Six things you didn’t know about chocolate
I’d love to eat a bar of chocolate every day. Not a square or a piece, but an entire bar. By myself. Because I think it’s unbelievably delicious, and also (or at least partly) because I really want to believe that chocolate is a genuine miracle cure. For example, it helps against colds and could help you multitask better. And did you already know this about chocolate?
Sweeter, or not?
Round pieces of chocolate taste sweeter. Huh? How does that work? Psychologist Charles Spence wondered the same thing and investigated. Together with his chocolate colleagues, he concluded that the actual taste isn’t different, but that the shape influences our taste perception: we more often associate round shapes with sweetness, while straight shapes are associated with bitterness. That’s why most chocolates are round.
Keep it safe
Chocolate has the property of absorbing smells from the things surrounding it. Is that opened bar lying next to a pack of chewing gum? Then it will acquire a minty flavor. That can of course be delicious, but there are also plenty of things you don’t want your favorite bar to taste like. So wrap it well and store it in a dark place. Incidentally, it’s better not to keep chocolate in the refrigerator. Because of the cold, the chocolate develops a white layer, and there’s a chance the sugar will crystallize.
Complex flavor
And that flavor is rather special. Actually, it’s very unique. The book Chocolate and Health scientifically proves that chocolate contains more than 600 (!) different flavor components. Sounds like a lot? It is. For comparison: a glass of red wine contains an average of 200.
Cookbooks
The smell of chocolate influences our purchasing behavior, research by our southern neighbors shows. For ten days, researchers at Hasselt University and the University of Antwerp observed the behavior of 201 people in a bookstore where a chocolate scent was diffused. They concluded that people stayed in the store longer and browsed cookbooks more quickly than usual, regardless of what they had come in for. The chance that someone actually bought a cookbook even increased by 6% compared with when there was no chocolate scent.
Melting…
Something so delicious that it melts on your tongue; with chocolate, this is literally the case. The temperature at which it starts to melt is below that of the human body, around 26 degrees. That’s why it also melts in your hand if you hold it for too long. Extra fact: milk and white chocolate are more sensitive to heat and therefore melt faster than dark chocolate.
A day dedicated to chocolate
A day entirely dedicated to chocolate: it exists. June 7 is World Chocolate Day. Just missed it? No worries. Besides June 7, September 13 is International Chocolate Day, and February is also known as National Chocolate Lovers Month. So it’s a great excuse to eat extra chocolate then—as long as you don’t, like me, need a special day for that at all.
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