The modern equivalent for a life partner, the humble yet powerful bar of chocolate has been given extra props today as it not only tastes amazing, is reasonably priced and fits easily into your bag but it’s now also been proven to reduce stress.

Indeed many people would claim the research redundant as they’ve been finishing bars of chocolate in an effort to calm down for years, at least now it’s scientifically proven.

Mice in the experiment were separated based on how happy they were, though I’m not sure how you measure a mouse’s happiness, the unhappy mice were fed a small amount of chocolate, unleashing the chemicals hidden deep within the dairy milk saviour.

Once the chocolate had been administered the mice were found to be de-stressed.

This week I was interviewing the managing director of an Australian chocolate company on my radio show who was sharing this marketing genius of research with me and I saw another news article, one regarding the syndrome sweeping Japan which I’ve dutifully dubbed MJ Fever.

MJ Fever is not a music obsession, sexual or illegal activity, dance move or jig. MJ Fever is that seemingly natural drive that pushes you away from who you really are.

Michael Jackson suffered it more than most; with his skin transformations and general slide from his teenage years away from everything he started out as and with to where we last saw him a few months ago.

I’m sure I think Michael Jackson suffered the most because his life was under the microscope more than most; there would be people who spend every last dollar in an attempt to not be who they are.

MJ Fever in Japan is sweeping the nation with white skin all the rage, where as in Australia we want tanned skin. Every country and every generation has it’s thing it wants to change.

Imagine the resources we’d have available to us if we could be happy with the us that’s here, free and available. Imagine the time, money, time … and the money … and the time …. life would be grand, or maybe we could just eat more chocolate.