February 13, 2026 • 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 does it really taste like? Plus, why does chocolate melt so perfectly in our mouths?
This episode originally aired on February 21, 2018.
Get your official Part-Time Genius membership card! Tell us your name, address, and one fun fact and we’ll send you one for free. Email higeniuses@gmail.com, DM us on our socials, or leave a message at (302) 405-5925.
Follow us on Instagram @parttimegenius and Bluesky @parttimegenius.bsky.social!
Photo by Tetiana Bykovets via Unsplash. Thanks, Tetiana!
Learn more about your ad choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Guess what will?
Speaker 2 (00:00):
What's that mango?
Speaker 1 (00:01):
So? You know I love spicy food, right, and I
love chocolate, but I don't really love this trend of
spicy and chocolate.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
I am one hundred percent 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.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
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 spicy chocolate.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Oh yeah, there's a.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Company that spared up in twenty sixteen called pepper bomb
your mom.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Like an insult?
Speaker 1 (00:33):
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 nine to ninety nine and then
send it to a loved one, or I guess the opposite.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
I was gonna say, that is not something you want
to send to a loved one.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
I know, Carolina reapers are so spicy.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Actually, we've talked about these before. Aren't they even spicier
than like ghost peppers? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (00:53):
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 uh, pepperbomb,
your mom sadly doesn't send out pepper bombs anymore. Sadly,
I do want to get into the more tempting part
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
(01:15):
taste more like tropical custard the way the beans do.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Let's dig in.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm
Will Pearson, and as always I'm joined by my good
friend mang show Ticketer. And on the other side of
the soundproof glass munching his way through a Whitman 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?
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Mango?
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Yeah, yeah, definitely, it's gotta be.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Like thirty forty ounces chocolate sitting there.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
I know.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
I actually tried to grab a piece earlier and Tristan
slapped my hand away. Apparently he's busy branking all the
different chocolates for his blog.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Oh really his blog. Well that's at least that's something
to look forward too, so I'll leave it be there.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
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 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 in line, and the first guy had the shopping
(02:34):
cart filled with beer and condom, that's all. Yeah. And
then I was there with like tpee and water in
my hands, and and then this other guy had this
shopping cart that was just filled with chocolate, just like
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.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
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,
chocolate based candies far out sell fruit based candies in
almost every country on the planet. Now, Denmark's love of
harribogummies makes it one of the few exceptions to the
(03:17):
rule in 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 one hundred billion dollars in revenue for
one year.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
That's crazy. So how much of that as thanks to
like American chocoholics.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Actually not as much as you might think. So even
though the average American eats about ten pounds of chocolate
every year, we actually only ranked twentieth in terms of
national chocolate consumption. And that's according to data released by
euro Monitor. You know euro Monitor, Yeah, I.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Get their newsletter.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
So we consume our own body weight and chocolate every
ten years or so, and that's still only good enough
for twentieth place. Yep, that's really confusing. How much chocolate
are these other countries eating.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
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 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
(04:21):
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 as those in China. That's amazing.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
So this is completely off topic, but I can't stop
thinking about it. Did you realize that cacao beans are
related to okra and actually to 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. But you were talking about chocolate consumption,
(04:58):
where do the actual cacau producing countries fall on that list?
Speaker 2 (05:01):
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 cacaw producing countries, Africa and
South American countries account for the vast majority of the
world's cacao production, 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
(05:23):
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 there are even lower in Africa, so the entire
continent consumes fewer than four percent of all the chocolate
sold worldwide.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Wow. And so I'm guessing the low consumption rate in
these countries isn't due to like cultural preferences like it
is in China, right, I mean, ancient civilizations in South
America are pretty much invented chocolate, So it's not like
the people there don't have.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
A taste for it. Yeah, that's that's really not what
it is. I mean, it comes down to the low
average income of several of these countries, And what do
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.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
So, I actually saw this report from Oxfam about the
economics of the chocolate trade and how skewed it is,
especially for Cocow farmers.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
And apparently if you divide up the cost.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Of producing a chocolate bar from start to finish, the
farmer who cultivated the rock Cocow only gets about three percent. Meanwhile,
about forty three percent of the price we pay for
a chocolate bar is profit for the retailer.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Wow. All right, So so three percent of the people
who actually grow it and harvest it and you know,
kind of provide that main ingredient for chocolate, and then
forty three percent to those who sell the final product.
Is that what you're saying? Wow, that does seem pretty skewed.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
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 Cocow farmers on the Ivory Coast,
and the Ivory Coast is the world's largest producer of
coco beans. It turns out roughly, I want to say,
like one point five million tons of it every year.
But processed chocolate isn't really available, so when you do
(07:06):
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. Wow, which means that many farmers
who cultivate cocao have actually never tasted the final product.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
I mean it kind of makes you want to go
there and give them a taste of this stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
And so the video right, like this reporter gives a
chocolate bar to a local farmer named Alphons, and he
takes his first bite and you see his face just
light up. He's like, I didn't know cacao 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, Alphons tells the other farmers,
(07:42):
this is why white people are so healthy.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Wow. Well, 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.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Yeah, I mean, chocolate's one of those things like red wine,
that you always hear about has all these surprising health benefits,
but then you never get good sense of how 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 caca than milk chocolate, and
you know, that makes a lot of sense, but at
(08:23):
the end of the day, it's still just a comparison
between two kinds of chocolate, so you're still kind of
left wondering.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Is chocolate itself healthy. Well, I'm glad you mentioned that
distinction between dark and milk chocolate, because that difference in
sugar and cacaws is really where these claims about chocolate's
health benefits kind of live or die. And that's because
cacao products contain a high amount of plant derived flavonols.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
So I think you should explain what flavanols are.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
It's just a word I made up, just sound good
of it. Now for real that they're actually the biological
compounds that occur in some foods. It's not not just chocolate,
but unprocessed cacao is an example of that. And since
flavonol's possess 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
(09:10):
pressure or various other measures like this.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
So all those reports about how eating chocolate promotes heart health,
that's basically because of the flavonols.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Yeah, that's where that comes from. But again, the blanket
statement that chocolate is good for your health is a
little misleading, you know. But because of his higher flavon
all count cacow 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 flavonols or even the best one really. In fact,
you can usually find more flavonols in tea or grape
(09:40):
juice or wine, and you know, several other fruits than
you would and say cacal say cocw.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Have you seen the Brooklyn nine nine where that guy
Terry starts eating CaCO nibs now and because there's so
much healthier for you than chocolate, And then he keeps
heatium keeps he um, and suddenly he's like floated by
the middle from the cacw. Okay, So there may be
some indirect health benefits for eating chocolate, but you'd basically
get the same or better results from other foods.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Right, Yeah, And in most cases the results probably would
be better with tea or berries than it would with chocolate.
