KEY POINTS:
Chocolate - that heart of darkness, that dangerously addictive drug, that corrupter of cocoa virgins. Few foods inspire passion and loyalty on the scale that chocolate does. Like most people, I have eaten chocolate all my life and it has always been associated with a "special treat".
We were chocolate and lolly rationed as children, our parents wanting neither high murder-house bills nor hyperglycemic werewolves instead of children. This we strangely accepted, which created a culture for us around chocolate - sweet-toothed Dad bringing plain dark chocolate home for us on Friday nights after work, our wealthy and doting grandparents bearing expensive chocolates in boxes at Christmas time... even a Topsy was a special occasion. But it wasn't until I went to Europe that I became a genuine chocophile, seduced by blatantly pornographic displays in those precious glass-plated chocolate shops. I tasted for the first time chocolate drinks made with real chocolate and cream that you could almost stand a spoon up in. It took me a while to get used to quality chocolate with its high cocoa content and to appreciate its slight bitterness, because I had been educated to sugar-and-milk-polluted confectionery - the work of the devil.
If you have ever tasted a "grand cru" chocolate, you will know it is like tasting a grand cru wine. Good chocolate can be recognised by its uniform dark, glossy surface; silky smooth to the touch and making a clean break in your fingers. In your mouth it will break with a crisp snap. As you eat the chocolate, it will melt in your mouth and you will be aware of its silky, uncloying texture, smooth but not fatty, and its intense, deep, rich flavour with a pleasant bitterness and a lingering, fruity finish.
Chocolate contains small amounts of caffeine and theobromine, which are stimulating uppers. These also cause or increase the release of endorphins, natural opiates in the brain that reduce pain _ the same chemicals that are released during exercise and create the "runner's high".
Chocolate has also been found to contain trace levels of anandamide, a substance that mildly mimics the effects of marijuana by acting on the same receptors in the brain and increasing levels of seratonin, which alleviates depression. Endorphins and seratonin are found in the presence of orgasms.
Chocolate also contains significant amounts of phenol, a chemical found in wine, which reduces the risk of heart disease by preventing plaque forming in coronary arteries.
As you can see from this impressive research, you would be ruining your health and sex life by not eating chocolate.
The latest chocolate drama in New Zealand stars the forbidding of huge chocolate bars in hospital dispensing machines. There have been riots and the anaesthetists have risen up.
You know what I'm thinking and it has to do with orgasms. Who would have known?
- Detours, HoS
