The Theobroma cacao tree is where it all started. Olmecs, Aztecs, and Mayans were the original consumers of cocoa: they would form it into a drink and ingest it for medicinal reasons (Allen Par. 7). The Spanish then brought it back to Europe and continued to treat a variety of ailments with it (Allen Par. 7). In the last 40 years people have started to question the health benefits of chocolate, but new research is starting to prove that the Olmecs, Aztecs, Mayans and Spaniards were not too far off. Now, the pods from the tree containing cocoa beans are collected, and the cocoa beans are taken out of the pod (Healing Foods Pyramid Par. 15). The beans are then fermented, dried, roasted, then ground to make cocoa liquor (Healing Foods Pyramid Par. 15). The cocoa liquor is then combined with sugar, vanilla, and cocoa butter to make what is now known as chocolate (Healing Foods Pyramid Par. 15). Controversy over the health benefits and detriments of chocolate is slowly subsiding, but there are many things that a lot of people still do not know about how chocolate can affect ones health. Chocolate is misunderstood.
There are many myths and misunderstandings about chocolate. For example, chocolate is not addictive. Many people might consider themselves “chocoholics”, but the fact of the matter is that there is now actual chemical addiction. Researchers, instead, insist that chocolate cravings are stimulated by the “sensory properties”, such as the smell, taste and texture, of chocolate (Brody Pars. 26). In a study concerning the satisfaction of a chocolate craving, one group was given a milk chocolate bar, one group was given a white chocolate bar that contains no actual cocoa, one group was given a capsule of cocoa powder, a...
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...d the Kunas consumed large amounts of a drink made from unprocessed cocoa that they stopped drinking when they moved to the city. (Tallmadge Par. 5)
Hollenberg was able to conclude that cocoa can lower blood pressure. Participants in a study done by researchers at “Germany’s University of Cologne” were given 3.5 ounces of dark chocolate or white chocolate “every day for two weeks” (Allen Par. 11). The volunteers whom all had “untreated high blood pressure” were then given the other selection of chocolate. The participants’ blood pressure started dropping within ten days of eating the other variety. While the white chocolate bars did not effect the volunteers, the dark chocolate caused “systolic blood pressure (the upper number)” to drop “an average of 5.1 points” and the “diastolic pressure (the lower number)” to drop “an average of 1.8 points” (Allen Par. 12).
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Show MorePeople are not prone to agree with one another. If you gather a dozen people together for a dinner party and the subject turns to politics or religion, then there is inevitably going to be an argument. There is one thing, however, that there is a near universal consensus on: chocolate is a wonderful and delicious thing.
We may think of chocolates as God's gift to humanity as they may soothes all our problems and suffering. But, have you ever wonder that these chocolates – sweet, good and pleasurable as it may, have dark sides?.
Though, the origin of the cacao bean is indefinite, the first instant that Europeans encountered cacao beans is alleged to have been in 1502 between Christopher Columbus and the ancient Mayan civilization. Initial impressions were less than satisfactory. Christopher Columbus having believed the beans were “shriveled almonds” (Rosenblum 6), . During Hernan Cortez’s voyage to the Aztec Empire of the Americas during 1517, he was introduced to the Emperor Montezuma’s favorite drink “chocolatl”. Though, he also was not very appreciative of the drink, Cortez was fascinated with the very idea that cacao beans were used as a form of currency among the Aztec. The Spanish would pay Aztec laborers in cacao beans, as they would load their treasure ships with deposits of silver and gold. For this reason, the Spanish nicknamed the cacao bean “black gold” (Lopez 19). Still, it was Spanish monks and missionaries who recognized the value of cacao beans as a medial t...
His first point to support his claim is that chocolate is fattening. He uses prior knowledge to support this fact by saying that candy bars can be upwards of 200 calories, they contain fat and sugar, and skinny people are vegetarians or athletes. Diego’s second point is that newspapers are not always trustworthy. He uses examples from his experience, the news going back and forth over the health benefits of red wine and the push for gluten-free food unnecessarily. His final point is that the study from the newspaper article was not valid. He uses the proof that testing only healthy people leads to skewed results and the study should have included chocolate eaters who were unhealthy.
