Thursday, March 15, 2012

A Treatise on the concept of Chocolate and Dieting

I love chocolate.  I know, woman's blog, blah blah blah, love chocolate, blah blah blah, but really?

I LOVE CHOCOLATE.

I love everything about chocolate.  I love its aroma, its sensuality, its weird way of tasting like a thousand things at once, from the tiniest hint of smoke to the grass that grew around the bean plant.

(It should be noted that I am speaking of non-US chocolate.  Having lived outside of the US for a few years now, I can safely say that compared to Belgian/French/Scandanavian chocolate, American chocolate tastes like wet dog crossed with an angry gym teacher's asshole.  Sorry Hershey's:  You may have a cool theme park, but you make angry-gym-teacher-asshole grade choccy.)

My husband came home from Stockholm and brought me lovely dark chocolate with sea salt in it - thought I was going to lose my mind.  I pass by little shops with baby on the high street, and see gorgeous hand molded treats with whisper thin shavings of gold-leaf goodness on them, and want to scarf the lot.  You can't have chocolate in this house for very long - I will bake it in something, melt it down to drink, whatever it takes to get goodness in my face hole.  

I was at some function a while ago with a lady who worked for Green & Black's, and she told me all about wine and chocolate pairings. It was like a whole new world was opened to me.  I could get drunk AND enjoy chocolate?  Why the hell had I never thought of that before?  There is even a shop on the sea side, Choccywoccydoodah, that makes everything with and focused around chocolate.  Surely, this is a nation that understands the importance of the cocoa bean.  They may fuck everything else up gastronomically, but they GET chocolate.

So why do modern diets hate chocolate so?  Easy - it's good and good for you.  Modern dieting says that if it tastes like day old socks, it must be good for you.  However, dark chocolate can help lower cholesterol, kick in serotonin levels in the body, helps your body release endorphins, and has enough caffeine to give you a little perk in the body and mind.  AND it tastes gorgeous.  Melt it over some fresh cut strawberries, and you have a sexy treat that is still good for you at the end of the day.

Of course, you'll never see the sad sacks on Biggest Loser enjoying chocolate, or anything else for that matter.  No, for them it's bland Subway sammiches and a treadmill of boring.  Why CAN'T we get healthy while keeping great things around us?  Why do we HAVE to pay good money to go to a gym, work out on machines we don't like, and then pay £5 for a shot of liquefied grass?  Why can't we just walk around more, savour our food, and make wise choices?  

I'm not to the wise choices part just yet. I just ate a whole Easter Egg of chocolate that my husband had hidden - poor man, he still doesn't realize that I am a feckin' sniffer dog when it comes to sweets  but I am getting there.  I am remembering more times than not that food can be good and good for me.  I am remembering that food can be a part of my life but not my whole life.  I am remembering that I love myself more than food, so while I enjoy rich food, I do it in moderation.

Enjoy yourself today.  

4 comments:

  1. So why do modern diets hate chocolate so?

    Because it contains sugar which is the root of all evil and insulin surges?

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  2. 3.5 ounces of dark chocolate (85%) contains 8 grams of sugar. That's less than the naturally occurring sugars in a medium orange (about 9.5 grams). One is a more processed sugar than the other, but the point remains - if you demonize something as pure as *food*, what kind of life do you expect to live? Certainly not an enjoyable one.

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  3. Get "A" to buy you some Venezuelan Black or Peruvian Black 100% Pure Cacao from Waitrose. This can be used to make some of the finest drinking chocolate EVER! or added to just about any food you want to accompany it with. "R"

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  4. To be fair, the paleo diet is pretty friendly towards dark chocolate as a sensible indulgence. I would say that I eat a small square of it every day.

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