And that's largely because the heating process involved in standard
chocolate manufacturing it actually burns away much of the flavonol
concentration that you would find in those fresh cacao seeds.
So you know, if you want to eat the healthiest
chocolate that you can find, you should go for the
(10:30):
dark chocolate with at least seventy or eighty percent cacal,
and the flavanol concentration will be much higher than in
any milk chocolate bar, which contains about fifteen percent cacao
or less, but twenty to twenty five percent fat and
forty to fifty percent sugar.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Well, I usually prefer the bitter taste of dark chocolate
to like the overly sweet taste of milk chocolate. But
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 tastes less sugary.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Well, I have to say, as a fan of milk chocolate,
all of this kind of disappointing to me. But I
do have good news for you, though, Mango, because 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.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
They shock the fat away with one of those crazy
exercise belts.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
I kind of wish that that was what they were doing,
but now it's not not exactly that. So you do
remember Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory and they're walking
alongside the chocolate river and they're all those industrial pipes
sucking up the chocolate.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Right, Definitely, Augustus Gloop falls in.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
It's pretty funny. 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'll clog up
the pipes a la Augustus gloop. And since cutting the
(11:52):
fat content results in a denser and less smooth chocolate,
producing low fat chocolate typically leads to a lot of blockages.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
So explain how electricity helps with that.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Well, there's this phenomenon called electroreology, and it's basically when
an electric field is used to turn a semi solid
like jello into a liquid state or vice versa. So
in the case of chocolate, the field from the electrified
pipes causes its chunky CaCO particles and milk solids to
really to line up in these chains and this makes
the chocolate flow through the pipes much more easily. So
(12:26):
not only will the new process lead to fewer clogs,
it'll actually allow chocolate tears to use ten to twenty
percent less butter per batch. And the best part is that,
according to the authors of the study, the resulting chocolate
delivers a stronger cacal flavor and significantly less.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Fat, which sounds like a dream come true.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Not to me, to be honest with you, I kind
of want the more butter.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
But you know, there are a few health benefits to
chocolate that go beyond the physicals. So, for one thing,
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 phenol ethylemium, which is a
stimulant that raises the endorphin level in the brain. And
there's also something called nandimide, which is similar to one
(13:07):
of the active chemicals in marijuana.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
All right, So between its caffeine and those other feel
good chemicals 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 in
some chocolate fiends.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
And don't forget, eating chocolate is also a surefire way
to restore a little happiness after about with the dementia,
which is you know, at least the case in Harry Potter, I.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Thought you might figure out a way to put in
a Harry Potter reference. That's a really helpful tip, though
chocolate frogs. 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.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Absolutely, But before we dive in, let's take a quick break.
Speaker 2 (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, Mengo,
So I know you did some digging into the early
years of chocolate. So do you want to walk us
through what you found in the process.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Sure, So the best place to start is with the
cacao tree and its beans. And for anyone who's wondering,
cacao and cocoa are the same thing. You can use
the terms interchangeably because they both refer to the same
exact bean. 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
(14:38):
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 cacao tree to thrive.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Or is it just another quick note on the terminology here.
So the cacao beans that these trees produce, they're really
seeds though, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
They're not actually beans in the same way that like
coconut milk is in milk, So we're just gonna go
with it. Yeah, But the trees produce these big yellowish
seed pods that kind of look like nerf footballs, and
each pod contains about forty beans, which are what's actually
used to make chocolate. So once you crack open the
pods they husk, the beans are released, along with this sweet,
(15:15):
sticky pulp that supposedly tastes something between like a cross
of lemonade and apple custard.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Actually sounds pretty good.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Yeah, But the beans and 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.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
A chocolate beverage. All right, So if that's what was
done first, who were the very first people to drink chocolate?
Speaker 1 (15:36):
So most of the evidence points to the ancient Olemecs.
They were actually the earliest known civilization to appear in Mexico,
and archaeologists have found pieces of olemeck pots and vessels
from around fifteen hundred BCE that contain traces of theobromine.
This is a stimulant found in chocolate, and in fact,
the Latin name for the cacao tree is theobromine cacao,
which translates to chocolate food of the gods, which actually
(15:59):
ends up being a pretty fitting names since it's believed
that the Omes use the ground beans to make a
special drink for religious ceremonies.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
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 this thing
that I don't have a name for. But why is
there uncertaint about who invented drinking chocolate? I mean, from
what you've said, it sounds like the Olemes kind of
have this wrapped up.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Yeah, But pottery with traces of cacao have been found
in southern Ecuador as well, so those are believed to
date back at least fifty five hundred years. So the
Shuar Indians who lived in the region also have a
potential claim to this chocolate drinking. The truth is there's
tinted pottery in a lot of places, and that leaves
a lot of room for interpretation, And since the Omes
don't actually have any written history to go on, some
(16:44):
of the theories surrounding them could be off. For instance,
some researchers think that the Olemes used only the tropical
flavorcaw pulp to make the drink rather than the bitter beans.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Well, I can't say I blame I mean, when you
say it tasted like what did you say, apple custard,
lemonade or something like that, that sounds a lot better
than like bitter bean water something.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
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 because Mayans had
yet to develop a good roasting technique to mellow the flavors,
it was probably pretty bitter.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
So what was in it exactly was just ground beans
and water or what.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Yeah, Or sometimes seasonings would be outed, like vanilla or
honey or chili pepper.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
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?
Speaker 1 (17:38):
No, I mean they were full on crazy for chocolate.