An everyday person, when asked to describe chocolate, would probably start by calling it "magic." The presence of chocolate in the everyday American life is an experience sought after, craved for, and bought for under two dollars at the corner convenience store. Indeed, chocolate is edible ecstasy that is put in everything: coffee, icecream, cereal, even the spicy sauce for Mexican mole. Chocolate has a cultural presence like no other food commodity; it is brought back to loved ones from the faraway places of Switzerland and Germany, it is given as a symbol of love, and moreover, it is the first thing everyone instinctually goes too when that loves does not work out. A teary-eyed young woman eating chocolate and watching romantic comedies has become so common it has become a cliche in American cinema. There is something about chocolate that makes the muddy, smooth, brown
Before looking into the chemical and psychological effects of chocolate, it is important to go back in time and see where chocolate originated. Even from the very beginning chocolate was viewed as a powerful food. The idea of chocolate first began in 1500 BC when the Pre-Olmecs and Mokaya peoples found that the beans that grew on the cacao trees could be used as food (Semenak, "Chocolate in History"). Moving forward to 600, the Mayan and Aztec civilizations used the chocolate beans in a more meaningful way. The Mayans created a drink from the beans and drank it during weddings and other important ceremonies. Only those of the highest class could indulge in what the Mayans referred to as the “God Food” ("Food: The History of Chocolate"). Similarly, the Aztecs created a drink out of the cacao beans, and according to Susan Semenak’s 2012 newspaper article, “Chocolate in History,” the Aztecs used it as a “love potion.” Pretty soon, the beans became so c...
The Puritan community in The Scarlet Letter and Mama Elena in Like Water for Chocolate have similar roles that the authors emphasize in their characters’ descriptions, expectations, customs, responses, and significances. Esquivel’s use of iron in reference to Mama Elena’s command (page 48) parallels Hawthorne’s description of the Puritan law in Chapter 5--picturing the community’s rules as a “giant with stern features, but with vigour to support, as well as to annihilate, in his iron arm.” The image of iron in relation to Mama Elena and the Puritan community symbolizes the great power both antagonists hold, as beings with strong, harsh, and unyielding control, like heavy shackles made of iron. Because Mama Elena and the Puritan community occupy roles
Chocolate or cacao was first discovered by the Europeans as a New World plant, as the seed of the tropical Theobroma cacao tree. In Latin, Theobroma literally means: “food of the Gods” (Bugbee, Cacao and Chocolate: A Short History of Their Production and Use). Originally found and cultivated in Mexico, Central America and Northern South America, its earliest documented use is around 1100 BC. The majority of the Mesoamerican people made chocolate beverages, including the Aztecs, who made it into a beverage known as xocolātl, a Nahuatl word meaning “bitter water” (Grivetti; Howard-Yana, Chocolate: History, Culture, and Heritage). It was also a beverage in Mayan tradition that served a function as a ceremonial item. The cacao plant is g...
Chocolate made the journey from Mesoamerica to Spain, and then to other European countries, including England. Not long after the sweetness was tasted in London, it traveled across the Atlantic to the North American colonies. It is possible to have traveled there directly from Jamaica after the island had been seized from Spain. However, the most genuine explanation is that high Colonial officials carried it with them when they were assigned to their administrative posts in Virginia and Massachusetts.
Addictive drugs like nicotine and cocaine and heroin, all can rewire the brain to crave the satisfaction that these agents produce. The desire becomes so strong that it starts to take over the body and it no longer becomes for pleasure and it becomes a need for your body. Now likewise, some people argue that some foods have the same power and effects on people that drugs do, where some of these foods can alter the brain in a way that is resets the appetite and satisfaction threshold in a way that it’s out of reach, meaning a person can never have enough. The obesity levels these days semi-dangerous, so some doctors have conducted an experiment that tested the effects of some foods on the brain, where they took 12 obese men after they consumed two milkshakes, whit the same amount of calories, protein, fat and carbohydrates, and they were equally sweet. (Sifferlin 2013) On the other hand one milkshake had much higher glycemic index from the carbohydrates. After the a few hours the blood sugar levels went down leaving the men hungry again. But after they ate the region of the brain that is related to addictive drugs and behaviors was triggered. In this paper food addiction is discussed and shown that it is a real problem that further critical analysis and experiments should be conducted on such issue.
