Opinion

Confessions of a chocoholic

By Tony Laszlo

Everyone has vices, and I think it is important to admit them rather than deny them, at least to oneself. For my part, I neither smoke, drink nor gamble. But put anything containing chocolate in front of me and you can be very sure that I will wolf it down like a demon in no more than a few seconds, if not sooner. Any time of day, any time of night. Ad infinitum.

Normally, I am conscious of the fine virtues of eating civilly and sharing nature's bounty with those around us. And, of course, I was brought up to eat slowly, chewing each morsel of food thoroughly before swallowing it down and reaching out for more. However, "normally" goes right out the window when it comes to chocolate. Yes, I am an unabashed, unrepentant and quite incurable fiend for the black stuff.

I call it "the black stuff" because I only concern myself with the darker, more bitter varieties. When I'm looking for a fix, the various milk-chocolate products on the market simply will not do. That's because it's cacao - the base ingredient - that has won my heart. Call me a snob, but chocolate has to have at least 60-percent cacao mass to even attract my attention, and 70-percent or more to hold it. The higher the percentage of cacao mass in the specimen, the darker it is. And the darker it is, the shorter-amount of time it has left on this Earth, if it is at all within my reach.

I do hope that the many fans of "white chocolate" don't take this as a slight, but personally, I don't consider that confection to be chocolate at all. You see, "the white stuff" contains no cacao mass whatsoever; only cacao oil, also known as cacao "butter." That, plus a lot of sugar, milk solids and a bit of vanilla flavoring, usually.

Fortunately for me, products containing higher levels of cacao are making inroads into Japan these days. More and more chocolate-bar labels display, in large letters, the percentage of cacao in the product. As someone who recently tried a 100-percent cacao chocolate bar - exorbitantly priced, I might add - I can say that more cacao is not necessarily better, though certainly it is more bitter. In fact, anything over 85 percent or so seems to be closer to the realm of Chinese medicine than of candy.

One other thing about these more "extreme" chocolate products: People are learning that the polyphenols in cacao - and so, in fine chocolate - help guard against the oxidation of LDL, or "bad" cholesterol and increase levels of HDL, the "good" cholesterol. In short, chocolate with a high cacao content can be healthy when taken in moderation. And that is really good news for me. There is nothing like having a justification for one's habit.

Shukan ST: Dec. 17, 2004

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