Chocolate

Posted on 7 April 2011 by Deanne Tremlett

a brief history of chocolate

Chocolate is a raw or processed food produced from the seed of the tropical Theobroma cacao tree. Cacao has been cultivated for at least three millennia in Mexico, Central and South America, with its earliest documented use around 1100 BC. The majority of the Mesaamerican people made chocolate beverages, including the Aztecs. The seeds of the cacao tree have an intense bitter taste, and must be fermented to develop the flavour.

[blah, bloody blah,]

the future is chocolate

‘Life is like a box of chocolates – you never know what you’re going to get.’

Forrest Gump in Forrest Gump

The possible health effects of chocolate include both positive and negative effects. While chocolate is regularly eaten for pleasure, there are potential beneficial health effects of eating chocolate. Cocoa or dark chocolate may positively affect the circulatory system. Other possible effects under basic research include anti-cancer, brain stimulating, cough preventing and anti-diarrhroeal properties.

Limited amounts of dark chocolate appears, according to research, to help to prevent heart disease. Studies have shown the polyphenols in chocolate inhibit oxidation of LDL cholesterol.

Eating chocolate neither causes nor aggravates acne.

Chocolate does not promote tooth decay, although the sugar in chocolate, as in other foods, does cause cavities, there is even evidence that the cocoa butter in chocolate may inhibit the formation of plaque.

Doctors often prescribe daily aspirin usage for its cardio-protective effects. However, a percentage of the population is unable to take aspirin as required, and chocolate therapy is a pleasant and beneficial alternative.

Although chocolate contains fat it is a fat similar to that found in olive oil, whose health benefits have been well documented.

Chocolate contains theobromine, caffeine, phenylethylamine and anandamide. Theobromine and caffeine are stimulants. Phenylethylamine combines with dopamine in the brain to produce a mild anti-depressant effect. Anandamide produces feelings of calm and well being.

On the other hand, the unconstrained consumption of large quantities of any energy-rich food such as chocolate is thought to increase the risk of obesity without a corresponding increase in activity.

Lah,lah,lah, not listening – fingers in ears lah,lah,lah

chocolate and sex

It’s aphrodisiac effect is not yet proven, however, a study reported by the BBC indicated that melting chocolate in one’s mouth produced an increase in brain activity and heart rate that was more intense than that associated with passionate kissing. It also lasted four times as long after the activity had ended.

Forever there has been a connection between sex and chocolate.

The complex relationship of consuming chocolate, feeling good, having sex, and consuming more chocolate is an intricate pattern set on a Mayan loom, and woven more deftly with every new generation in every new culture.
‘Twill make old women young and fresh,
Create new motions of the flesh.
And cause them long for you know what,
If they but taste of chocolate.’

- James Wadworth (1768-1844)

All men believe sex is better than chocolate. All women know chocolate is better than sex. The only way to completely satisfy both sexes is to combine the two.

I’m quite enjoying this but I’ll put the rest of this rambling in a comment and move on to context.

Chocolate at flat time house

I love chocolate. Did I mention that yet?

A day without is a day without sunshine.

To have arrived at the house without enough to get me through the week would have been reckless and unwise. Chocolate is essential for my health and well-being.

To say I love chocolate is throw-away. An ‘I love you too’ worth phrase.

Eating chocolate is an act of self-love and appreciation. Sorry, I must re-phrase. Eating quality chocolate is an act of self-love and appreciation. Mars bars are self-harm.

Anything below 70% cocoa solids [solids mind you, otherwise they creep the cocoa butter back in], tips the balance between profit and loss.

Sin, sex, gratification, well-being, all wrapped in foil.

Anyway, to cut a long tale short [don’t snort] my supplies lasted the day. It was needed, required. A relational tool. A leveller. A lovely, lovely thing.

It created almost immediately a frisson, a giggle.

Naughtiness.

A circle, a round.

A group of chocolate sharers.

Oftentimes my chocolate proclivity has led me to feel like a ‘pusher’.

Not so here.

As the days rolled on more was required.

Luckily for my purse. the role of chocolate procurer generale was taken up by others and a steady stream of well made and ethically sourced beauties appeared.

The location of a supreme ‘madame du chocolate’ not 200yards from the House a happy coincidence? I don’t believe in those. [Give me a mo and I’ll add in the link].

I would like to hope that my contribution to a social future might be now, or in the future, manifest in works worthy of critical comment. I suspect I may only henceforth be known as ‘the one who brought the chocolate’.

 

 

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5 Responses to Chocolate

1. Tracey Payne says:

   12 April 2011 at 9:51 am

   Is it possible to have too much chocolate?
2. Deanne Tremlett says:

   13 April 2011 at 10:53 am

   6.7 grams of dark, high cocoa solids, chocolate is the optimum amout a day to benefit health. You need a lot more to benefit the soul…
3. Deanne Tremlett says:

   29 May 2011 at 2:51 pm

   More history – read this bit if you want. I personally, would just scroll down to the future is chocolate.