As we know chocolate is an unhealthy food option most of us have, it also is in one of the most popular food group, junk food. Everyone has some “junk food” in some point of their life these days; though its consumption is even more popular in the United States. Many Americans are becoming more and more obese over the last century partially due to that fact. According to Dr. Jeffrey Fortuna, author of the article The Obesity Epidemic And Food Addiction: Clinical Similarities To Drug Dependence, “As of 2010 nearly 70% of adult Americans were overweight or obese. Specifically, 35.7% of adult Americans are obese, and this is the highest level of obesity in the recorded history of the United States” (Fortuna, p. 1). I began to wonder if it could be possible that these people have become addicted to the junk food that they crave leading to these unsettling statistics. From the same article, The Obesity Epidemic And Food Addiction: Clinical Similarities To Drug Dependence, I learned that food does possess addictive qualities. There were biological and psychological factors that were similar to those of drug addictions. “They are: (1) cravings for specific drugs and palatable foods exist in many of the same neural path-ways, and; (2)...
This increase in production caused a change at the consumption end. When sugar was first being produced it was seen as a luxury product only accessible to the rich, but then as its production increased and there was a surge amount in the market place its uses changed. It went from being a specialized product used for medicinal, ritual, or for display purposes to a common everyday food substitute. Now the working class people began more than ever to consume large quantities of sugar as a substitute to their calorie lacking diet. The production of sugar in the British West Indies was not able to keep pace with the demands from the mother country. When the supply from the British West Indies increased so did England’s demand for the crop. It seemed like from the middle of the eighteen century onward the islands were never able to produce more sugar than what was consumed by the people in the mother country. “English sugar consumption increased about four-fold in the last four decades of the eighteenth century, 1700-40, and more than doubled again from 1741-45 to 1771-75 (Mintz 1985) . As the English began to incorporate more amounts of sugar into their daily diets they began to find multiple uses of the commodity. Sugar soon developed into a stable product in the lives of people. With the increased use of sugar in multiple forms of consumption it changed from its previous classification as a spice to its own separate category. The use of this newly popular commodity did not lose any popularity as the years passed. Britain became a leading exporter of sugar crops into the world market, with majority of the supply going to feed their own peoples ravenous appetite. In 1800 British consumption of sugar had increased some 2,500 percent in...
It is a Saturday night and it is time for a late night snack. Is the first thing on your mind ice cream? Who does not like Ice cream? The best late night snack ever, think about it tastes delicious. First of all, ice cream tastes better than any other sweet treat. What food could compete with this creamy smoothness, or the delicious feeling of this soft, cold treat as it meets your taste buds? Don’t know of any other food that feels as good. With Talenti they have so many mouth-watering flavors 33 to be exact. In today’s world you can even get ice cream that’s protein, as the soy ice creams have. So Ice cream is really good. Secondly, while it might not yet be a complete ideal healthy snack, it can be served after every suppertime for everyone likes it. It can be a common thread between strangers. Ice cream can be a healthy treat because it is delicious, it comes in many flavors, and it can be eaten in ways; but, eating too much ice cream can make you fat.
Klein, R., A. (2001). Death by Chocolate: what you must know before taking a cruise. St John’s, Canada: Breakwater Books.
Desserts are all around the corners. Who does not love eating sweets? Anyone can get in touch with delicious fatting foods so quick. These fluffy cakes makes us feel unharmed all the time. The sugariness blinds the eyes of the people, because no one is aware that these sugary foods are our worst enemies. It affects our children, our weight development, and cause health issue to ourselves.