It tastes great. Too much of it makes you fat. And some people believe large quantities make your face break out. Besides that, what else could you possibly need to know about chocolate?
For 250 scholars, food professionals and the curious at the three-day conference, ”Chocolate: Food of the Gods” at Hofstra University last week, the answer is that there is much more to chocolate than meets the palate.
The sessions took a serious look at chocolate: in art and literature, in business and folklore. They included such papers as ”Inside the Pastilles of the Marquis de Sade,” ”Has Modernism Failed the Chocolate Box?” and
”Candy, Cheka and Controversy: The Propaganda Failure of Alexander Tarasov-Rodinov`s 1922 Novel, `Chocolate.` ”
Benneville N. Strohecker, owner of Harbor Sweets, Inc., in Marblehead, Mass., told how he built up a $2 million business by following his dream to
”make the best piece of candy in the world.” Strohecker`s speech was particularly well received, possibly because he promised to give out free samples at the end.
”Chocolate is irresistible,” said Eileen Denver, managing editor of Consumer Reports and the conference`s keynote speaker. ”It is about love, passion, obession and addiction. Chocolate pushes the pleasure and panic button at the same time.”
Evidently, our mixed feelings about chocolate begin early in childhood.
”Kids realize chocolate is complex,” said Leon Schiffman, a marketing professor at Baruch College.
When Schiffman asked junior and senior high school students what they felt about chocolate, they told him, ”Chocolate makes you happy, comforts you when you are upset, makes you smarter and more enthusiastic.” But ”it also makes you unpredictable, and while it gives you the energy to do things, you shouldn`t take it before going to bed.”
The fact that chocolate is the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of sweets hasn`t been a recent revelation. According to Alice Ross, an historian at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, the Aztecs, who drank their chocolate with everything from chilies to marigolds thrown in, thought it could make those who drank it deranged and only let noble men partake.
The conference was the brainchild of Herman A. Berliner, dean of Hofstra`s business school.
Considering the United States processed 2.3 billion pounds of chocolate valued at $4.8 billion in 1986 (that works out to about 10 pounds per year for every man, woman and child in the country), it seems Berliner hit upon a pretty popular subject.
Among the more serious papers were those devoted to the health effects of chocolate. According to Dr. Andrew Weil, a professor at the University of Arizona and an authority on herbal medicines and natural healing, ”chocolate is a mind-altering, conscious-altering drug associated with addiction and behavior change.”
There was some good chocolate health news. ”There is no evidence that chocolate causes acne, calcium deficiencies, heart disease or kidney stones,” said Dr. Marion Nestle, a nutritionist at New York University. –
