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Beware Headlines Saying Chocolate Is Good For You
BarbaraHudson writes: Many news organizations ran stories last fall extolling certain health benefits of chocolate. But it turns out the studies that the articles were based on didn't go quite so far. The CBC is running a pair of stories debunking chocolate's benefits to the average consumer: "Scientists have zeroed in on a family of fragile molecules known as cocoa flavanols. Research suggests they can relax blood vessels, improve blood flow and, as Small found in his study, even increase activity in a part of the brain involved with age related memory loss. But those flavanols largely disappear once the cocoa bean is heated, fermented and processed into chocolate. In other words, making chocolate destroys the very ingredient that is supposed to make it healthy.
That’s why Small’s memory study used a highly concentrated powder prepared exclusively for research by Mars Inc., the chocolate company, which also partially funded the study. ... There are lots of foods that contain potentially healthy flavanols, along with other bioactive compounds in complex combinations. So the question is: Would academic scientists in publicly funded institutions be so interested in the cocoa bean if the chocolate industry wasn't supporting so much of the research?"
That’s why Small’s memory study used a highly concentrated powder prepared exclusively for research by Mars Inc., the chocolate company, which also partially funded the study. ... There are lots of foods that contain potentially healthy flavanols, along with other bioactive compounds in complex combinations. So the question is: Would academic scientists in publicly funded institutions be so interested in the cocoa bean if the chocolate industry wasn't supporting so much of the research?"
To be fair, what you're talking about is American "chocolate", which lacks regulation, and as such is mostly just oil with a tiny amount of chocolate flavouring. In Europe, the amount of cocoa content of a chocolate bar is regulated, and isn't dropping. That's why europeans tend to baulk the first time they taste a hershey bar - it doesn't taste of chocolate.
Wasn't it the EU who didn't want Cadbury's chocolate to be labeled real chocolate? This sounds like just more "Europe is better than America" crap. People like what they like, no need to act superior about it. Guess what, American beers and wines are winning contests in Europe.
You're probably talking about Hershey's, which is net the entirety of American chocolate. The thing with Hersheys is that it had a process that was not highly sensitive to milk quality which was important to the time it was invented. Converted it from a high end luxury product to an affordable product. The process stops the milk fermentation but adds some butyric acid which makes it slightly sour. Today though we don't need that because of refrigeration, however everyone grew up associating that taste with pleasant childhood memories and so even competitors now add a bit of butyric acid.
The childhood memories part is important! What we eat as desserts as children influences what we love as adults. In hotter climates they like to add lots of sugar to chocolate to prevent it from melting so quickly. I find that chocolate awful, and yet some people prefer that style. I wouldn't call them stupid or lacking in taste, it would be quite rude to insult someone's food preferences, much less an entire country's.
I'm sorry, you are incorrect. In the United States, you can not have any other fats other than cocoa butter or milk fat (which is in milk and is thus in milk chocolate). If you check the FDA standards of identity for chocolate: It is regulated in the United States and you can read the Standards of Identity here: http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFRSearch.cfm?CFRPart=163
I own a chocolate factory so I know just a bit about this subject.
I own a chocolate factory. I would HEAVILY recommend NOT eating raw chocolate. I travel to some of the very best cocoa plantations in the world in countries such as Venezuela, Dominican Republic, Peru, Ecuador, Dominican Republic, Mexico, etc. etc. Cocoa is processed at the farm in conditions which are far from sanitary. I've watched dogs walk through cocoa (can you say: fecal coliform bacteria?). I've watched chickens walk through it and pidgins peck at it, and turkeys walk around it and EVERY time you have birds, you have salmonella bacteria.
Roasting is important to not only bring out the chocolate flavor but to kill all the nasties that came from the farm, from the cocoa processing center (or co-op), from the warehousing, from the shipping on the boat in open jute bags, from the transport on the semi to the chocolate factory in the US, etc. There are a million ways that even clean cocoa beans can get contaminated even if they left the farm in great condition. While I've made raw chocolate as an experiment for myself (and it is part of my job afterall), there is no way that I'd ever release the chocolate on a commercial basis without having each and every batch go through extensive microbial testing something that few raw chocolate companies do.
Right, the key is in the fact that they only mandate 10% cocoa liquor content. While the EU mandate 15% cocoa butter, and 27.5% cocoa solids (42.5% cocoa liquor). White chocolate in europe actually contains more cocoa than milk chocolate needs to in the US.
Lindt, Baker's, Ghirardelli's...
Did you try those Kit Kats?
This is the problem, even well known big brand chocolate tastes better in Europe than the US, the brand may well be the same but the recipe is different.
American Dairy Milk bars are awful compared to the UK versions for example.
"So don't you Europeans talk about 'fine chocolate' until at least you've tasted a fine batch made from single-plantation source in Madagascar. You don't know what you're talking about until then."
Why? we can already one up you on that quite trivially. Succesful chains like Hotel Chocolat let us have single-plantation source chocolate of our choice -
http://www.hotelchocolat.com/u...
But it's better than that. Their flagships contain three things, a shop, a bar, and a restaurant. So you can experience everything from chocolate liqueurs to cocoa gravy there. You can experience proper cocoa usage from just about every worthwhile source in just about all it's incarnations - whether in chocolate bars, drinks, or meals.
So we know exactly what we're talking about by fine chocolate- the issue seems to be that you're wholly unaware of what actual chocolatiers we do have here in Europe given your completely false suggestion that it's hard to find. Even here in the UK which is normally frowned upon as one of the poorest quality chocolate producers in Europe we have major high quality chocolatiers in just about every high street that even slightly matters, and most have high quality independents too.