February 21, 2018 • 37 mins
Will and Mango are on a mission to uncover chocolate's darkest secrets. What's the difference between cacao and cocoa? Why have Swiss scientists been working on a pink chocolate for so long? (And what's it taste like?) Plus, why does chocolate melt so perfectly in our mouths?
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I guess what, well, what's that mango? So you know
(00:02):
I love spicy food, right, and I love chocolate, but
I don't really love this trend of spicy and chocolate.
I am with you on this because I love spicy
food and I love chocolate too, but I don't want
any chili powder like in my hot chocolate or chocolate
or any of that stuff. I know, why why are
people always mixing those flavors? But I was looking into
it and I found possibly the worst example of super
(00:24):
spicy chocolate. There's a company that's sparred up in two
thousands sixteen called pepper Bomb your mom. Yeah, I mean
it was I guess a joke that you could play
on people where you'd buy a chocolate coated Carolina reaper
for and then send it to a loved one, or
I guess the opposite. I was going to say, that
(00:45):
is not something you want to send to a loved one.
I know, Carolina roopers are so spicy. Actually, we've talked
about these before. Aren't they even spicier than like ghost peppers? Yeah?
They are. So. I'm not sure if it's like the
threat of lawsuits that close this business or the fact
that too many moms complained about it, but pepper bomb
your mom sadly doesn't send out pepper bombs anymore. Like
I do want to get into the more tempting part
(01:06):
of that recipe, which is the chocolate, why humans are
so obsessed with it, whether it's really as healthy as
all these reports would have us believe, and why doesn't
taste more like tropical custard the way the beans do.
Let's dig in either. Podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius.
(01:42):
I'm Will Pearson, and as always I'm joined by my
good friend Mangut show ticketer and on the other side
of the soundproof glass, munching his way through a Whitman's sampler,
that's our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. Actually, by the way,
that sampler looks like it's meant for more than one person,
wouldn't you say? Mango? Yeah, yeah, definitely, it's gotta be
like thirty forty oce a chocolate sitting there. I know.
I actually tried to grab a piece earlier and Tristan
(02:03):
slapped my hand away. Apparently he's busy branking all the
different chocolates for his blog. Oh really, his blog, well,
that's at least that's something to look forward to, so
I'll leave it be there. So you know what's funny
is right before a hurricane Sandy, the night before the
storm hit, like Lizzie sent me to a convenience store
to get some last minute supplies, and we were pretty
stocked up, but just in case, I went to pick
(02:24):
up some like extra toilet paper and water and I
think batteries. But the weather was bad, so like there
were only two other guys in the store inline and
the first guy had the shopping cart filled with beer
and condom that's all, yeah, and uh. And then I
was there with like TP and and water in my
hands and uh. And then this other guy had the
shopping cart that was just filled with chocolate, just like
(02:47):
bags and bags of candy. And I remember like glancing
around and like being a little confused and thinking, well,
we all have different definitions of being prepared. Sounds like
everybody was ready for very different nights. That's pretty great,
all right. Well, I know we're going to get into
the ancient history of chocolate, but it is kind of
amazing that chocolate is the world's favorite candy. In fact,
(03:08):
chocolate based candies far out sell fruit based candies and
almost every country on the planet. Now, Denmark's love of
Harribo gummies makes it one of the few exceptions to
the rule. And and I have to respect that they're
pretty good. But this year alone, nearly eight million tons
of chocolate is expected to be sold and consumed worldwide. Now,
that amounts to over a hundred billion dollars in revenue
(03:29):
for one year. That's crazy. So how much of that
is thanks to like American chocoholics. Actually not as much
as you might think. So even though the average American
eats about ten pounds of chocolate every year, actually only
ranked twentie in terms of national chocolate consumption. And that's
according to data released by euro Monitor. You know euro Monitor, Yeah,
I get the newsletter. So we are we consume our
(03:50):
own body weight and chocolate every ten years or so,
and that's still only good enough for twentieth place. That's
really confusing. How much chocolate are these other countries eating. Well,
it's probably no surprise that Switzerland ranks number one, and
each person there consumes on average about twenty pounds of
chocolate every year, and so that's twice as much as
the average American and then Germany and Austria are tied
(04:11):
for second. They have about I don't know, say seventeen
to eighteen pounds per year. England and Ireland come in
right after those. And then you go to the other
end of the spectrum, and these are places where chocolate
really doesn't dominate the sweet market, and China is an
example of that. So the average Chinese citizen eats less
than half a pound of chocolate a year, So that
means people in Switzerland eat forty times as much chocolate
(04:33):
as those in China. That's amazing. So this is completely
off topic, but I can't stop thinking about it. Did
you realize that cocaw beans are related to okra? And
actually did durian as well? That's super smelly fruit, Like
they're all from the same family. And I kind of
want to tell my kids, like, I'm so sorry I
couldn't pick you up any chocolate from the store, but
I got its cousin a bag of okra for you.
(04:56):
But you were talking about chocolate consumption, where did the
actual coca producing countries fall on that list? Actually, just
to go back to that, that would mean that chocolate
is technically a vegetable then right, Yeah, that's true. All right.
So the actual coco producing countries, Africa and South American
countries account for the vast majority of the world's cocaw production,
(05:16):
and that's the type of seed pod that's used to
make chocolate. But despite being the first and most crucial
link in the chocolate supply chain, these countries actually don't
consume very much chocolate at all. In fact, the highest
chocolate consumption rate in all of South America is actually
in Chili, and the average person there eats less than
four pounds of chocolate per year, and the numbers are
(05:36):
even lower in Africa, So the entire continent consumes fewer
than four percent of all the chocolate sold worldwide. Wow.
And so I'm guessing the low consumption rate in these
countries is introduced like cultural preferences, like it is in China.
I mean, ancient civilizations in South America are pretty much
invented chocolate. So it's not like the people there don't
have a taste for it. Yeah, that's that's really not
(05:57):
what it is. I mean, it comes down to the
low average income of several of these countries. And when
you think about it, if you're living on a few
dollars or even less than a dollar a day, then
it just doesn't make sense in the budget to spend
on a luxury item like chocolate. Sure. So, I actually
saw this report from Oxfam about the economics of the
chocolate tread and how skewed it is, especially for cocao farmers.
(06:18):
And apparently if you divide up the cost of producing
a chocolate bar from start to finish, the farmer who
cultivated the rock cocow only gets about three Meanwhile, about
fort pent of the price we pay for a chocolate
bars profit for the retailer. Wow. Alright, So so three
percent of people who actually grow it and harvest it
and you know, kind of provide that main ingredient for
(06:38):
chocolate and then to those who sell the final product.
Is that what you're saying? Wow, that does does seem
pretty skewed. Yeah. So, I actually remember this video that
made the rounds a few years ago where this reporter
for this international news site visits some cocao farmers on
the Ivory Coast, and the Ivory Coast is the world's
largest producer of cocaw beans. It turns out, roughly, I
(06:59):
want to say like one point five million tons of
it every year, but process chocolate isn't really available, so
when you do find it, it's really exorbitant. Like I
think a bar costs about a third of what the
average worker makes in a single day, which means that
many farmers who cultivate cocao have actually never tasted the
final product. I mean it kind of makes you want
to go there and give them a taste of this stuff. Yeah,
(07:21):
and and so the video right, like the this reporter
gives a chocolate bar to a local farmer named Alphonse,
and he takes his first fight and you see his
face just light up. He's like, I didn't know cocao
was so yummy. And then he and the reporter hop
on a motorbike to share the chocolate with other farmers,
and when he passes the chocolate bar around, Alphonse tells
the other farmers, this is why white people are so healthy. Wow. Well,
(07:47):
I know there's more we wanted to cover about cacao
production and some of the other challenges that it involves.
But since you brought up these health benefits of chocolate,
I do think we should take a few minutes to
do I don't know some kind of a true false
breakdown of what there it actually is good for your health. Yeah,
I mean, chocolate is one of those things like red wine,
that you always hear about has all these surprising health benefits,
but then you never get a good sense of how
(08:09):
much of that is backed by science and how much
is just wishful thinking by people who really want to
eat a lot of chocolate. I mean, like, I feel
like I usually hear that dark chocolate is healthier because
it has less sugar and more cacao than milk chocolate,
And you know, that makes a lot of sense, but
at the end of the day, it's still just a
comparison between two kinds of chocolate, so you're still kind
of left wondering is chocolate itself healthy. Well, I'm glad
(08:31):
you mentioned that distinction between dark and milk chocolate, because
that difference in sugar and kikaw is is really where
these claims about chocolate's health benefits kind of live or die.
And and that's because kow products contain a high amount
of plant derived flavor als. So I think you should
explain what flavor als are. It's just the word I
made up just sounded good of it. Now for real
that they're actually the biological compounds that occur in in
(08:54):
some foods. It's not not just chocolate, but unprocessed coco
is an example of that. And since flavor als possess
us you know, antioxidant and blood vessel relaxing and these
anti inflammatory qualities, they're they're often associated with markers of
good health like you know, balance cholesterol or blood pressure
or various other measures like this. So all those reports
(09:14):
about how eating chocolate promotes heart health, that's basically because
of the flavon als. Yeah, that's where that comes from.