They leave the drink as offerings to their gods, and
there are also paintings recovered from the time that show
cacao and mythological scenes. It was also kind of a
way to settle important legal matters or even seal the
deal on a marriage wow for example, like early records
of Mayan marriages show that in some places a woman
had to prepare a cacao drink to prove that you
(18:00):
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.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
I don't even know what that means, but I can't
imagine it.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
But caca wasn't actually restricted to just the loftier sides
of life. There were ceremonies and celebrations that used it,
and it was also an early form of currency.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Oh wow.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Yeah, so in the fifth century CE, the Aztecs used
it to buy food and other goods. For example, you
can actually get a whole turkey for about one hundred
cacao beans.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
It feels like a pretty good deal. I don't know
what the exchange rate is and coco beans, but I'd
buy it.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Yeah. Well, what's amazing is that it bread some early
counterfeiting schemes as well.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Counterfeiting of beans, is that what you're talking about. How
do you counterfeit a bean? You just like take a
rock and paint it or something.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Yeah, well, if you want a turkey bad enough anything. Yeah. So,
researchers have actually found these counterfeit beans at multiple dig
sites in both Mexico and Guatemala, and at first glances,
they just looked like these incredibly well preserved cacao beans.
But once they actually touched them, the researchers realized that
they were just made of clay, which.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Is pretty ridiculous. I mean, but if kakau was that valuable,
I would have to think that it was a delicacy
that was reserved for the super wealthy. I mean, if
people were going through the trouble of making these phony
clay beans. What was it really hard to come by
them or what?
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Yeah, I mean it seems like the Mayans had taken
a really generous approach to cacao.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
In their day.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
They thought of it as food from the gods, as
we mentioned, so they thought it was meant for everyone
to eat. So Mayan 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 Aztecs, on the other hand, considered cacau to
be this upper class luxury and almost a status symbol.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
And I mean that's partially because they were using it
as money.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
Too, right, But as a result, the lower classes would
really only get a taste of stuff at weddings or
sometimes at community celebrations. But what is clear is that
Aztec rulers really loved their cacau, and probably the most
famous was Montezuma. He supposedly drank I think it's like
gallons of hot chocolate every day.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
See gallons. I can't imagine drinking gallons of anything.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
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.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
All right, So just as a reminder, we remember that
Cortes was the conquista or who conquered the Aztec. So
was he the first to bring chocolate back to Europe?
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Yeah, so this is fuzzy too, just like with the
Olmex and the shoe are It kind of depends on
who you ask. So some historians claim Christopher Columbus was
responsible for it. I'll say it was Cortes who returned
to Spain bearing cacao and also the chocolate making apparatus
from Montezuma's court. And whether or not Cortez was the first,
he was definitely obsessed with this concoction. So in a
(20:53):
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.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
I mean he might have oversold it. Just the tad
chumming chocolate is really good but all right, so it
might have been Columbus, or it might have been Cortes,
but either way, it sounds like Spain was definitely the
first in Europe to experience chocolate though right, yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
Mean that seems pretty clear. And there's even a third
version of the story that attributes chocolate's European introduction to
the Spanish, albeit to 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 cacao beans as a gift. Apparently he
did this while introducing minds to the core to Philip
the Second. But no matter how chocolate made its way
(21:40):
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 chocolate houses popped up in London and Amsterdam
and even a few other cities, and it wasn't long
(22:02):
after that that chocolate actually made its way back across
the Pond.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
To American colonies. Wait, did you say chocolate houses or
these like coffee houses or what.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Yeah, exactly, they were kind of these posh establishments. But
drinking chocolate actually predates both coffee and tea as a
stimulant beverage in Europe. So it's actually more accurate to
say that coffee houses are like chocolate houses rather than
the other way around.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
I mean, it's still crazy to you that drinking chocolate
was the norm for so long. Yeah, fairly.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
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 sons hit upon the idea of adding
sugar and cocoa butter to make a paste that could
be molded into the world's first chocolate bar.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
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,
But first let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Okay, Well, so I feel like I might know the
answer to this one already. But why do you think
adding sugar and fat to chocolate is such a great idea?
Speaker 2 (23:14):
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 I think it helps
on the taste front, for sure. But sure the biggest
boon that sugar in fat gave to chocolate was actually
this added sensory quality, you know, being something that melts
in your mouth. I think it's actually pretty important.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
And that's something that didn't happen until sugar and fat
were added.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
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.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
So why is that?
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Well, because cocoa butter contains fatty triglycerized 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 it.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
So how do you get to the ideal melting point.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Well, the trick is to nail that 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 into my mouth.
(24:32):
But the thing is, even for a talented chocolate tear,
it's actually pretty difficult to get those fatty triglycerites to
crystallize just the way you want them to, and so
it takes a lot of patience, takes a lot of skill,
you know, to perfectly control the chocolates temperature during this
whole tempering process, you know, just so you don't throw
your proportions out of whack in the process of doing this.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
You know, what's funny is that, I mean, I love
that there's an art taking chocolate and how it melts.
But I met this editor a long time ago, 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 and Vermont or something,
and he shook hands with a lady and she said,
(25:13):
your hands are too warm. You'll never be good at this.
Oh wow, crazy, And you walk across the street to
a bookstore. And that's how I got.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Into Yeah, like, you're not tall enough to be a quarterback, but.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
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.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
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. 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.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
That's pretty great. So all these couples are just like
standing around the lab eating chocolate and then making out
while wearing heart markers and things strapped to their heads.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
I guess, and they were proud, probably paid to do
this as well. I guess. 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 volunteer's heart
to race, and I guess that's good for their relationships,
but you know, the chocolate made the effect last four
times longer. It actually more than double volunteers resting heart
(26:21):
rates from about sixty beats per minute to one 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.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
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 Valentine's Day.
It almost seems like that mouthfeel could be a big
reason why.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Oh, it definitely is. And I was reading up on
this a little and it turns out that we actually
have special touch receptors on our tongues and they respond
to this change in texture of a melting piece of chocolate.
