Читать книгу Chocolate Busters: The Easy Way to Kick It! - Jason Vale, Jason Vale - Страница 29

There are some people who love the taste of very dark chocolate and there are a few weird people who even like the unsweetened cocoa bean. But then let’s not forget, there are some people who say they like the taste of cigarettes and yet they never eat them and there is even a group of people in the world who drink their own urine. However, just because this floats the boat for a few people, I don’t believe this shows that it is a genuinely lovely taste and something we should all be doing!

Our taste buds, just like our minds, can easily be moulded and conditioned. As part of our natural survival mechanism, our taste buds are designed to adapt to any foods we are presented with on a regular basis. This is why, just like our minds, they can easily be fooled. For example, when you had your first alcoholic drink, did you jump for joy exclaiming, ‘Where have you been all my life?’ I don’t think so! The vast majority of children/teenagers simply think, ‘What the hell is this rubbish, give me an orange juice.’ Yet, as we persevered with the taste of a particular brand we gradually acquired a liking for it. But even then, we’re not actually enjoying the taste of the alcohol itself. Neat alcohol not only feels like you’ve just set fire to your mouth, but it can kill you instantly! What you enjoy is a mixture of added flavours and chemicals which are there to try and mask the taste of alcohol. Now don’t panic, this book isn’t about getting rid of alcohol (phew!), I just wanted to point out that cocoa is similar in terms of taste. In its neat form its taste is awful so it needs to be covered up, otherwise there would be no GODS and no ‘love’ of chocolate. In the case of alcohol we have products such as alcopops. One of the reasons for their success is because they don’t taste of alcohol at all; instead they have been designed to taste like orange, lemon, blackberry, etc, so slowly but surely manipulating the taste buds.

The difference with alcohol and chocolate is that you don’t have your first shot of alcohol when you are still in a buggy! This is why the alcohol companies have to work harder initially to manipulate our minds, and then do the same with our taste buds as most have been developed by the time we have our first hit. But with chocolate it’s a whole different kettle of creme eggs. It seems perfectly normal and natural to mix in some chocolate powder with a baby’s milk before they’ve even learnt to pronounce ‘Ovaltine’, let alone make a conscious decision to make some for themselves. If you were fed ‘neat’ cocoa as a child you would spit it out since your body’s natural defence mechanism would kick in and scream, ‘This is a type of poison – stop doing it’. If you’re in any doubt, give your dog high percentage cocoa-rich chocolates, second thoughts don’t as you would run a considerable risk of killing them – yes, killing them! The high concentrations of theobromine found in dark chocolate can easily send the heart of your dog racing so fast that it has an attack. Humans are more robust when it comes to this heart stimulant, but the natural tendency to spit out neat cocoa should still tell us that it is not good for us. However, if all you were presented with on a regular basis was neat cocoa powder, your body would eventually adapt and you would end up acquiring a taste for the ‘hard stuff of the chocolate world. This is why people can end up believing they like the taste of cigarettes – proof in itself that our amazing survival mechanisms and taste buds can adjust to just about anything (except Brussels sprouts – I don’t think they fall into this category!)

So considering that the chocolate we were presented with as kids had already been ‘alcopop-ed’ as it were, with sugar, chemicals and artificial flavourings, and since we were given these bars/boxs/slabs by way of a ‘reward’ at times when we were feeling good anyway, is it any wonder that the vast majority of people acquire a relationship and taste for the stuff?

Because our taste buds are conditioned to what we are presented with over and over and over again, the relationship built up with chocolate will depend on the culture in which you are brought up. The British tend to like the caramelized flavour of Cadbury’s, the Swiss prefer milkier chocolate such as Lindt and Toblerone, the Italians prefer the darker bitter creamier chocolate such as Baci and the US like Hershey chocolate – a brand that just doesn’t cut the nougat overseas with a taste that’s been described as ‘burned leaves and toasted rubber’. In fact, to the pretentious chocolate connoisseurs, Hershey chocolate is considered ‘offensive’ if not completely ‘inedible’. Hans Schu, a Swiss national, goes one further by saying, ‘Milton Hershey completely ruined the American palate with his sour, gritty chocolate … he had no idea what he was doing. Who in their right mind would set out to produce such a sour chocolate?’ A friend of mine who travels to the States on a regular basis said that ‘Hershey chocolate tastes like sick.’ However, to the chocolate-loving people in the US, Hershey chocolate tastes blooming lovely, thank you very much. It’s only the European chocolate ‘connoisseurs’ who profess that it doesn’t taste as chocolate should – but how should chocolate taste? Well, in reality no one knows.

Unlike other ‘foods’, chocolate doesn’t have an official ‘chocolate taste’. Strawberry is strawberry, orange is orange, and lemon is lemon no matter where you go in the world, but chocolate is always a little different. This is because each variety of cocoa bean produces its own unique perfume and each results in a different chocolate taste. Also, each different method, different milk and different chemical used in the making of chocolate produces different flavours. So, it is not the taste of ‘chocolate’ you love, as all chocolate tastes different, it is the taste of the variety you are used to, the variety that was fed to you before your taste buds had a personality of their own. And the chances are, unless you are one of the rare few who like only 99% cocoa solid chocolate (which I doubt, as you wouldn’t be ‘hooked’ so you wouldn’t even be reading this book), then you don’t actually like the taste of chocolate at all. What you have been conditioned to like is some bitter tasting powder that’s been covered and processed with all kinds of addictive rubbish to make it taste sweet and creamy.