But but again the blanket statement that chocolate is good
for your health is a little misleading. You know, but
because of his higher flavoral count, cocow has a much
better case for being healthy than chocolate does, I guess.
But you know, even then, it's not like a cow
is the only source of plant derived flavor als or
(09:35):
even the best one really. In fact, you can usually
find more flavor als and tea or grape juice or wine,
and you know, several other fruits than you would and say,
co cow, say co cow. Have you seen the Brooklyn
nine nine where that guy Terry starts eating cocow nives
and because there's so much healthier for you than chocolate,
and then he keeps eating and keep seating him and
(09:57):
something he's like floated by by the middle from okay. So,
so there may be some indirect health benefits for eating chocolate,
but you'd basically get the same or better results from
other foods, right, Yeah, And in most cases the results
probably would be better with tea or berries than it
would with with chocolate. And and that's largely because the
heating process involved in standard chocolate manufacturing it actually burns
(10:20):
away much of the flavor all concentration that you would
find in those fresh cocao seeds. So you know, if
you want to eat the healthiest chocolate that you can find,
you should go for the dark chocolate with at least
seventy or eighty percent cacao, and the flavor all concentration
will be much higher than in any milk chocolate bar,
which contains about cocao or less but twenty fat and
(10:42):
forty to fifty sugar. Well, I usually prefer the bitter
taste of dark chocolate to like the overly sweet taste
of milk chocolate. Fit I'm kind of surprised there isn't
more of a middle ground, like something that melts in
your mouth like milk chocolate does, but also taste less sugary.
I have to say, as a fan of milk chocolate,
all of this is kind of disappointing to me. But
I do have good news for you, though, Mango, because
(11:04):
researchers out of Temple University in Philly have actually found
a new way to cut the fat content from chocolate
by using nothing other than electricity, Like they shocked the
fat away with one of those crazy exercise belts. I
kind of wish for that was what they were doing,
but now it's not not exactly that. So you do
remember Willie Wonka on the Chocolate factory and they're walking
alongside the chocolate river and they're all those industrial pipes
(11:26):
sucking up the chocolate. Right, definitely, Augustus Gloup falls in.
It's pretty funny that you like that movie, right, Yeah,
I loved it, man, it's such a great movie. Well,
it's actually there's something we can learn from that because
the chocolate makers really are dependent on this pipe system
to move liquid chocolate from one stage of production to
the next, and the problem is that the thicker and
more viscous a liquid is, the higher the chance it
(11:48):
will clog up the pipes. Augustus gloup and since cutting
the fat content results in a denser and less smooth chocolate,
producing low fat chocolate typically leads to a lot of blockages.
So explain how electricity helps with a Well, there's this
phenomenon called electoral reology, and it's basically when an electric
field is used to turn a semi solid like jello
(12:10):
into a liquid state or vice versa. So in the
case of chocolate, the field from the electrified pipes causes
its chunky cacao particles and milk solids to really to
line up in these chains and and this makes the
chocolate flow through the pipes much more easily. So so
not only will the new process lead to fewer clogs,
it will actually allow chocolate tears to use ten to
(12:31):
less butter per batch. And the best part is that,
according to the authors of the study, the resulting chocolate
delivers a stronger cacao flavor and significantly less fat, which
sounds like a dream come true not to me, to
be honest with you, I kind of want the more butter,
but you know, there are a few health benefits of
chocolate that go beyond the physical. So, for one thing,
(12:51):
chocolate contains caffeine, which obviously has a stimulating effect on
the brain, but there are also these other feel good
chemicals in there too. There's phenal ethylamy, which is a
stimulant that raises the endorphin level in the brain, and
there's also something called an end of mind, which is
similar to one of the active chemicals in marijuana. Alright,
so between it's caffeine and those other field good chemicals
(13:12):
you mentioned, chocolate is clearly a mood enhancer. And this
is real. There's even a study from Oxford that found
that even just looking at a picture of chocolate was
enough to trigger cravings and mood boost and some chocolate veins.
And uh, don't forget eating chocolate is also a surefire
way to restore a little happiness after about with the dementier,
which is, you know, at least the case in Harry Potter.
(13:34):
I thought you might figure out a way to put
in a Harry Potter reference. That's that's a really helpful
tip though. Well, now that we've covered the health benefits
of chocolate, both real and imaginary, I do feel like
we should take a closer look at how humans became
obsessed with the sweet stuff in the first place. Absolutely,
But before we dive in, let's take a quick break.
(14:04):
You're listening to Part Time Genius and we're talking about
the origins of mankind's love affair with chocolate. All right, Mango,
So I know you did some digging into the early
years of chocolate. So do you want to walk us
through You know what you found in the process. Sure,
So the best place to start is with the cacao
tree and its beans. And for anyone who's wondering, cocao
and cocoa are the same thing. You can use the
terms interchangeably because they both refer to the same exact bean.
(14:27):
But even though Africa is now the world's largest cocoa producer,
the trees aren't native to the region. They were actually
brought over as a cash crop to aid the struggling region.
And the true starting point of chocolate's long history is
in Mexico, Central and South America, and that's where the
equatorial climate provide the best place for the native cocow
tree to thrive. Or is it just another quick note
(14:48):
on the terminology here. So the cow beans that these
trees produced, they're really seeds though, right, yeah, they're they're
not actually beans in the same way that like coconut
milk is and milk. So we're just gonna go with it.
But the trees produced these big yellowish seed pods that
kind of look like nerve footballs, and each pod contains
about forty beans, which are what's actually used to make chocolate.
(15:10):
So once you crack open the pods they cost the
beans are released, along with this sweet, sticky pulp that
supposedly taste something between like a cross of lemonade and
apple custard. Actually sounds really good. Yeah, But the beans
of the pulp are left to ferment for a few
days before being dried and roasted, and from there the
cocoa beans can be ground up and then made into
(15:30):
a chocolate beverage. All right, So if that's what was
done first, who were the very first people to drink chocolate?
So most of the evidence points to the ancient Almex.
They were actually the earliest known civilization to appear in Mexico,
and archaeologists have found pieces of Olmec pots and vessels
from around that contained traces of theobromine. This is a
stimulant found in chocolate, and in fact, the Latin name
(15:53):
for the cacao tree is theobromine cocao, which translates to
chocolate food of the Gods, which actually ends up being
a pretty fitting names since it's believed that the Almex
used the ground beans to make a special drink for
religious ceremonies. It's always funny to think about the first
people to discover something like chocolate, like, oh my god,
this tastes so good. I gotta go tell everybody about
(16:14):
this thing that I don't have a name for. But
but but why is there uncertainty about who invented drinking chocolate?
I mean, from what you've said, it sounds like the
Old Max kind of have this wrapped up. Yeah, but
pottery with traces of cacao have been found in southern
Ecuador as well, so those are believed to date back
at least years so the sho are Indians who lived
in the region also have a potential claim to this
(16:35):
chocolate drinking. The truth is this tainted pottery and a
lot of places, and that leaves a lot of room
for interpretation. And since the Old Max don't actually have
any written history to go on, some of the theories
surrounding them could be off. For instance, some researchers think
that the Olmes used only the tropical flavor cow pulp
to make the drink rather than the bitter beans. I
can't say I blame I mean, when you say it
(16:55):
tastes of like what did you say, apple custard, lemonade
or something like that, that sounds a lot better than
like bitter bean water something. Yeah, but bitter bean water
the gods right, right, right. But regardless of who came
up with the idea first, we do know for certain
that the Mayans ran with it. Like their written history
includes numerous mentions of chocolate based drink made from the
cacao seeds and uh, because myyons had yet to develop
(17:18):
a good roasting technique to mellow the flavors, it was
probably pretty bitter. So so what was in it exactly?
Was just ground beans and water or what? Yeah, sometimes
seasonings would be out of, like vanilla or honey or
chili pepper. So how did the Mayans think about chocolate
they did they consider it the food of the gods?
Or were they a little more level headed about the
way they approached it. No, I mean they were full
(17:39):
on crazy for chocolate. They leave the drinks offerings to
their gods. And they're also paintings recovered from the time
that show cocaw and mythological scenes. It was also a
kind of a way to settle important legal matters or
even seal the deal on the marriage. For example, like
early records of Mayan marriages show that in some places
a woman had to prepare a cocaw drink to prove it.
(18:00):
You can get that thick, frothy consistency just right. I mean,
it does kind of make sense, because could you ever
see yourself loving somebody who can't properly froth a pot
of chocolate. I don't even know what that means, but
I can't imagine it. But cocaw wasn't actually restricted to
just the loftier sides of life. There were ceremonies and
celebrations that used to and it was also an early
(18:22):
form of currency. Yeah, so in the fifth century CEE,
the Aztecs used it to buy food and other goods.