So once our tongues detect this melt, we have these
receptors that send the message to the brain and that
stimulates these feelings of pleasure. And the smell of chocolate
(27:07):
has a similar effect, right, Yeah, that's right. And cacal
beans are roasted and fermented during chocolate production, and these
processes cause 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 they include everything
from overcooked cabbage to human sweat to rob be fat,
(27:28):
this all making one.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
Hundred mouths water.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
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, these studies have shown that even just smelling
chocolate stimulates the emotional what you would call feel good
centers of the brain.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
Well, I know we talked earlier about some of the
mood altering chemicals that chocolate contains, but you're actually saying
that your brain lights up from just the smell alone.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Yeah, So the mood enhancing substances we mentioned are only
found in trace somemounts in chocolate, so you're not really
gonna 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,
and chocolate has this uniquely pleasurable smell and taste and
texture to humans. So you know, if we detect any
(28:16):
of those sensations, we actually just get excited because we
know we're about to eat some chocolate.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
Yeah, And it kind of makes you wonder if the
whole idea of chocolate as 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 decadend or indulgent for almost hundreds
of years now, So whether or not chocolate spurs these
romantic feelings, we've all kind of been conditioned to make
(28:42):
these connections ourselves.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Yeah, I think that's right. And you know, for example,
you mentioned Mona Zoomer earlier, and that story I always
remember about him is that he supposedly downed a bunch
of drinking chocolate just before visiting his hairm at night.
And 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
(29:04):
single day, So drink it before bed was probably just coincidence, right?
Or have it right?
Speaker 1 (29:11):
So let me just recap things a little bit. Chocolate
contains psychoactive chemicals, but not enough to have more than
a slight effect on our senses. Its reputation as afrodijiak
is way overflown 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
(29:32):
humans respond as strongly to these qualities as we do.
So I guess I'm wondering, like where does that leave us?
Speaker 3 (29:38):
Like?
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Is there an answer for why we love chocolate so much?
Because somehow it tastes good isn't good enough?
Speaker 2 (29:44):
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 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
(30:06):
of sugar and fat that you rarely find in nature. Now, separately,
we obviously know that there are plenty of fruits that
contain natural sugars, and then you've got nuts and fish,
which are chok full of fat. But both of these
together 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 even then,
(30:27):
chocolate generally has a fat to sugar ratio of about
one to two, which is higher than almost any kinds
of milk except for one, and that's human breast milk.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Huh.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
So, doctor Moseley talks about this. He explains that human
breast milk is particularly rich in 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
(30:59):
to sugars that you find in milk, chocolate, and 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.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
So the reason we love chocolate is because they're reminds
us of breast milk. I mean, that's more appropriate for
Mother's Day, right.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
Well, that's the idea though, I mean that that humans
have a preference for the particular fat to carbohydrate balance
that we've been conditioned to like from the start of
our lives. And Mosley 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.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Well I definitely wasn't expecting that, but it does remind
me of this chocolate quote I read from this Portuguese
poet named Fernando Pesoa. So you know how metaphysics is
the branch of philosophy that deals with questions and about
really plowing existence and the first.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Causes and all that.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
Right, So Pasoa 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 to eat it.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
Yeah. Well, I know Tristan agrees with that, because he's
eaten 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 in
today's backt off? All right, Well, I'll kick us off here,
(32:29):
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 natural state, and so it's taken about
(32:50):
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, be a little sweet.
But I'm pretty eager to try some.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
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.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
So Tristan's in luck.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
He's gonna have so many Nobells 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 forty three percent
of those reported eating chocolate at least twice a week,
and that was higher than the twenty five percent of
people who were at a similar age and education level
but who had not won a Nobel. Wow. So this
(33:34):
really scientifically solid finding also came after a correlation that
was found between national chocolate consumption and the rate of
Nobel prizes. I mean, that seems like pretty solid science
to me.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
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 forty three percent of those Nobel winners were eating chocolate.
What did you say, twice a week? Okay, that's still
that's still pretty big. All right. Well, how weird is
it that Quaker Oats finance the production of Willy Wonka
and the Chocolate Factory. Did you know about that? And
(34:05):
that's actually why the name was changed from Charlie and
the Chocolate Factory to Willy 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
just right, so they actually didn't even release a Wanka
Bar for a few years after the film. But the
film did help launch several other of their popular candies,
(34:28):
and thankfully it's still a pretty great movie.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
Yeah, so 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 to answer for this type of thing.
But this is like that story on steroids. So in
twenty sixteen, Japan sewage companies used a chocolate oil to
mass the scent of their sewage trucks, which I guess
(34:52):
you know, you'd have your kids running to meet the
chocolate truck and suddenly they.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
That seems like I would ruin the taste for chocolate.
So they're smelling chocolate in the air and that's the sewage.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Yeah it well, it covers up the sewage.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
Yeah, yeah, crazy. Wow, that's pretty interesting. All right. Well,
my kids were asking not too long ago why dogs
can't eat chocolate, and that's because chocolate contains this chemical
that we actually talked about earlier, theobromine, which is a
little bit like caffeine, and it's actually toxic to both
dogs and cats. And so this is the main reason,
and that's because their bodies aren't able to metabolize the
(35:27):
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 theobromine, it can actually have tragic
results as we know.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Man, well, I feel like we need to bring this
back to a slightly happier note. So did you know
that Ruth Wakefield, the inventor of the chocolate chip cookies,
sold her cookie idea to Neslie Tolehouse and you know
how she was compensated with a lifetime supply of chocolate.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
No way, Again, it's still so weird to me to
think of somebody like as the inventor of the chocolate
chip cookiels like that stuff that should have just always
been there.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
Pray that in for so many turkeys.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
Yeah, well, I have to say that is a great
fact and worthy of today's Fact Off Trophy. So congratulations, mana.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
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 HowStuffWorks
dot com or call us on our twenty four to
seven fact hotline. That's one eight four four pt genius.
We've gotten so many great comments on Facebook and Twitter,
so you can always hit us up there. But thanks
so much for listening. Thanks again for listening. Part Time
(36:45):
Genius is a production of how stuff works and wouldn't
be possible without several brilliant people who do the important
things we couldn't even begin to understand.
Speaker 4 (36:52):
Tristan McNeil does the editing thing.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
Noel Brown made the theme song and does the mixy
mixy sound thing.
Speaker 4 (36:57):
Harry Rowland does the exact producer thing.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Abe Lozier is our lead researcher, with support from the
Research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and Lucas Adams.
Speaker 4 (37:05):
If Jeff go gets the show to your ears, good.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Job, Eves.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
If you 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. Jason who
Guess what will?
Speaker 2 (00:00):
What's that mango?
