ReviewNutrients2020
To Eat or Not to Eat: A Review of the Relationship between Chocolate and Migraines.
Review in Nutrients, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed, 59 citations in OpenAlex.
- Patient- and parent-reported triggers of migraine attacks in children and adolescents.Developmental medicine and child neurology · 2026Observational
- Assessment of Chocolate, Cheese, and Caffeine as Migraine Triggers: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Patient-Reported Trigger Rates.Journal of nutrition and metabolism · 2026Review
- Self-Reported Triggers Evaluation of High-Risk Dietary and Environmental Factors Preceding Migraine Onset by Using a Mobile Tracking App (Migraine Insight): Comparative Analysis Study.JMIR formative research · 2025Article
- Forecasting migraine attacks by managing daily lifestyle: a systematic review as a basis to develop predictive algorithms.Pain reports · 2025Article
- Dietary Patterns and Migraine: Insights and Impact.Nutrients · 2025Review
- Antimigraine activity of Asarinin by OPRM1 pathway with multifaceted impacts through network analysis.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Benefit of Dietary Supplementation of Nutraceuticals as an Integrative Approach for Management of Migraine: Evidence From Preclinical and Clinical Studies.Current pain and headache reports · 2024Review
- The correlation between the frequent intake of dietary migraine triggers and increased clinical features of migraine (analytical cross-sectional study from Egypt).Scientific reports · 2024Article
- CGRP Antagonism and Ketogenic Diet in the Treatment of Migraine.Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) · 2024Review
- Review
- All Roads Lead to the Gut: The Importance of the Microbiota and Diet in Migraine.Neurology international · 2023Review
- Frequency of migraine according to the ICHD-3 criteria and its association with sociodemographic and triggering factors in Pakistan: A cross-sectional study.Annals of medicine and surgery (2012) · 2022Article
- Applying a biopsychosocial model to migraine: rationale and clinical implications.The journal of headache and pain · 2022Review
- Article
- mBrain: towards the continuous follow-up and headache classification of primary headache disorder patients.BMC medical informatics and decision making · 2022Observational
- Migraine Visual Aura and Cortical Spreading Depression-Linking Mathematical Models to Empirical Evidence.Vision (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- A Bidirectional View of Migraine and Diet Relationship.Neuropsychiatric disease and treatment · 2021Review
- A Review on the Triggers of Pediatric Migraine with the Aim of Improving Headache Education.Journal of clinical medicine · 2020Review
- Association between diet and migraine characteristics: The role of dietary inflammatory index.Current journal of neurology · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Migraine is a chronic disorder with episodic attacks, and patients with a migraine often report that certain factors can trigger their headache, with chocolate being the most popular type of food-based trigger. Many studies have suggested a link between chocolate and headaches; however, the underlying physiological mechanisms are unclear. As premonitory symptoms may herald migraine attacks, a question arises regarding whether eating chocolate before a headache is a consequence of a food craving or indeed a real trigger. Here, we aim to summarize the available evidence on the relationship between chocolate and migraines. All articles concerning this topic published up to January 2020 were retrieved by searching clinical databases, including EMBASE, MEDLINE, PubMed, and Google Scholar. All types of studies have been included. Here, we identify 25 studies investigating the prevalence of chocolate as a trigger factor in migraineurs. Three provocative studies have also evaluated if chocolate can trigger migraine attacks, comparing it to a placebo. Among them, in 23 studies, chocolate was found to be a migraine trigger in a small percentage of participants (ranging from 1.3 to 33), while all provocative studies have failed to find significant differences between migraine attacks induced by eating chocolate and a placebo. Overall, based on our review of the current literature, there is insufficient evidence that chocolate is a migraine trigger; thus, doctors should not make implicit recommendations to migraine patients to avoid it.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.