Chocolate: composition, uses, and cultural significance

Chocolate

One of the most seductive and pleasurable foods, enjoyed everywhere in the world, is chocolate. Chocolate is a slightly psychoactive substance but it has some health benefits when consumed in its purest forms and in moderation. Much of what is sold as chocolate today, such as the candy bars in the check-out aisles in grocery stores, barely approximates the richer varieties of the confection like the brands produced in Europe. Most high-quality chocolate contains fewer additives, less milk, and less sugar than the average Hershey bar. Although European manufacturers produce some of the highest quality and best known chocolate in the world, the cocoa plant is native to Central America. The Aztecs enjoyed chocolate mostly as an unsweetened beverage, adding spices like chili peppers and vanilla to enhance the flavor of the naturally bitter drink The term "chocolate" comes from the native Mexican language Nahuatl. Much like coffee, chocolate is a natural stimulant. However, the caffeine content in chocolate is miniscule. The main psychoactive ingredient in cocoa is called theobromine. The scientific term for chocolate, theobroma cacao, derives from the Greek term "food of the gods," owing to chocolate's universal and enduring appeal.

Produced from the fermented and roasted seeds of the tropical plant cacao, chocolate caught on quickly in Europe during colonization. To produce edible chocolate, either for beverage or confectionary use, the pods of the cacao plant are fermented and their beans dried, then roasted and ground. The resulting material is pressed to separate the cocoa butter from the cocoa solids. The term cocoa liquor refers to the unadulterated chocolate, containing both cocoa solids and cocoa fats. The higher the concentration of cocoa liquor, the higher quality and more expensive is the resulting chocolate product. However, all commercially sold chocolates contain a blend of cocoa butter and cocoa liquor, with other ingredients added for flavor and texture. Vanilla is a common flavor enhancer, added to nearly all forms of chocolate. Many manufacturers also add soy lethicin to make the product creamier. High-end chocolate does not contain lethicin, but rather, the chocolate is churned in a process called conching. Most chocolate is made from Forastero cocoa beans, which come from a relatively hardy variety of the plant; rarer and more expensive beans such as Criollo only account for about 10 or 20% of the market ("Chocolate" 2005). Europeans revolutionized the production of chocolate, changing it from a bitter, spicy beverage to a bitter and sweet one, by adding sugar and later, milk ingredients to it. Chocolate was only made into a beverage until the nineteenth century, when a Dutch man by the name of Conrad J. van Houten devised a method of extracting the cocoa butter from the beans. The separation of the cocoa into cocoa butter and cocoa powder permits the formation of chocolate bars. Chocolate lovers around the world appreciate both bar and liquid chocolate; chocolate is also a common ingredient in baked goods as well as in ice creams and other treats.

Official categories of chocolate vary between Europe and North America. Generally, standards for chocolate purity are stricter in Europe than in North America. Unsweetened chocolate has no added ingredients. Dark chocolate has no milk ingredients added but may contain sugar or sweeteners. Semi-sweet chocolate is dark chocolate with relatively little sugar, and is most commonly used in cooking. Milk chocolate is the most common form of chocolate used in American candy bars, whereas many European chocolate bars are made with bittersweet chocolate. Bittersweet chocolate is made by adding sugar and cocoa butter to unsweetened chocolate, and may also contain lethicin and vanilla. High-grade white chocolate is made mainly from cocoa butter, and contains no cocoa solids.

Although chocolate is considered to be a decadent treat and is feared by dieters everywhere, chocolate is actually quite healthy. However, all the health benefits associated with chocolate only apply to unsweetened or dark chocolates containing no milk ingredients. Cocoa itself contains antioxidants called flavonoids, similar to those contained in red wine, beer and tea, and consuming chocolate can reduce mild hypertension ("Chocolate" 2005). Chocolate also contains high levels of magnesium. Although chocolate contains a few psychoactive substances such as theobromine and a cannabinoid called anandamine, chocolate has not been proven to be chemically addictive. One of the reasons why people might eat chocolate compulsively is because of its high sugar content and possibly also because eating chocolate tends to release endorphins in the brain.