Speaker 1 (00:01):
So? You know I love spicy food, right, and I
love chocolate, but I don't really love this trend of
spicy and chocolate.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
I am one hundred percent 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.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
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 spicy chocolate.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Oh yeah, there's a.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Company that spared up in twenty sixteen called pepper bomb
your mom.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Like an insult?
Speaker 1 (00:33):
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 nine to ninety nine and then
send it to a loved one, or I guess the opposite.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
I was gonna say, that is not something you want
to send to a loved one.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
I know, Carolina reapers are so spicy.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Actually, we've talked about these before. Aren't they even spicier
than like ghost peppers? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (00:53):
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 uh, pepperbomb,
your mom sadly doesn't send out pepper bombs anymore. Sadly,
I do want to get into the more tempting part
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
(01:15):
taste more like tropical custard the way the beans do.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Let's dig in.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm
Will Pearson, and as always I'm joined by my good
friend mang show Ticketer. And on the other side of
the soundproof glass munching his way through a Whitman 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?
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Mango?
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Yeah, yeah, definitely, it's gotta be.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Like thirty forty ounces chocolate sitting there.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
I know.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
I actually tried to grab a piece earlier and Tristan
slapped my hand away. Apparently he's busy branking all the
different chocolates for his blog.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Oh really his blog. Well that's at least that's something
to look forward too, so I'll leave it be there.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
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 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 in line, and the first guy had the shopping
(02:34):
cart filled with beer and condom, that's all. Yeah. And
then I was there with like tpee and water in
my hands, and and then this other guy had this
shopping cart that was just filled with chocolate, just like
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.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
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,
chocolate based candies far out sell fruit based candies in
almost every country on the planet. Now, Denmark's love of
harribogummies makes it one of the few exceptions to the
(03:17):
rule in 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 one hundred billion dollars in revenue for
one year.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
That's crazy. So how much of that as thanks to
like American chocoholics.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Actually not as much as you might think. So even
though the average American eats about ten pounds of chocolate
every year, we actually only ranked twentieth in terms of
national chocolate consumption. And that's according to data released by
euro Monitor. You know euro Monitor, Yeah, I.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Get their newsletter.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
So we consume our own body weight and chocolate every
ten years or so, and that's still only good enough
for twentieth place. Yep, that's really confusing. How much chocolate
are these other countries eating.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
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 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
(04:21):
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 as those in China. That's amazing.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
So this is completely off topic, but I can't stop
thinking about it. Did you realize that cacao beans are
related to okra and actually to 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. But you were talking about chocolate consumption,
(04:58):
where do the actual cacau producing countries fall on that list?
Speaker 2 (05:01):
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 cacaw producing countries, Africa and
South American countries account for the vast majority of the
world's cacao production, 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
(05:23):
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 there are even lower in Africa, so the entire
continent consumes fewer than four percent of all the chocolate
sold worldwide.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Wow. And so I'm guessing the low consumption rate in
these countries isn't due to like cultural preferences like it
is in China, right, I mean, ancient civilizations in South
America are pretty much invented chocolate, So it's not like
the people there don't have.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
A taste for it. Yeah, that's that's really not what
it is. I mean, it comes down to the low
average income of several of these countries, And what do
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.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
So, I actually saw this report from Oxfam about the
economics of the chocolate trade and how skewed it is,
especially for Cocow farmers.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
And apparently if you divide up the cost.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Of producing a chocolate bar from start to finish, the
farmer who cultivated the rock Cocow only gets about three percent. Meanwhile,
about forty three percent of the price we pay for
a chocolate bar is profit for the retailer.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Wow. All right, So so three percent of the people
who actually grow it and harvest it and you know,
kind of provide that main ingredient for chocolate, and then
forty three percent to those who sell the final product.
Is that what you're saying? Wow, that does seem pretty skewed.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
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 Cocow farmers on the Ivory Coast,
and the Ivory Coast is the world's largest producer of
coco beans. It turns out roughly, I want to say,
like one point five million tons of it every year.
But processed chocolate isn't really available, so when you do
(07:06):
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. Wow, which means that many farmers
who cultivate cocao have actually never tasted the final product.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
I mean it kind of makes you want to go
there and give them a taste of this stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
And so the video right, like this reporter gives a
chocolate bar to a local farmer named Alphons, and he
takes his first bite and you see his face just
light up. He's like, I didn't know cacao 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, Alphons tells the other farmers,
(07:42):
this is why white people are so healthy.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Wow. Well, 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.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Yeah, I mean, chocolate's one of those things like red wine,
that you always hear about has all these surprising health benefits,
but then you never get good sense of how 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 caca than milk chocolate, and
you know, that makes a lot of sense, but at
(08:23):
the end of the day, it's still just a comparison
between two kinds of chocolate, so you're still kind of
left wondering.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Is chocolate itself healthy. Well, I'm glad you mentioned that
distinction between dark and milk chocolate, because that difference in
sugar and cacaws is really where these claims about chocolate's
health benefits kind of live or die. And that's because
cacao products contain a high amount of plant derived flavonols.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
So I think you should explain what flavanols are.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
It's just a word I made up, just sound good
of it. Now for real that they're actually the biological
compounds that occur in some foods. It's not not just chocolate,
but unprocessed cacao is an example of that. And since
flavonol's possess 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
(09:10):
pressure or various other measures like this.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
So all those reports about how eating chocolate promotes heart health,
that's basically because of the flavonols.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Yeah, that's where that comes from. But again, the blanket
statement that chocolate is good for your health is a
little misleading, you know. But because of his higher flavon
all count cacow 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 flavonols or even the best one really. In fact,
you can usually find more flavonols in tea or grape
(09:40):
juice or wine, and you know, several other fruits than
you would and say cacal say cocw.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Have you seen the Brooklyn nine nine where that guy
Terry starts eating CaCO nibs now and because there's so
much healthier for you than chocolate, And then he keeps
heatium keeps he um, and suddenly he's like floated by
the middle from the cacw. Okay, So there may be
some indirect health benefits for eating chocolate, but you'd basically
get the same or better results from other foods.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Right, Yeah, And in most cases the results probably would
be better with tea or berries than it would with chocolate.
And that's largely because the heating process involved in standard
chocolate manufacturing it actually burns away much of the flavonol
concentration that you would find in those fresh cacao seeds.