For example, you can actually get a whole turkey for
about a hundred cocaw beans. It feels like a pretty
good deal. And I don't know what the exchange rate
isn't cow beans, but but I'd buy it. Yeah. Well,
what's amazing is that it bread some early counterfeiting schemes
(18:42):
as well. Counterfeiting of beans is that we're talking about,
how do you counterfeit of bean? You just like take
a rock and paint it or something. Yeah, well, if
you want a turkey bad enough anything. So, researchers have
actually found these counterfeit beans at multiple dig sites in
both Mexico and Guatemala, and at first glance they just
look like these incredibly well preserved cocao beans. But once
(19:04):
they actually touched them, the researchers realized that they were
just made of clay, which is pretty ridiculous. I mean,
but if kakao was that valuable, I would have to
think that it was a delicacy that was reserved for
the super wealthy. I mean, people were going through the
trouble of making these phony clay beans. What was it
really hard to come by them or what? Yeah, I mean,
it seems like the minds had taken a really generous
(19:26):
approach to cocaw in their day. They they thought of
it as food from the gods, as we mentioned, so
they thought it was meant for everyone to eat. So
man families, even the ones who weren't well off, would
prepare batches of their favorite drink ahead of time, and
then they'd enjoy it at every meal. And the Aspects,
on the other hand, considered cocaw to be this upper
class luxury and almost a status symbol. And I mean
that's partially because they were using as money too write.
(19:48):
But as a result, the lower classes would really only
get a taste of stuff at weddings or sometimes that
community celebrations. But what is clear is that Aspect rulers
really loved their coco and probably the most famous was Montezuma.
He supposedly drank. I think it's like gallons of hot
chocolate every day. Gallons. I can't imagine drink of gallons
(20:10):
of anything. Yeah, So the Spanish explorer Cortez claimed to
have witnessed Montezuma consuming more than fifty cups of chocolate
in a single day. I should mention though, that some
researchers think Cortez was exaggerating. Alright, So just as a reminder,
we we we remember that Cortez was the conquistador who
conquered the Aztecs. So was he the first to bring
(20:30):
chocolate back to Europe. Yeah, so this is fuzzy too,
just like with the Olmex and the sho are. It
kind of depends on who you ask. So some historians
claimed Christopher Columbus was responsible for it. Others say it
was Cortez who returned to Spain bearing cacao and also
the chocolate making apparatus from Montezuma's court. And whether or
not Cortes was the first, he was definitely obsessed with
(20:51):
this concoction. So in a letter to King Carlos, the
First of Spain in fifteen nineteen, Cortez wrote, the divine
drink which builds up resistance and fights fatigue. A cop
of this precious drink permits a man to walk for
a whole day without food. I mean, he might have
oversold it, just the dad. I'm not chimmy chocolate is
really good, but all right, So it might have been
Columbus or it might have been Cortez, but either way,
(21:13):
it sounds like Spain was definitely the first in Europe
to experience chocolate though, right, Yeah, I mean that seems
pretty clear, and there's even a third version of the
story that attributes chocolates European introduction to the Spanish, albeit
too clergymen rather than conquistadors. So this is according to
the True History of Chocolate by Sophie and Michael co
and they say it was a Spanish friar who brought
cocao beans as a gift. Apparently he did this while
(21:35):
introducing minds to the core to fill it the second
But no matter how chocolate made its way to Spain,
it quickly caught on all over Europe, and of course
European palates weren't accustomed to that bitter, spicy brew enjoyed
by the Aztecs, so they started making their own version
of hot chocolate with cane, sugar and cinnamon and other
common spices. And by the sixteen fifties, these super trendy
(21:56):
chocolate houses popped up in London and Amsterdam and even
a few other cities. And it wasn't long after that
that chocolate actually made its way back across the Pond
to American colonies. Wait, did you say chocolate houses or
these like coffee houses or what? Yeah? Exactly, they were
kind of these posho establishments, but drinking chocolate actually predates
both coffee and tea as a stimulant beverage in Europe,
(22:17):
so it's actually more accurate to say that coffee houses
are like chocolate houses rather than the other way around.
I mean, it's still crazy to me that drinking chocolate
was the norm for so long. Yeah, fairly. The eating
chocolate that we used to really didn't come about until
like the nineteenth century. That's when these British chocolate tears
frying Sun's hit upon the idea of adding sugar and
(22:38):
cocoa butter to make a paste that be molded into
the world's first chocolate bar. Well, you know, the addition
of sugar and fat, whether it was cocoa butter or milk.
I mean, that was definitely a turning point for chocolate,
and I do want to talk a little bit about
why that is exactly the first let's take a quick break, Okay, Well,
(23:07):
so I feel like I might know the answer to
this one already, but I do think adding sugar and
fats chocolate was such a great idea. I mean, in
terms of taste, I think you could pretty much ask
anyone in the world why adding sugar and fat might
be good so so I think it helps on the
taste front for sure, But the biggest boon that sugar
and fat gave to chocolate was actually this added sensory quality,
(23:28):
you know, being something that melts in your mouth. I
think it's it's actually pretty important, and that's something that
didn't happen until sugar and fat were at it. Yeah,
that's right. So you know the old Eminem slogan about
melts in your mouth, not in your hand, But we
actually should be more impressed with what Eminem's pulled off
with that, because, as it turns out, getting chocolate to
melt where and when you want it is not at
all an easy task. So why is that? Well, because
(23:51):
cocoa butter contains fatty triglycerides, and they can arrange themselves
in six different ways, and each of those combinations results
in its own unique melting point. But here's the cash
to that. There's only one of those arrangements that actually
has the proper melting point to melt in your mouth,
but not outside. So how do you get to the
ideal melting point? Well, the trick is to nail that
(24:12):
ratio between milk, fat and cocoa. So, for example, you know,
dark chocolate has this higher percentage of cocoa and proportion
to milk fat, and that gives it a higher melting point.
But milk chocolate, on the other end, has much less
cocoa than it does milk fat, which that's why it'll
melt in your hand if you don't eat it quickly enough,
which is why I tend to just shovel it in
my mouth. But the thing is, even for a talented
(24:34):
chocolate tear, it's actually pretty difficult to get those fatty
triglycerides to crystallize just the way you want them to,
and so it takes a lot of patients, takes a
lot of skill, you know, to perfectly control the chocolate's
temperature during this whole tempering process, you know, just so
you don't throw your proportions out of whack. And in
the process of doing this. You know, what's funny is that, uh,
(24:54):
I mean, I love that there's an art taking chocolate
and how it melts. But I met this editor a
long time, Agoys, a really good book editor, and I
was asking him how he got into the business, and
he said he really wanted to be a chocolate maker,
but so he went to like this famous chocolate maker
in town in Vermont or something, and he shook hands
with a lady and she said, your hands are too warm.
You'll never be good at this. Walk across the street
(25:17):
to a bookstore, And that's how I got into books. Like,
you're not tall enough to be a quarterback, but I mean,
I get why it's worth the effort. Like, you know,
making this creamy piece of chocolate that melts away and
coats your tongue. That's a fantastic feeling, it really is.
In fact, I was reading about this study from a
group called mind Lab, and they tried to determine just
how important that melting sensation is in our enjoyment of chocolate.
(25:39):
So the researchers gathered a bunch of volunteer couples in
their twenties. They monitored their heart rates and brain activity
while they first melted chocolate in their mouths, and then
again while they were kissing each other. That's pretty great.
So all these couples are just like standing around lab
eating chocolate and then making out while wearing heart marterrs
and things drafted to their heads, I guess. And they
were probably paid to do this as well, I guess,
(26:01):
sounds like not a bad gig. But the crazy thing
they discovered was that the melting chocolate caused a more
intense reaction than the kissing did. And I mean, the
kissing did cause the volunteers heart to race, and I
guess that's good for their relationships, but you know, the
chocolate made the effect last four times longer and actually
more than double volunteers resting heart rates from about sixty
(26:22):
beats per minute to a hundred and forty. And the
same kind of thing happened in the brain as well.
So once this chocolate started to melt, the pleasure centers
in the brain lit up more strongly and for a
longer period than they did during the kissing. That's pretty nuts,
And it kind of makes me think of how it
chocolate has his reputation as an aphrodisiac, and how it's
so strongly associated with love and Valentine's Day. It almost
(26:44):
seems like that mouthfield could be a big reason why. Oh,
it definitely is. And and I was reading up on
this a little, and it turns out that we actually
have special touch receptors on our tongues and and they
respond to this change and texture of a melting piece
of chocolate. So once our tongues detect this mal alting,
we have these receptors that send the message to the
brain and that stimulates these feelings of pleasure. And the
(27:06):
smell of chocolate has a similar effect, right, Yeah, that's right.
And cow beans are roasted and fermented during chocolate production,
and these processes called chemical changes in the beans, which
ensure the chocolate has its own distinct aroma. There's actually
over six hundred flavor compounds produced at all, and include
everything from overcooked cabbage to human sweat to raw beefat
(27:28):
this all making hungry mouth watering, right, And you know,
of course none of these compounds smell anything close to
chocolate on their own, thankfully, but they're unmistakable when joined together.
