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