So you know, if you want to eat the healthiest
chocolate that you can find, you should go for the
(10:30):
dark chocolate with at least seventy or eighty percent cacal,
and the flavanol concentration will be much higher than in
any milk chocolate bar, which contains about fifteen percent cacao
or less, but twenty to twenty five percent fat and
forty to fifty percent sugar.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Well, I usually prefer the bitter taste of dark chocolate
to like the overly sweet taste of milk chocolate. But
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 tastes less sugary.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Well, I have to say, as a fan of milk chocolate,
all of this kind of disappointing to me. But I
do have good news for you, though, Mango, because 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.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
They shock the fat away with one of those crazy
exercise belts.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
I kind of wish that that was what they were doing,
but now it's not not exactly that. So you do
remember Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory and they're walking
alongside the chocolate river and they're all those industrial pipes
sucking up the chocolate.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Right, Definitely, Augustus Gloop falls in.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
It's pretty funny. 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'll clog up
the pipes a la Augustus gloop. And since cutting the
(11:52):
fat content results in a denser and less smooth chocolate,
producing low fat chocolate typically leads to a lot of blockages.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
So explain how electricity helps with that.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Well, there's this phenomenon called electroreology, and it's basically when
an electric field is used to turn a semi solid
like jello into a liquid state or vice versa. So
in the case of chocolate, the field from the electrified
pipes causes its chunky CaCO particles and milk solids to
really to line up in these chains and this makes
the chocolate flow through the pipes much more easily. So
(12:26):
not only will the new process lead to fewer clogs,
it'll actually allow chocolate tears to use ten to twenty
percent less butter per batch. And the best part is that,
according to the authors of the study, the resulting chocolate
delivers a stronger cacal flavor and significantly less.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Fat, which sounds like a dream come true.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Not to me, to be honest with you, I kind
of want the more butter.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
But you know, there are a few health benefits to
chocolate that go beyond the physicals. So, for one thing,
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 phenol ethylemium, which is a
stimulant that raises the endorphin level in the brain. And
there's also something called nandimide, which is similar to one
(13:07):
of the active chemicals in marijuana.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
All right, So between its caffeine and those other feel
good chemicals 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 in
some chocolate fiends.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
And don't forget, eating chocolate is also a surefire way
to restore a little happiness after about with the dementia,
which is you know, at least the case in Harry Potter, I.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Thought you might figure out a way to put in
a Harry Potter reference. That's a really helpful tip, though
chocolate frogs. 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.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Absolutely, But before we dive in, let's take a quick break.
Speaker 2 (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, Mengo,
So I know you did some digging into the early
years of chocolate. So do you want to walk us
through what you found in the process.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Sure, So the best place to start is with the
cacao tree and its beans. And for anyone who's wondering,
cacao and cocoa are the same thing. You can use
the terms interchangeably because they both refer to the same
exact bean. 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
(14:38):
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 cacao tree to thrive.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Or is it just another quick note on the terminology here.
So the cacao beans that these trees produce, they're really
seeds though, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
They're not actually beans in the same way that like
coconut milk is in milk, So we're just gonna go
with it. Yeah, But the trees produce these big yellowish
seed pods that kind of look like nerf footballs, and
each pod contains about forty beans, which are what's actually
used to make chocolate. So once you crack open the
pods they husk, the beans are released, along with this sweet,
(15:15):
sticky pulp that supposedly tastes something between like a cross
of lemonade and apple custard.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Actually sounds pretty good.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Yeah, But the beans and 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.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
A chocolate beverage. All right, So if that's what was
done first, who were the very first people to drink chocolate?
Speaker 1 (15:36):
So most of the evidence points to the ancient Olemecs.
They were actually the earliest known civilization to appear in Mexico,
and archaeologists have found pieces of olemeck pots and vessels
from around fifteen hundred BCE that contain traces of theobromine.
This is a stimulant found in chocolate, and in fact,
the Latin name for the cacao tree is theobromine cacao,
which translates to chocolate food of the gods, which actually
(15:59):
ends up being a pretty fitting names since it's believed
that the Omes use the ground beans to make a
special drink for religious ceremonies.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
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 this thing
that I don't have a name for. But why is
there uncertaint about who invented drinking chocolate? I mean, from
what you've said, it sounds like the Olemes kind of
have this wrapped up.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Yeah, But pottery with traces of cacao have been found
in southern Ecuador as well, so those are believed to
date back at least fifty five hundred years. So the
Shuar Indians who lived in the region also have a
potential claim to this chocolate drinking. The truth is there's
tinted pottery in a lot of places, and that leaves
a lot of room for interpretation, And since the Omes
don't actually have any written history to go on, some
(16:44):
of the theories surrounding them could be off. For instance,
some researchers think that the Olemes used only the tropical
flavorcaw pulp to make the drink rather than the bitter beans.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Well, I can't say I blame I mean, when you
say it tasted like what did you say, apple custard,
lemonade or something like that, that sounds a lot better
than like bitter bean water something.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
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 because Mayans had
yet to develop a good roasting technique to mellow the flavors,
it was probably pretty bitter.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
So what was in it exactly was just ground beans
and water or what.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Yeah, Or sometimes seasonings would be outed, like vanilla or
honey or chili pepper.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
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?
Speaker 1 (17:38):
No, I mean they were full on crazy for chocolate.
They leave the drink as offerings to their gods, and
there are also paintings recovered from the time that show
cacao and mythological scenes. It was also kind of a
way to settle important legal matters or even seal the
deal on a marriage wow for example, like early records
of Mayan marriages show that in some places a woman
had to prepare a cacao drink to prove that you
(18:00):
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.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
I don't even know what that means, but I can't
imagine it.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
But caca wasn't actually restricted to just the loftier sides
of life. There were ceremonies and celebrations that used it,
and it was also an early form of currency.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Oh wow.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Yeah, so in the fifth century CE, the Aztecs used
it to buy food and other goods. For example, you
can actually get a whole turkey for about one hundred
cacao beans.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
It feels like a pretty good deal. I don't know
what the exchange rate is and coco beans, but I'd
buy it.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Yeah. Well, what's amazing is that it bread some early
counterfeiting schemes as well.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Counterfeiting of beans, is that what you're talking about. How
do you counterfeit a bean? You just like take a
rock and paint it or something.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Yeah, well, if you want a turkey bad enough anything. Yeah. So,
researchers have actually found these counterfeit beans at multiple dig
sites in both Mexico and Guatemala, and at first glances,
they just looked like these incredibly well preserved cacao beans.