It's such a strange thing, But in fact, the studies
have shown that even just smelling chocolate stimulates the emotional
what you would call feel good centers of the brain. Well,
I know we talked earlier about some of the mood
(27:49):
altering chemicals that chocolate contains, but you're actually saying that
your brain lights up from just the smell a loan. Yeah,
So the mood enhancing substances we mentioned are only found
in trade surmounts in chocolate, so you're not really going
to feel much of an effect from them unless you
eat way more chocolate than you probably should. But what's
going on a smell is it's a little bit more psychological,
(28:10):
and the chocolate has this uniquely pleasurable smell and taste
and texture to humans. So you know, if we detect
any of those sensations, we actually just get excited because
we know we're about to eat some chocolate. Yeah, and
it kind of makes you wonder if the whole idea
of chocolate is an afrodisiac is also just in our heads. Like,
we live in a world where chocolate hearts are already
symbols of affection and where chocolate has been viewed as
(28:33):
decadent or indulgent for almost hundreds of years now. So
whether or not chocolate spurs these romantic feelings, we've all
kind of be in condition to make these connections ourselves. Yeah,
I think that's right. And you know, for example, you
mentioned Mono Zuma earlier, and that story I always remember
about him is that he's supposedly downed a bunch of
drinking chocolate just before visiting his harem at night. And
(28:54):
you know, along with this story spread this idea that
a daily dose of chocolate could enhance virility. But you've
got to remember, this is the guy who reportedly drank
what did you say, fifty cups of chocolate every single day,
So drink it before bed was probably just coincidence, right,
or have it right? So let me just recap things
a little bit. Chocolate contains psychoactive chemicals, but not enough
(29:16):
to have more than a slight effect on our senses.
It's reputation as aphrodisiac is way overblown and mostly due
to sort of this widespread placebo effect. And while it
does have a unique smell, taste, and texture, we don't
really know why the majority of humans responded strongly to
these qualities as we do. So I guess I'm wondering,
(29:36):
like where does that leave us? Like? Is there an
answer for why we love chocolate so much? Because somehow
it tastes good? Isn't good enough? Well? I was reading
this interesting BBC News article by a doctor's name is
Michael Moseley, and so he's a TV journalist and he's
worked on a bunch of different science programs and there's
one called The Secrets of Your Food, and it sounds
like a pretty interesting show. But his idea for the
(29:58):
unique appeal of chocolate goes back to that all important
addition of sugar and fat that we talked about earlier,
namely that chocolate contains a combination of sugar and fat
that you rarely find in nature. Now, separately, we we
obviously know that there are plenty of fruits that contain
natural sugars, and then you've got nuts and fish, which
are chock full of fat. But both of these together
(30:19):
is a pretty rare thing. And in fact, one of
the few natural sources where you'll find high levels of
both sugar and fat is in milk. But you know,
even then, chocolate generally has a fat to sugar ratio
of about one the two, which is higher than almost
any kinds of milk except for one, and that's human
breast milk. So Dr Mosley talks about this. He explains
(30:39):
that human breast milk is particularly rich and natural sugars,
mainly lactose. Roughly four percent of human breast milk is fat,
while about eight percent is made up of sugars. Formula
milk which is fed to babies contains a similar ratio
of fats to sugars. This ratio one gram of fat
to two grams of sugars. That's the same ratio of
fats to sugars that you find in milk, chocolate, and
(31:02):
of course in biscuits and doughnuts and ice cream. In fact,
this particular ratio is reflected in many of the foods
that we find hard to resist. So the reason we
love chocolate is because it reminds of breast milk. I mean,
that's more appropriate for Mother's Day. Well that's the idea though,
I mean that the humans have a preference for the
particular fat to carbohydrate balance that we've been conditioned alike
(31:24):
from the start of our lives. And mostly describes this
chocolate obsession as an effort to quote recapture the taste
and sense of closeness we got from the first food
we ever sampled. Well, I definitely wasn't expecting that, but
it does remind me of this chocolate quote I read
from this Portuguese poet named Fernando pasola Um. So, so
you know how. Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that
(31:46):
deals with questions and about really plowing existence and the
first causes and all that. So, uh, Posa said, there's
no metaphysics on Earth like chocolate, and he's right. So
I mean, there's so much history and lore and science
wrapped up in chocolate that you can almost never really
get your head around it or get to the beginning
of it, and in the end, it's probably just best
(32:08):
to eat it. Yeah. Well, I know Tristan agrees with that,
because he's eating like forty five more pieces of this
stuff since the beginning of the episode. But all right,
before we let him finish the rest of that box off,
why don't we share a few more stories about chocolate
and today's fact off. All right, well, I'll kick us
(32:29):
off here. So we know there's obviously brown chocolate and
white chocolate, which we weren't allowed to talk about today,
even though I love because it's not technically chocolate. But
the good news is there will now soon be pink chocolate.
And this is because, as we may have talked about earlier,
you know, cocoa beans are actually kind of pinkish or
reddish in their in their natural state, and so it's
(32:49):
taken about a decade or so for food scientists in
Switzerland to figure this out. But soon we will actually
have pink chocolate, which will maintain that fruity or flavor,
will be a little less sweet. But I'm pretty eager
to try something. Yeah, I'm excited about that. So I've
got a different type of good news. If you actually
want to increase your odds of winning a Nobel prize,
you should eat more chocolate. So Tristan's in luck. He's
(33:13):
gonna have so many Nobels by the end of this year.
A few years ago, a survey was taken of twenty
three Nobel laureates during the time of their prize winning work,
and it found that of those reported eating chocolate at
least twice a week, and that was higher than the
tent of people who were at a similar age and
education level but who had not want a Nobel. Wow.
So this really scientifically solid finding also came after a
(33:36):
correlation that was found between national chocolate consumption and the
rate of Nobel prizes. I mean, that seems like pretty
solid science to me. What do you think, Yeah, I mean,
let's just forget that whole correlation causation thing and just
go with it. That's that's some good science there. That
is pretty funny though that for of those Nobel winners
were eating chocolate. What did you say, twice twice a week? Okay,
that's still that's still pretty big. All right. Well, how
(33:59):
weird is it that Quaker Oates financed the production of
Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Did you know about that?
And that's actually why the name was changed from Charlie
and the Chocolate Factory to Willie Wonka and the Chocolate
Factory for the movie. And that's because they wanted to
push their new Wonka candies and specifically the Wonka Bar. Now, weirdly,
they couldn't seem to get the formula for the bar
(34:19):
just right, so they actually didn't even release a Wonka
Bar for a few years after the film. But the
film did help launch several other of their popular candies,
and thankfully it's still a pretty great movie. Yeah. So,
I I think we've talked about this German chemist who
made those fart pills that make your tooth smell like chocolate, right,
But I don't know why chocolate is always the go
(34:39):
to answer for this type of thing. But uh, this
is like that story on steroids. So in in two
thousand and sixteen, Japan's sewage companies used a chocolate oil
to mass the scent of their sewage trucks, which I
guess you know, you have your kids running to meet
the chocolate truck and something they did feel like I
would ruin the taste for chocolate. So they're smelling chocolate
(35:01):
in the air and that's the sewage. Yeah, well, it
covers up the sewage. Yeah, wow, that's pretty interesting. All right. Well,
my kids were asking not too long ago why dogs
can't eat chocolate, and and that's because chocolate contains this
chemical that we actually talked about earlier, THEO broman which
is a little bit like caffeine, and it's actually toxic
to both dogs and cats. And so this is the
(35:23):
main reason. And that's because their bodies aren't able to
metabolize the chemical at the same rate that we can.
So if they have a little too much chocolate, it
just causes them to get sick or very sick. But
if they have high doses of THEO bro mine, it
can actually have tragic results, as we know. Man, well,
I feel like we need to bring this back to
a slightly happier note. So did you know that Ruth Wakefield,
(35:45):
the inventor of the chocolate chip cookies soldier cookie idea
to Nesleie Tollhouse, and you know how she was compensated
with a lifetime supply of chocolate. No way. Again, it's
still so weird to me to think of somebody like
as the inventor of the chocolate chip cookie. It just
els like that stuff that should have just always been
prayed that in for so many turkeys. Yeah, well, I
(36:06):
have to say that is a great fact and worthy
of today's Fact Off Trophy. So congratulations Manga, Thank you
so much. Thank you guys for listening. If we've forgotten
any great chocolate facts, we would love to hear from you. Guys.
You can always email us part Time Genius at how
stuff Works dot com or call us on our seven
fact hotline. That's one eight four four pt Genius. We've
gotten so many great comments on Facebook and Twitter, so
(36:27):
you can always hit us up there. But thanks so
much for listening. Thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius
is a production of How Stuff Works and wouldn't be
(36:47):
possible without several brilliant people who do the important things.
We couldn't even begin to understand. Tristan McNeil does the
ending thing. Noel Brown made the theme song and does
the MIXI MIXI sound thing. Erry Roland does the exact
producers thing. Losier is our lead researcher, with support from
the Research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and Lucas Adams.
