continue eating chocolate without the worry of theobromine poisoning. Eat on chocolate lovers!

References List

¹ Theobromine. (2006). In N. Schlager, J. Weisblatt, & D. E. Newton (Eds.), Chemical Compounds (Vol. 3, pp. 843-846). Detroit: UXL. Retrieved from http://library.mtroyal.ca:2163/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CCX3441700205&v=2.1&u=mtroyalc&it=r&p=GVRL&asid=a1b02b16e4c5f35ffcbcde30daded55f

² Mitchell, E. S., Slettenaar, M., vd Meer, N., Transler, C., Jans, L., Quadt, F., & Berry, M. (2011). Differential contributions of theobromine and caffeine on mood, psychomotor performance and blood pressure. Physiology & Behavior, 104(5), 816-822. doi:10.1016/j.physbeh.2011.07.027

³ "Compositions containing theobromine and their use in treating tooth hypersensitivity" in patent application approval process. (2015). Medical Patent Business Week, (1552-5597), 2414.

⁴ National Center for Biotechnology Information. (n.d.) PubChem Compound Database; CID=5429, https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/5429  (accessed Nov. 27, 2015).

⁵ Campbell, Alexander, and Chapman, Michael. (2008). Handbook of Poisoning in Dogs and Cats. Hoboken, NJ, USA: Wiley-Blackwell,  ProQuest ebrary. Web. 26 November 2015.