But once they actually touched them, the researchers realized that
they were just made of clay, which.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Is pretty ridiculous. I mean, but if kakau was that valuable,
I would have to think that it was a delicacy
that was reserved for the super wealthy. I mean, if
people were going through the trouble of making these phony
clay beans. What was it really hard to come by
them or what?
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Yeah, I mean it seems like the Mayans had taken
a really generous approach to cacao.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
In their day.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
They thought of it as food from the gods, as
we mentioned, so they thought it was meant for everyone
to eat. So Mayan 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 Aztecs, on the other hand, considered cacau to
be this upper class luxury and almost a status symbol.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
And I mean that's partially because they were using it
as money.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
Too, right, But as a result, the lower classes would
really only get a taste of stuff at weddings or
sometimes at community celebrations. But what is clear is that
Aztec rulers really loved their cacau, and probably the most
famous was Montezuma. He supposedly drank I think it's like
gallons of hot chocolate every day.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
See gallons. I can't imagine drinking gallons of anything.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
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.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
All right, So just as a reminder, we remember that
Cortes was the conquista or who conquered the Aztec. So
was he the first to bring chocolate back to Europe?
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Yeah, so this is fuzzy too, just like with the
Olmex and the shoe are It kind of depends on
who you ask. So some historians claim Christopher Columbus was
responsible for it. I'll say it was Cortes who returned
to Spain bearing cacao and also the chocolate making apparatus
from Montezuma's court. And whether or not Cortez was the first,
he was definitely obsessed with this concoction. So in a
(20:53):
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.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
I mean he might have oversold it. Just the tad
chumming chocolate is really good but all right, so it
might have been Columbus, or it might have been Cortes,
but either way, it sounds like Spain was definitely the
first in Europe to experience chocolate though right, yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
Mean that seems pretty clear. And there's even a third
version of the story that attributes chocolate's European introduction to
the Spanish, albeit to 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 cacao beans as a gift. Apparently he
did this while introducing minds to the core to Philip
the Second. But no matter how chocolate made its way
(21:40):
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 chocolate houses popped up in London and Amsterdam
and even a few other cities, and it wasn't long
(22:02):
after that that chocolate actually made its way back across
the Pond.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
To American colonies. Wait, did you say chocolate houses or
these like coffee houses or what.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Yeah, exactly, they were kind of these posh establishments. But
drinking chocolate actually predates both coffee and tea as a
stimulant beverage in Europe. So it's actually more accurate to
say that coffee houses are like chocolate houses rather than
the other way around.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
I mean, it's still crazy to you that drinking chocolate
was the norm for so long. Yeah, fairly.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
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 sons hit upon the idea of adding
sugar and cocoa butter to make a paste that could
be molded into the world's first chocolate bar.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
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,
But first let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Okay, Well, so I feel like I might know the
answer to this one already. But why do you think
adding sugar and fat to chocolate is such a great idea?
Speaker 2 (23:14):
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 I think it helps
on the taste front, for sure. But sure the biggest
boon that sugar in fat gave to chocolate was actually
this added sensory quality, you know, being something that melts
in your mouth. I think it's actually pretty important.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
And that's something that didn't happen until sugar and fat
were added.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
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.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
So why is that?
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Well, because cocoa butter contains fatty triglycerized 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 it.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
So how do you get to the ideal melting point.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Well, the trick is to nail that 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 into my mouth.
(24:32):
But the thing is, even for a talented chocolate tear,
it's actually pretty difficult to get those fatty triglycerites to
crystallize just the way you want them to, and so
it takes a lot of patience, takes a lot of skill,
you know, to perfectly control the chocolates temperature during this
whole tempering process, you know, just so you don't throw
your proportions out of whack in the process of doing this.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
You know, what's funny is that, I mean, I love
that there's an art taking chocolate and how it melts.
But I met this editor a long time ago, 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 and Vermont or something,
and he shook hands with a lady and she said,
(25:13):
your hands are too warm. You'll never be good at this.
Oh wow, crazy, And you walk across the street to
a bookstore. And that's how I got.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Into Yeah, like, you're not tall enough to be a quarterback, but.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
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.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
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. 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.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
That's pretty great. So all these couples are just like
standing around the lab eating chocolate and then making out
while wearing heart markers and things strapped to their heads.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
I guess, and they were proud, probably paid to do
this as well. I guess. 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 volunteer's heart
to race, and I guess that's good for their relationships,
but you know, the chocolate made the effect last four
times longer. It actually more than double volunteers resting heart
(26:21):
rates from about sixty beats per minute to one 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.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
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 Valentine's Day.
It almost seems like that mouthfeel could be a big
reason why.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Oh, it definitely is. And I was reading up on
this a little and it turns out that we actually
have special touch receptors on our tongues and they respond
to this change in texture of a melting piece of chocolate.
So once our tongues detect this melt, we have these
receptors that send the message to the brain and that
stimulates these feelings of pleasure. And the smell of chocolate
(27:07):
has a similar effect, right, Yeah, that's right. And cacal
beans are roasted and fermented during chocolate production, and these
processes cause 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 they include everything
from overcooked cabbage to human sweat to rob be fat,
(27:28):
this all making one.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
Hundred mouths water.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
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, these studies have shown that even just smelling
chocolate stimulates the emotional what you would call feel good
centers of the brain.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
Well, I know we talked earlier about some of the
mood altering chemicals that chocolate contains, but you're actually saying
that your brain lights up from just the smell alone.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Yeah, So the mood enhancing substances we mentioned are only
found in trace somemounts in chocolate, so you're not really
gonna 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,
and chocolate has this uniquely pleasurable smell and taste and
texture to humans. So you know, if we detect any
(28:16):
of those sensations, we actually just get excited because we
know we're about to eat some chocolate.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
Yeah, And it kind of makes you wonder if the
whole idea of chocolate as 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 decadend or indulgent for almost hundreds
of years now, So whether or not chocolate spurs these
romantic feelings, we've all kind of been conditioned to make
(28:42):
these connections ourselves.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Yeah, I think that's right. And you know, for example,
you mentioned Mona Zoomer earlier, and that story I always
remember about him is that he supposedly downed a bunch
of drinking chocolate just before visiting his hairm at night.