Gets the show to your ears. Good jobs. If you
(37:08):
like what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe, And if
you really really like what you've heard, maybe you could
leave a good review for us. M Jason, who
I guess what, well, what's that mango? So you know
(00:02):
I love spicy food, right, and I love chocolate, but
I don't really love this trend of spicy and chocolate.
I am with you on this because I love spicy
food and I love chocolate too, but I don't want
any chili powder like in my hot chocolate or chocolate
or any of that stuff. I know, why why are
people always mixing those flavors? But I was looking into
it and I found possibly the worst example of super
(00:24):
spicy chocolate. There's a company that's sparred up in two
thousands sixteen called pepper Bomb your mom. Yeah, I mean
it was I guess a joke that you could play
on people where you'd buy a chocolate coated Carolina reaper
for and then send it to a loved one, or
I guess the opposite. I was going to say, that
(00:45):
is not something you want to send to a loved one.
I know, Carolina roopers are so spicy. Actually, we've talked
about these before. Aren't they even spicier than like ghost peppers? Yeah?
They are. So. I'm not sure if it's like the
threat of lawsuits that close this business or the fact
that too many moms complained about it, but pepper bomb
your mom sadly doesn't send out pepper bombs anymore. Like
I do want to get into the more tempting part
(01:06):
of that recipe, which is the chocolate, why humans are
so obsessed with it, whether it's really as healthy as
all these reports would have us believe, and why doesn't
taste more like tropical custard the way the beans do.
Let's dig in either. Podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius.
(01:42):
I'm Will Pearson, and as always I'm joined by my
good friend Mangut show ticketer and on the other side
of the soundproof glass, munching his way through a Whitman's sampler,
that's our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. Actually, by the way,
that sampler looks like it's meant for more than one person,
wouldn't you say? Mango? Yeah, yeah, definitely, it's gotta be
like thirty forty oce a chocolate sitting there. I know.
I actually tried to grab a piece earlier and Tristan
(02:03):
slapped my hand away. Apparently he's busy branking all the
different chocolates for his blog. Oh really, his blog, well,
that's at least that's something to look forward to, so
I'll leave it be there. So you know what's funny
is right before a hurricane Sandy, the night before the
storm hit, like Lizzie sent me to a convenience store
to get some last minute supplies, and we were pretty
stocked up, but just in case, I went to pick
(02:24):
up some like extra toilet paper and water and I
think batteries. But the weather was bad, so like there
were only two other guys in the store inline and
the first guy had the shopping cart filled with beer
and condom that's all, yeah, and uh. And then I
was there with like TP and and water in my
hands and uh. And then this other guy had the
shopping cart that was just filled with chocolate, just like
(02:47):
bags and bags of candy. And I remember like glancing
around and like being a little confused and thinking, well,
we all have different definitions of being prepared. Sounds like
everybody was ready for very different nights. That's pretty great,
all right. Well, I know we're going to get into
the ancient history of chocolate, but it is kind of
amazing that chocolate is the world's favorite candy. In fact,
(03:08):
chocolate based candies far out sell fruit based candies and
almost every country on the planet. Now, Denmark's love of
Harribo gummies makes it one of the few exceptions to
the rule. And and I have to respect that they're
pretty good. But this year alone, nearly eight million tons
of chocolate is expected to be sold and consumed worldwide. Now,
that amounts to over a hundred billion dollars in revenue
(03:29):
for one year. That's crazy. So how much of that
is thanks to like American chocoholics. Actually not as much
as you might think. So even though the average American
eats about ten pounds of chocolate every year, actually only
ranked twentie in terms of national chocolate consumption. And that's
according to data released by euro Monitor. You know euro Monitor, Yeah,
I get the newsletter. So we are we consume our
(03:50):
own body weight and chocolate every ten years or so,
and that's still only good enough for twentieth place. That's
really confusing. How much chocolate are these other countries eating. Well,
it's probably no surprise that Switzerland ranks number one, and
each person there consumes on average about twenty pounds of
chocolate every year, and so that's twice as much as
the average American and then Germany and Austria are tied
(04:11):
for second. They have about I don't know, say seventeen
to eighteen pounds per year. England and Ireland come in
right after those. And then you go to the other
end of the spectrum, and these are places where chocolate
really doesn't dominate the sweet market, and China is an
example of that. So the average Chinese citizen eats less
than half a pound of chocolate a year, So that
means people in Switzerland eat forty times as much chocolate
(04:33):
as those in China. That's amazing. So this is completely
off topic, but I can't stop thinking about it. Did
you realize that cocaw beans are related to okra? And
actually did durian as well? That's super smelly fruit, Like
they're all from the same family. And I kind of
want to tell my kids, like, I'm so sorry I
couldn't pick you up any chocolate from the store, but
I got its cousin a bag of okra for you.
(04:56):
But you were talking about chocolate consumption, where did the
actual coca producing countries fall on that list? Actually, just
to go back to that, that would mean that chocolate
is technically a vegetable then right, Yeah, that's true. All right.
So the actual coco producing countries, Africa and South American
countries account for the vast majority of the world's cocaw production,
(05:16):
and that's the type of seed pod that's used to
make chocolate. But despite being the first and most crucial
link in the chocolate supply chain, these countries actually don't
consume very much chocolate at all. In fact, the highest
chocolate consumption rate in all of South America is actually
in Chili, and the average person there eats less than
four pounds of chocolate per year, and the numbers are
(05:36):
even lower in Africa, So the entire continent consumes fewer
than four percent of all the chocolate sold worldwide. Wow.
And so I'm guessing the low consumption rate in these
countries is introduced like cultural preferences, like it is in China.
I mean, ancient civilizations in South America are pretty much
invented chocolate. So it's not like the people there don't
have a taste for it. Yeah, that's that's really not
(05:57):
what it is. I mean, it comes down to the
low average income of several of these countries. And when
you think about it, if you're living on a few
dollars or even less than a dollar a day, then
it just doesn't make sense in the budget to spend
on a luxury item like chocolate. Sure. So, I actually
saw this report from Oxfam about the economics of the
chocolate tread and how skewed it is, especially for cocao farmers.
(06:18):
And apparently if you divide up the cost of producing
a chocolate bar from start to finish, the farmer who
cultivated the rock cocow only gets about three Meanwhile, about
fort pent of the price we pay for a chocolate
bars profit for the retailer. Wow. Alright, So so three
percent of people who actually grow it and harvest it
and you know, kind of provide that main ingredient for
(06:38):
chocolate and then to those who sell the final product.
Is that what you're saying? Wow, that does does seem
pretty skewed. Yeah. So, I actually remember this video that
made the rounds a few years ago where this reporter
for this international news site visits some cocao farmers on
the Ivory Coast, and the Ivory Coast is the world's
largest producer of cocaw beans. It turns out, roughly, I
(06:59):
want to say like one point five million tons of
it every year, but process chocolate isn't really available, so
when you do find it, it's really exorbitant. Like I
think a bar costs about a third of what the
average worker makes in a single day, which means that
many farmers who cultivate cocao have actually never tasted the
final product. I mean it kind of makes you want
to go there and give them a taste of this stuff. Yeah,
(07:21):
and and so the video right, like the this reporter
gives a chocolate bar to a local farmer named Alphonse,
and he takes his first fight and you see his
face just light up. He's like, I didn't know cocao
was so yummy. And then he and the reporter hop
on a motorbike to share the chocolate with other farmers,
and when he passes the chocolate bar around, Alphonse tells
the other farmers, this is why white people are so healthy. Wow. Well,
(07:47):
I know there's more we wanted to cover about cacao
production and some of the other challenges that it involves.
But since you brought up these health benefits of chocolate,
I do think we should take a few minutes to
do I don't know some kind of a true false
breakdown of what there it actually is good for your health. Yeah,
I mean, chocolate is one of those things like red wine,
that you always hear about has all these surprising health benefits,
but then you never get a good sense of how
(08:09):
much of that is backed by science and how much
is just wishful thinking by people who really want to
eat a lot of chocolate. I mean, like, I feel
like I usually hear that dark chocolate is healthier because
it has less sugar and more cacao than milk chocolate,
And you know, that makes a lot of sense, but
at the end of the day, it's still just a
comparison between two kinds of chocolate, so you're still kind
of left wondering is chocolate itself healthy. Well, I'm glad
(08:31):
you mentioned that distinction between dark and milk chocolate, because
that difference in sugar and kikaw is is really where
these claims about chocolate's health benefits kind of live or die.
And and that's because kow products contain a high amount
of plant derived flavor als. So I think you should
explain what flavor als are. It's just the word I
made up just sounded good of it. Now for real
that they're actually the biological compounds that occur in in
(08:54):
some foods. It's not not just chocolate, but unprocessed coco
is an example of that. And since flavor als possess
us you know, antioxidant and blood vessel relaxing and these
anti inflammatory qualities, they're they're often associated with markers of
good health like you know, balance cholesterol or blood pressure
or various other measures like this. So all those reports
(09:14):
about how eating chocolate promotes heart health, that's basically because
of the flavon als. Yeah, that's where that comes from.