   Chocolate has been used as a drink for nearly all of its history. In November 2007, archaeologists reported finding evidence of the oldest known cultivation and use of cacao at a site in Puerto Escondido, Honduras, dating from about 1100 to 1400 BC. In the New World, chocolate was consumed in a bitter, spicy drink called xocoatl, and was often flavoured with vanilla and chilli pepperr.

   Xocoatl was believed to fight fatigue, a belief that is attributable to it’s theobromine content. Chocolate was also an important luxury good, throughout pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, cacao beans were used as currency. The Aztecs priced a turkey at one hundred beans and an avocado at three.

   The areas conquered by the Aztecs where beans grew were ordered to pay them as a tax, or as the Aztecs called it, a “tribute”.

   But until the 16th century, no European had ever heard of chocolate.

   Oh happy days.

   Christopher Columbus ‘discovered’ chocolate on August 15, 1502, when he stole the cargo of a native trader near modern Honduras. Columbus assumed that the beans were a kind of almond, and all he really knew about them was that someone else thought they were valuable. So, for the glory of Church, State, and Christopher Columbus, he took them;

   ‘They seemed to hold these almonds at a great price; for when they were brought on board ship together with their goods, I observed that when any of these almonds fell, they all stooped to pick it up, as if an eye had fallen’.

   It was not until the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs that chocolate was imported to Europe.

   In Spain it quickly became a court favourite. Within a century it had spread throughout the European continent. To keep up with the high demand for this new drink, Spanish armies began enslaving Mesoamericans. Even with harvesting becoming a regular business, only royalty and the well-connected could afford to drink this expensive import

   The first chocolate house opened in London in 1657. In 1689, noted physician and collector Hans Sloane developed a milk chocolate drink in Jamaica which was initially used by Apothacaries, but later sold to the CAdbury brothers in 1897.

   Chocolate in its solid form was invented in 1847. Fry & Son discovered a way to mix some of the cocoa butter back in, and added sugar, creating a paste that could be moulded. The result was the first modern chocolate bar.

   Huzzah.

   So, currency, drug, protection, South American and I am addicted to it. Damn, it’s a class A narcotic.
4. Deanne Tremlett says:

   29 May 2011 at 2:55 pm

   It is permissible to involve the consumption of chocolate in the sex act. However, many, if not most, humans would be deeply disgusted with the reverse. A sex act being involved in their chocolate.

   We are more likely to see chocolate at large gatherings of people than sex. Sex is considered in many parts of the world to be an act done in private. The enjoyment of chocolate is something which can be shared between persons who have no physical attraction to one another.

   It can be argued that the act of eating chocolate, at the proper time, may give a human more energy to perform the sex act.

   It can also be argued that performing sex, at the proper time, may lead to a human being given more chocolate.

   The question ‘Is chocolate better than sex?’ shouldn’t be asked unless the questions ‘Who am I to have sex with?’ and ‘How much chocolate?’ have already been answered. It can be safely said that chocolate is a less fickle choice than sex: Those who choose chocolate are unlikely to ask ‘Which kind?’; while those who choose sex will almost always ask, ‘With whom?’

   From the time the first cocoa beans were harvested by the Mayans, there has been the belief that chocolate has a euphoric impact on the body’s senses. The conquistadores saw the Emperor Montezuma of the Aztecs consuming a large quantity before entering his harem.

   The invading Spaniards spread the Emperor’s belief that cocoa was an aphrodisiac and brought it to Europe. This belief was also. Apparently, shared by one of history’s most famous lovers, Giacomo Casanova.

   Since then, the use of chocolate as part of the mating ritual has been firmly established. More recently it has been shown that not only does chocolate increase the sexual appetite but also produces a sense of elation similar to an orgasm.

   It has only been in recent times that scientists have unravelled chocolate’s psychotropic properties and the effects it has on us. Chocolate has been found to contain modest amounts of the stimulants caffeine and theo-bromine, (much less than in coffee or tea) Chocolate is also known to generate increased levels of serotonin, a chemical naturally produced by the brain, which is known to reduce anxiety. Serotonin is most commonly associated with the effects of marijuana or getting ‘stoned’ [you need to eat 25lbs of dark chocolate at once to achieve the effect though, bah]

   None of this, by itself, provides the connection between eating chocolate and heightened sexual pleasure. It is, in fact, the rush of endorphins produced by eating chocolates, particularly dark chocolates, which is most similar to the bliss associated with sex.

   Chocolate also contains phenyl-ethylamine which is known to stimulate the release of dopamine into the pleasure centres commonly associated with orgasm.

   In addition to this scientific evidence, a great deal of behavioural research has been done to study the sexual behaviour of women who eat a lot of chocolate and those who don’t.

   The conclusion of this is that women who consume large quantities of chocolate have more satisfying sex lives. However the reverse correlation could also be assumed. Where women with satisfying sex lives tend to eat more chocolate.

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