And 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
(29:04):
single day, So drink it before bed was probably just coincidence, right?
Or have it right?
Speaker 1 (29:11):
So let me just recap things a little bit. Chocolate
contains psychoactive chemicals, but not enough to have more than
a slight effect on our senses. Its reputation as afrodijiak
is way overflown 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
(29:32):
humans respond as strongly to these qualities as we do.
So I guess I'm wondering, like where does that leave us?
Speaker 3 (29:38):
Like?
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Is there an answer for why we love chocolate so much?
Because somehow it tastes good isn't good enough?
Speaker 2 (29:44):
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 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
(30:06):
of sugar and fat that you rarely find in nature. Now, separately,
we obviously know that there are plenty of fruits that
contain natural sugars, and then you've got nuts and fish,
which are chok full of fat. But both of these
together 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 even then,
(30:27):
chocolate generally has a fat to sugar ratio of about
one to two, which is higher than almost any kinds
of milk except for one, and that's human breast milk.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Huh.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
So, doctor Moseley talks about this. He explains that human
breast milk is particularly rich in 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
(30:59):
to sugars that you find in milk, chocolate, and 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.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
So the reason we love chocolate is because they're reminds
us of breast milk. I mean, that's more appropriate for
Mother's Day, right.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
Well, that's the idea though, I mean that that humans
have a preference for the particular fat to carbohydrate balance
that we've been conditioned to like from the start of
our lives. And Mosley 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.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Well I definitely wasn't expecting that, but it does remind
me of this chocolate quote I read from this Portuguese
poet named Fernando Pesoa. So you know how metaphysics is
the branch of philosophy that deals with questions and about
really plowing existence and the first.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Causes and all that.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
Right, So Pasoa 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 to eat it.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
Yeah. Well, I know Tristan agrees with that, because he's
eaten 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 in
today's backt off? All right, Well, I'll kick us off here,
(32:29):
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 natural state, and so it's taken about
(32:50):
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, be a little sweet.
But I'm pretty eager to try some.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
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.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
So Tristan's in luck.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
He's gonna have so many Nobells 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 forty three percent
of those reported eating chocolate at least twice a week,
and that was higher than the twenty five percent of
people who were at a similar age and education level
but who had not won a Nobel. Wow. So this
(33:34):
really scientifically solid finding also came after a correlation that
was found between national chocolate consumption and the rate of
Nobel prizes. I mean, that seems like pretty solid science
to me.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
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 forty three percent of those Nobel winners were eating chocolate.
What did you say, twice a week? Okay, that's still
that's still pretty big. All right. Well, how weird is
it that Quaker Oats finance the production of Willy Wonka
and the Chocolate Factory. Did you know about that? And
(34:05):
that's actually why the name was changed from Charlie and
the Chocolate Factory to Willy 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
just right, so they actually didn't even release a Wanka
Bar for a few years after the film. But the
film did help launch several other of their popular candies,
(34:28):
and thankfully it's still a pretty great movie.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
Yeah, so 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 to answer for this type of thing.
But this is like that story on steroids. So in
twenty sixteen, Japan sewage companies used a chocolate oil to
mass the scent of their sewage trucks, which I guess
(34:52):
you know, you'd have your kids running to meet the
chocolate truck and suddenly they.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
That seems like I would ruin the taste for chocolate.
So they're smelling chocolate in the air and that's the sewage.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Yeah it well, it covers up the sewage.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
Yeah, yeah, crazy. Wow, that's pretty interesting. All right. Well,
my kids were asking not too long ago why dogs
can't eat chocolate, and that's because chocolate contains this chemical
that we actually talked about earlier, theobromine, which is a
little bit like caffeine, and it's actually toxic to both
dogs and cats. And so this is the main reason,
and that's because their bodies aren't able to metabolize the
(35:27):
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 theobromine, it can actually have tragic
results as we know.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Man, well, I feel like we need to bring this
back to a slightly happier note. So did you know
that Ruth Wakefield, the inventor of the chocolate chip cookies,
sold her cookie idea to Neslie Tolehouse and you know
how she was compensated with a lifetime supply of chocolate.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
No way, Again, it's still so weird to me to
think of somebody like as the inventor of the chocolate
chip cookiels like that stuff that should have just always
been there.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
Pray that in for so many turkeys.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
Yeah, well, I have to say that is a great
fact and worthy of today's Fact Off Trophy. So congratulations, mana.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
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 HowStuffWorks
dot com or call us on our twenty four to
seven fact hotline. That's one eight four four pt genius.
We've gotten so many great comments on Facebook and Twitter,
so you can always hit us up there. But thanks
so much for listening. Thanks again for listening. Part Time
(36:45):
Genius is a production of how stuff works and wouldn't
be possible without several brilliant people who do the important
things we couldn't even begin to understand.
Speaker 4 (36:52):
Tristan McNeil does the editing thing.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
Noel Brown made the theme song and does the mixy
mixy sound thing.
Speaker 4 (36:57):
Harry Rowland does the exact producer thing.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Abe Lozier is our lead researcher, with support from the
Research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and Lucas Adams.
Speaker 4 (37:05):
If Jeff go gets the show to your ears, good.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Job, Eves.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
If you 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. Jason who
Part-Time Genius News
Hosts And Creators
Will Pearson
Mangesh Hattikudur
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Betrayal Season 5
Saskia Inwood woke up one morning, knowing her life would never be the same. The night before, she learned the unimaginable – that the husband she knew in the light of day was a different person after dark. This season unpacks Saskia’s discovery of her husband’s secret life and her fight to bring him to justice. Along the way, we expose a crime that is just coming to light. This is also a story about the myth of the “perfect victim:” who gets believed, who gets doubted, and why. We follow Saskia as she works to reclaim her body, her voice, and her life. If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal Team, email us at betrayalpod@gmail.com. Follow us on Instagram @betrayalpod and @glasspodcasts. Please join our Substack for additional exclusive content, curated book recommendations, and community discussions. Sign up FREE by clicking this link Beyond Betrayal Substack. Join our community dedicated to truth, resilience, and healing. Your voice matters! Be a part of our Betrayal journey on Substack.