But but again the blanket statement that chocolate is good
for your health is a little misleading. You know, but
because of his higher flavoral count, cocow has a much
better case for being healthy than chocolate does, I guess.
But you know, even then, it's not like a cow
is the only source of plant derived flavor als or
(09:35):
even the best one really. In fact, you can usually
find more flavor als and tea or grape juice or wine,
and you know, several other fruits than you would and say,
co cow, say co cow. Have you seen the Brooklyn
nine nine where that guy Terry starts eating cocow nives
and because there's so much healthier for you than chocolate,
and then he keeps eating and keep seating him and
(09:57):
something he's like floated by by the middle from okay. So,
so there may be some indirect health benefits for eating chocolate,
but you'd basically get the same or better results from
other foods, right, Yeah, And in most cases the results
probably would be better with tea or berries than it
would with with chocolate. And and that's largely because the
heating process involved in standard chocolate manufacturing it actually burns
(10:20):
away much of the flavor all concentration that you would
find in those fresh cocao seeds. So you know, if
you want to eat the healthiest chocolate that you can find,
you should go for the dark chocolate with at least
seventy or eighty percent cacao, and the flavor all concentration
will be much higher than in any milk chocolate bar,
which contains about cocao or less but twenty fat and
(10:42):
forty to fifty sugar. Well, I usually prefer the bitter
taste of dark chocolate to like the overly sweet taste
of milk chocolate. Fit I'm kind of surprised there isn't
more of a middle ground, like something that melts in
your mouth like milk chocolate does, but also taste less sugary.
I have to say, as a fan of milk chocolate,
all of this is kind of disappointing to me. But
I do have good news for you, though, Mango, because
(11:04):
researchers out of Temple University in Philly have actually found
a new way to cut the fat content from chocolate
by using nothing other than electricity, Like they shocked the
fat away with one of those crazy exercise belts. I
kind of wish for that was what they were doing,
but now it's not not exactly that. So you do
remember Willie Wonka on the Chocolate factory and they're walking
alongside the chocolate river and they're all those industrial pipes
(11:26):
sucking up the chocolate. Right, definitely, Augustus Gloup falls in.
It's pretty funny that you like that movie, right, Yeah,
I loved it, man, it's such a great movie. Well,
it's actually there's something we can learn from that because
the chocolate makers really are dependent on this pipe system
to move liquid chocolate from one stage of production to
the next, and the problem is that the thicker and
more viscous a liquid is, the higher the chance it
(11:48):
will clog up the pipes. Augustus gloup and since cutting
the fat content results in a denser and less smooth chocolate,
producing low fat chocolate typically leads to a lot of blockages.
So explain how electricity helps with a Well, there's this
phenomenon called electoral reology, and it's basically when an electric
field is used to turn a semi solid like jello
(12:10):
into a liquid state or vice versa. So in the
case of chocolate, the field from the electrified pipes causes
its chunky cacao particles and milk solids to really to
line up in these chains and and this makes the
chocolate flow through the pipes much more easily. So so
not only will the new process lead to fewer clogs,
it will actually allow chocolate tears to use ten to
(12:31):
less butter per batch. And the best part is that,
according to the authors of the study, the resulting chocolate
delivers a stronger cacao flavor and significantly less fat, which
sounds like a dream come true not to me, to
be honest with you, I kind of want the more butter,
but you know, there are a few health benefits of
chocolate that go beyond the physical. So, for one thing,
(12:51):
chocolate contains caffeine, which obviously has a stimulating effect on
the brain, but there are also these other feel good
chemicals in there too. There's phenal ethylamy, which is a
stimulant that raises the endorphin level in the brain, and
there's also something called an end of mind, which is
similar to one of the active chemicals in marijuana. Alright,
so between it's caffeine and those other field good chemicals
(13:12):
you mentioned, chocolate is clearly a mood enhancer. And this
is real. There's even a study from Oxford that found
that even just looking at a picture of chocolate was
enough to trigger cravings and mood boost and some chocolate veins.
And uh, don't forget eating chocolate is also a surefire
way to restore a little happiness after about with the dementier,
which is, you know, at least the case in Harry Potter.
(13:34):
I thought you might figure out a way to put
in a Harry Potter reference. That's that's a really helpful
tip though. Well, now that we've covered the health benefits
of chocolate, both real and imaginary, I do feel like
we should take a closer look at how humans became
obsessed with the sweet stuff in the first place. Absolutely,
But before we dive in, let's take a quick break.
(14:04):
You're listening to Part Time Genius and we're talking about
the origins of mankind's love affair with chocolate. All right, Mango,
So I know you did some digging into the early
years of chocolate. So do you want to walk us
through You know what you found in the process. Sure,
So the best place to start is with the cacao
tree and its beans. And for anyone who's wondering, cocao
and cocoa are the same thing. You can use the
terms interchangeably because they both refer to the same exact bean.
(14:27):
But even though Africa is now the world's largest cocoa producer,
the trees aren't native to the region. They were actually
brought over as a cash crop to aid the struggling region.
And the true starting point of chocolate's long history is
in Mexico, Central and South America, and that's where the
equatorial climate provide the best place for the native cocow
tree to thrive. Or is it just another quick note
(14:48):
on the terminology here. So the cow beans that these
trees produced, they're really seeds though, right, yeah, they're they're
not actually beans in the same way that like coconut
milk is and milk. So we're just gonna go with it.
But the trees produced these big yellowish seed pods that
kind of look like nerve footballs, and each pod contains
about forty beans, which are what's actually used to make chocolate.
(15:10):
So once you crack open the pods they cost the
beans are released, along with this sweet, sticky pulp that
supposedly taste something between like a cross of lemonade and
apple custard. Actually sounds really good. Yeah, But the beans
of the pulp are left to ferment for a few
days before being dried and roasted, and from there the
cocoa beans can be ground up and then made into
(15:30):
a chocolate beverage. All right, So if that's what was
done first, who were the very first people to drink chocolate?
So most of the evidence points to the ancient Almex.
They were actually the earliest known civilization to appear in Mexico,
and archaeologists have found pieces of Olmec pots and vessels
from around that contained traces of theobromine. This is a
stimulant found in chocolate, and in fact, the Latin name
(15:53):
for the cacao tree is theobromine cocao, which translates to
chocolate food of the Gods, which actually ends up being
a pretty fitting names since it's believed that the Almex
used the ground beans to make a special drink for
religious ceremonies. It's always funny to think about the first
people to discover something like chocolate, like, oh my god,
this tastes so good. I gotta go tell everybody about
(16:14):
this thing that I don't have a name for. But
but but why is there uncertainty about who invented drinking chocolate?
I mean, from what you've said, it sounds like the
Old Max kind of have this wrapped up. Yeah, but
pottery with traces of cacao have been found in southern
Ecuador as well, so those are believed to date back
at least years so the sho are Indians who lived
in the region also have a potential claim to this
(16:35):
chocolate drinking. The truth is this tainted pottery and a
lot of places, and that leaves a lot of room
for interpretation. And since the Old Max don't actually have
any written history to go on, some of the theories
surrounding them could be off. For instance, some researchers think
that the Olmes used only the tropical flavor cow pulp
to make the drink rather than the bitter beans. I
can't say I blame I mean, when you say it
(16:55):
tastes of like what did you say, apple custard, lemonade
or something like that, that sounds a lot better than
like bitter bean water something. Yeah, but bitter bean water
the gods right, right, right. But regardless of who came
up with the idea first, we do know for certain
that the Mayans ran with it. Like their written history
includes numerous mentions of chocolate based drink made from the
cacao seeds and uh, because myyons had yet to develop
(17:18):
a good roasting technique to mellow the flavors, it was
probably pretty bitter. So so what was in it exactly?
Was just ground beans and water or what? Yeah, sometimes
seasonings would be out of, like vanilla or honey or
chili pepper. So how did the Mayans think about chocolate
they did they consider it the food of the gods?
Or were they a little more level headed about the
way they approached it. No, I mean they were full
(17:39):
on crazy for chocolate. They leave the drinks offerings to
their gods. And they're also paintings recovered from the time
that show cocaw and mythological scenes. It was also a
kind of a way to settle important legal matters or
even seal the deal on the marriage. For example, like
early records of Mayan marriages show that in some places
a woman had to prepare a cocaw drink to prove it.
(18:00):
You can get that thick, frothy consistency just right. I mean,
it does kind of make sense, because could you ever
see yourself loving somebody who can't properly froth a pot
of chocolate. I don't even know what that means, but
I can't imagine it. But cocaw wasn't actually restricted to
just the loftier sides of life. There were ceremonies and
celebrations that used to and it was also an early
(18:22):
form of currency. Yeah, so in the fifth century CEE,
the Aztecs used it to buy food and other goods.
For example, you can actually get a whole turkey for
about a hundred cocaw beans. It feels like a pretty
good deal. And I don't know what the exchange rate
isn't cow beans, but but I'd buy it. Yeah. Well,
what's amazing is that it bread some early counterfeiting schemes
(18:42):
as well. Counterfeiting of beans is that we're talking about,
how do you counterfeit of bean? You just like take
a rock and paint it or something. Yeah, well, if
you want a turkey bad enough anything. So, researchers have
actually found these counterfeit beans at multiple dig sites in
both Mexico and Guatemala, and at first glance they just
look like these incredibly well preserved cocao beans. But once
(19:04):
they actually touched them, the researchers realized that they were
just made of clay, which is pretty ridiculous. I mean,
but if kakao was that valuable, I would have to
think that it was a delicacy that was reserved for
the super wealthy. I mean, people were going through the
trouble of making these phony clay beans. What was it
really hard to come by them or what? Yeah, I mean,
it seems like the minds had taken a really generous
(19:26):
approach to cocaw in their day. They they thought of
it as food from the gods, as we mentioned, so
they thought it was meant for everyone to eat. So
man families, even the ones who weren't well off, would
prepare batches of their favorite drink ahead of time, and
then they'd enjoy it at every meal. And the Aspects,
on the other hand, considered cocaw to be this upper
class luxury and almost a status symbol. And I mean
that's partially because they were using as money too write.
(19:48):
But as a result, the lower classes would really only
get a taste of stuff at weddings or sometimes that
community celebrations. But what is clear is that Aspect rulers
really loved their coco and probably the most famous was Montezuma.
He supposedly drank. I think it's like gallons of hot
chocolate every day. Gallons. I can't imagine drink of gallons
(20:10):
of anything. Yeah, So the Spanish explorer Cortez claimed to
have witnessed Montezuma consuming more than fifty cups of chocolate
in a single day. I should mention though, that some
researchers think Cortez was exaggerating. Alright, So just as a reminder,
we we we remember that Cortez was the conquistador who
conquered the Aztecs. So was he the first to bring
(20:30):
chocolate back to Europe. Yeah, so this is fuzzy too,
just like with the Olmex and the sho are. It
kind of depends on who you ask. So some historians
claimed Christopher Columbus was responsible for it. Others say it
was Cortez who returned to Spain bearing cacao and also
the chocolate making apparatus from Montezuma's court. And whether or
not Cortes was the first, he was definitely obsessed with
(20:51):
this concoction. So in a letter to King Carlos, the
First of Spain in fifteen nineteen, Cortez wrote, the divine
drink which builds up resistance and fights fatigue. A cop
of this precious drink permits a man to walk for
a whole day without food. I mean, he might have
oversold it, just the dad. I'm not chimmy chocolate is
really good, but all right, So it might have been
Columbus or it might have been Cortez, but either way,
(21:13):
it sounds like Spain was definitely the first in Europe
to experience chocolate though, right, Yeah, I mean that seems
pretty clear, and there's even a third version of the
story that attributes chocolates European introduction to the Spanish, albeit
too clergymen rather than conquistadors. So this is according to
the True History of Chocolate by Sophie and Michael co
and they say it was a Spanish friar who brought
cocao beans as a gift. Apparently he did this while
(21:35):
introducing minds to the core to fill it the second
But no matter how chocolate made its way to Spain,
it quickly caught on all over Europe, and of course
European palates weren't accustomed to that bitter, spicy brew enjoyed
by the Aztecs, so they started making their own version
of hot chocolate with cane, sugar and cinnamon and other
common spices. And by the sixteen fifties, these super trendy
(21:56):
chocolate houses popped up in London and Amsterdam and even
a few other cities. And it wasn't long after that
that chocolate actually made its way back across the Pond
to American colonies. Wait, did you say chocolate houses or
these like coffee houses or what? Yeah? Exactly, they were
kind of these posho establishments, but drinking chocolate actually predates
both coffee and tea as a stimulant beverage in Europe,
(22:17):
so it's actually more accurate to say that coffee houses
are like chocolate houses rather than the other way around.
I mean, it's still crazy to me that drinking chocolate
was the norm for so long. Yeah, fairly. The eating
chocolate that we used to really didn't come about until
like the nineteenth century. That's when these British chocolate tears
frying Sun's hit upon the idea of adding sugar and
(22:38):
cocoa butter to make a paste that be molded into
the world's first chocolate bar. Well, you know, the addition
of sugar and fat, whether it was cocoa butter or milk.
I mean, that was definitely a turning point for chocolate,
and I do want to talk a little bit about
why that is exactly the first let's take a quick break, Okay, Well,
(23:07):
so I feel like I might know the answer to
this one already, but I do think adding sugar and
fats chocolate was such a great idea. I mean, in
terms of taste, I think you could pretty much ask
anyone in the world why adding sugar and fat might
be good so so I think it helps on the
taste front for sure, But the biggest boon that sugar
and fat gave to chocolate was actually this added sensory quality,
(23:28):
you know, being something that melts in your mouth. I
think it's it's actually pretty important, and that's something that
didn't happen until sugar and fat were at it. Yeah,
that's right. So you know the old Eminem slogan about
melts in your mouth, not in your hand, But we
actually should be more impressed with what Eminem's pulled off
with that, because, as it turns out, getting chocolate to
melt where and when you want it is not at
all an easy task. So why is that? Well, because
(23:51):
cocoa butter contains fatty triglycerides, and they can arrange themselves
in six different ways, and each of those combinations results
in its own unique melting point. But here's the cash
to that. There's only one of those arrangements that actually
has the proper melting point to melt in your mouth,
but not outside. So how do you get to the
ideal melting point? Well, the trick is to nail that
(24:12):
ratio between milk, fat and cocoa. So, for example, you know,
dark chocolate has this higher percentage of cocoa and proportion
to milk fat, and that gives it a higher melting point.
But milk chocolate, on the other end, has much less
cocoa than it does milk fat, which that's why it'll
melt in your hand if you don't eat it quickly enough,
which is why I tend to just shovel it in
my mouth. But the thing is, even for a talented
(24:34):
chocolate tear, it's actually pretty difficult to get those fatty
triglycerides to crystallize just the way you want them to,
and so it takes a lot of patients, takes a
lot of skill, you know, to perfectly control the chocolate's
temperature during this whole tempering process, you know, just so
you don't throw your proportions out of whack. And in
the process of doing this. You know, what's funny is that, uh,
(24:54):
I mean, I love that there's an art taking chocolate
and how it melts. But I met this editor a
long time, Agoys, a really good book editor, and I
was asking him how he got into the business, and
he said he really wanted to be a chocolate maker,
but so he went to like this famous chocolate maker
in town in Vermont or something, and he shook hands
with a lady and she said, your hands are too warm.
You'll never be good at this. Walk across the street
(25:17):
to a bookstore, And that's how I got into books. Like,
you're not tall enough to be a quarterback, but I mean,
I get why it's worth the effort. Like, you know,
making this creamy piece of chocolate that melts away and
coats your tongue. That's a fantastic feeling, it really is.
In fact, I was reading about this study from a
group called mind Lab, and they tried to determine just
how important that melting sensation is in our enjoyment of chocolate.
(25:39):
So the researchers gathered a bunch of volunteer couples in
their twenties. They monitored their heart rates and brain activity
while they first melted chocolate in their mouths, and then
again while they were kissing each other. That's pretty great.
So all these couples are just like standing around lab
eating chocolate and then making out while wearing heart marterrs
and things drafted to their heads, I guess. And they
were probably paid to do this as well, I guess,
(26:01):
sounds like not a bad gig. But the crazy thing
they discovered was that the melting chocolate caused a more
intense reaction than the kissing did. And I mean, the
kissing did cause the volunteers heart to race, and I
guess that's good for their relationships, but you know, the
chocolate made the effect last four times longer and actually
more than double volunteers resting heart rates from about sixty
(26:22):
beats per minute to a hundred and forty. And the
same kind of thing happened in the brain as well.
So once this chocolate started to melt, the pleasure centers
in the brain lit up more strongly and for a
longer period than they did during the kissing. That's pretty nuts,
And it kind of makes me think of how it
chocolate has his reputation as an aphrodisiac, and how it's
so strongly associated with love and Valentine's Day. It almost
(26:44):
seems like that mouthfield could be a big reason why. Oh,
it definitely is. And and I was reading up on
this a little, and it turns out that we actually
have special touch receptors on our tongues and and they
respond to this change and texture of a melting piece
of chocolate. So once our tongues detect this mal alting,
we have these receptors that send the message to the
brain and that stimulates these feelings of pleasure. And the
(27:06):
smell of chocolate has a similar effect, right, Yeah, that's right.
And cow beans are roasted and fermented during chocolate production,
and these processes called chemical changes in the beans, which
ensure the chocolate has its own distinct aroma. There's actually
over six hundred flavor compounds produced at all, and include
everything from overcooked cabbage to human sweat to raw beefat
(27:28):
this all making hungry mouth watering, right, And you know,
of course none of these compounds smell anything close to
chocolate on their own, thankfully, but they're unmistakable when joined together.
It's such a strange thing, But in fact, the studies
have shown that even just smelling chocolate stimulates the emotional
what you would call feel good centers of the brain. Well,
I know we talked earlier about some of the mood
(27:49):
altering chemicals that chocolate contains, but you're actually saying that
your brain lights up from just the smell a loan. Yeah,
So the mood enhancing substances we mentioned are only found
in trade surmounts in chocolate, so you're not really going
to feel much of an effect from them unless you
eat way more chocolate than you probably should. But what's
going on a smell is it's a little bit more psychological,
(28:10):
and the chocolate has this uniquely pleasurable smell and taste
and texture to humans. So you know, if we detect
any of those sensations, we actually just get excited because
we know we're about to eat some chocolate. Yeah, and
it kind of makes you wonder if the whole idea
of chocolate is an afrodisiac is also just in our heads. Like,
we live in a world where chocolate hearts are already
symbols of affection and where chocolate has been viewed as
(28:33):
decadent or indulgent for almost hundreds of years now. So
whether or not chocolate spurs these romantic feelings, we've all
kind of be in condition to make these connections ourselves. Yeah,
I think that's right. And you know, for example, you
mentioned Mono Zuma earlier, and that story I always remember
about him is that he's supposedly downed a bunch of
drinking chocolate just before visiting his harem at night. And
(28:54):
you know, along with this story spread this idea that
a daily dose of chocolate could enhance virility. But you've
got to remember, this is the guy who reportedly drank
what did you say, fifty cups of chocolate every single day,
So drink it before bed was probably just coincidence, right,
or have it right? So let me just recap things
a little bit. Chocolate contains psychoactive chemicals, but not enough
(29:16):
to have more than a slight effect on our senses.
It's reputation as aphrodisiac is way overblown and mostly due
to sort of this widespread placebo effect. And while it
does have a unique smell, taste, and texture, we don't
really know why the majority of humans responded strongly to
these qualities as we do. So I guess I'm wondering,
(29:36):
like where does that leave us? Like? Is there an
answer for why we love chocolate so much? Because somehow
it tastes good? Isn't good enough? Well? I was reading
this interesting BBC News article by a doctor's name is
Michael Moseley, and so he's a TV journalist and he's
worked on a bunch of different science programs and there's
one called The Secrets of Your Food, and it sounds
like a pretty interesting show. But his idea for the
(29:58):
unique appeal of chocolate goes back to that all important
addition of sugar and fat that we talked about earlier,
namely that chocolate contains a combination of sugar and fat
that you rarely find in nature. Now, separately, we we
obviously know that there are plenty of fruits that contain
natural sugars, and then you've got nuts and fish, which
are chock full of fat. But both of these together
(30:19):
is a pretty rare thing. And in fact, one of
the few natural sources where you'll find high levels of
both sugar and fat is in milk. But you know,
even then, chocolate generally has a fat to sugar ratio
of about one the two, which is higher than almost
any kinds of milk except for one, and that's human
breast milk. So Dr Mosley talks about this. He explains
(30:39):
that human breast milk is particularly rich and natural sugars,
mainly lactose. Roughly four percent of human breast milk is fat,
while about eight percent is made up of sugars. Formula
milk which is fed to babies contains a similar ratio
of fats to sugars. This ratio one gram of fat
to two grams of sugars. That's the same ratio of
fats to sugars that you find in milk, chocolate, and
(31:02):
of course in biscuits and doughnuts and ice cream. In fact,
this particular ratio is reflected in many of the foods
that we find hard to resist. So the reason we
love chocolate is because it reminds of breast milk. I mean,
that's more appropriate for Mother's Day. Well that's the idea though,
I mean that the humans have a preference for the
particular fat to carbohydrate balance that we've been conditioned alike
(31:24):
from the start of our lives. And mostly describes this
chocolate obsession as an effort to quote recapture the taste
and sense of closeness we got from the first food
we ever sampled. Well, I definitely wasn't expecting that, but
it does remind me of this chocolate quote I read
from this Portuguese poet named Fernando pasola Um. So, so
you know how. Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that
(31:46):
deals with questions and about really plowing existence and the
first causes and all that. So, uh, Posa said, there's
no metaphysics on Earth like chocolate, and he's right. So
I mean, there's so much history and lore and science
wrapped up in chocolate that you can almost never really
get your head around it or get to the beginning
of it, and in the end, it's probably just best
(32:08):
to eat it. Yeah. Well, I know Tristan agrees with that,
because he's eating like forty five more pieces of this
stuff since the beginning of the episode. But all right,
before we let him finish the rest of that box off,
why don't we share a few more stories about chocolate
and today's fact off. All right, well, I'll kick us
(32:29):
off here. So we know there's obviously brown chocolate and
white chocolate, which we weren't allowed to talk about today,
even though I love because it's not technically chocolate. But
the good news is there will now soon be pink chocolate.
And this is because, as we may have talked about earlier,
you know, cocoa beans are actually kind of pinkish or
reddish in their in their natural state, and so it's
(32:49):
taken about a decade or so for food scientists in
Switzerland to figure this out. But soon we will actually
have pink chocolate, which will maintain that fruity or flavor,
will be a little less sweet. But I'm pretty eager
to try something. Yeah, I'm excited about that. So I've
got a different type of good news. If you actually
want to increase your odds of winning a Nobel prize,
you should eat more chocolate. So Tristan's in luck. He's
(33:13):
gonna have so many Nobels by the end of this year.
A few years ago, a survey was taken of twenty
three Nobel laureates during the time of their prize winning work,
and it found that of those reported eating chocolate at
least twice a week, and that was higher than the
tent of people who were at a similar age and
education level but who had not want a Nobel. Wow.
So this really scientifically solid finding also came after a
(33:36):
correlation that was found between national chocolate consumption and the
rate of Nobel prizes. I mean, that seems like pretty
solid science to me. What do you think, Yeah, I mean,
let's just forget that whole correlation causation thing and just
go with it. That's that's some good science there. That
is pretty funny though that for of those Nobel winners
were eating chocolate. What did you say, twice twice a week? Okay,
that's still that's still pretty big. All right. Well, how
(33:59):
weird is it that Quaker Oates financed the production of
Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Did you know about that?
And that's actually why the name was changed from Charlie
and the Chocolate Factory to Willie Wonka and the Chocolate
Factory for the movie. And that's because they wanted to
push their new Wonka candies and specifically the Wonka Bar. Now, weirdly,
they couldn't seem to get the formula for the bar
(34:19):
just right, so they actually didn't even release a Wonka
Bar for a few years after the film. But the
film did help launch several other of their popular candies,
and thankfully it's still a pretty great movie. Yeah. So,
I I think we've talked about this German chemist who
made those fart pills that make your tooth smell like chocolate, right,
But I don't know why chocolate is always the go
(34:39):
to answer for this type of thing. But uh, this
is like that story on steroids. So in in two
thousand and sixteen, Japan's sewage companies used a chocolate oil
to mass the scent of their sewage trucks, which I
guess you know, you have your kids running to meet
the chocolate truck and something they did feel like I
would ruin the taste for chocolate. So they're smelling chocolate
(35:01):
in the air and that's the sewage. Yeah, well, it
covers up the sewage. Yeah, wow, that's pretty interesting. All right. Well,
my kids were asking not too long ago why dogs
can't eat chocolate, and and that's because chocolate contains this
chemical that we actually talked about earlier, THEO broman which
is a little bit like caffeine, and it's actually toxic
to both dogs and cats. And so this is the
(35:23):
main reason. And that's because their bodies aren't able to
metabolize the chemical at the same rate that we can.
So if they have a little too much chocolate, it
just causes them to get sick or very sick. But
if they have high doses of THEO bro mine, it
can actually have tragic results, as we know. Man, well,
I feel like we need to bring this back to
a slightly happier note. So did you know that Ruth Wakefield,
(35:45):
the inventor of the chocolate chip cookies soldier cookie idea
to Nesleie Tollhouse, and you know how she was compensated
with a lifetime supply of chocolate. No way. Again, it's
still so weird to me to think of somebody like
as the inventor of the chocolate chip cookie. It just
els like that stuff that should have just always been
prayed that in for so many turkeys. Yeah, well, I
(36:06):
have to say that is a great fact and worthy
of today's Fact Off Trophy. So congratulations Manga, Thank you
so much. Thank you guys for listening. If we've forgotten
any great chocolate facts, we would love to hear from you. Guys.
You can always email us part Time Genius at how
stuff Works dot com or call us on our seven
fact hotline. That's one eight four four pt Genius. We've
gotten so many great comments on Facebook and Twitter, so
(36:27):
you can always hit us up there. But thanks so
much for listening. Thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius
is a production of How Stuff Works and wouldn't be
(36:47):
possible without several brilliant people who do the important things.
We couldn't even begin to understand. Tristan McNeil does the
ending thing. Noel Brown made the theme song and does
the MIXI MIXI sound thing. Erry Roland does the exact
producers thing. Losier is our lead researcher, with support from
the Research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and Lucas Adams.
Gets the show to your ears. Good jobs. If you
(37:08):
like what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe, And if
you really really like what you've heard, maybe you could
leave a good review for us. M Jason, who
Part-Time Genius News
Hosts And Creators
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