How Chocolate Works

People have been consuming chocolate for at least a couple thousand years, but it's only been in the last hundred that humanity has arrived at its crowning achievement: the smooth, creamy milk chocolate bar. Find out about the history of chocolate, how it's made and how it affects your mood in this episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the all new Toyota Corolla. Welcome
to Stuff you Should Know from House stuff Works dot com. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and I'm
with Charles de w Chuck Bryant. He's with me right
now drinking the quaw. That's right, and Jerry's over there,

(00:23):
fresh back from San Francisco. Like, yeah, everything's coming up
aces in this room right now, just because we're here. Yeah,
just because it's stuff you should that's right. Welcome to
the show. Welcome to the show. Hey, I'd like to
shout out a little Bit Sweets for for no reason
other than they make awesome candy. Well send it to

(00:44):
us from time time in a little while. Well, we're
doing chocolate today and little Bit Sweets in Brooklyn, New
York now has a retail space. Oh yeah, congratulate at
Chelsea Market. You ever been there? That's awesome? I have not.
Oh wait, is that the one like the it's relatively
new and awesome. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wonder if they're

(01:04):
Rubanelbos with like Mario Batali and all that. Doesn't he
have a place there? I don't know. I think he does.
I've been through there though. It's it's a cool place,
that's neat. So congratulations to Liz and gen of little
bit Sweet sound seem at Chelsea Market they make great chocolate.
And I'm gonna ask Liz after this is released if
we screwed it up really bad or if we got
it pretty pretty good? Oh the chocolate thing, because she'll know, well, sure,

(01:29):
she's a chocolate tour. That's right. Um, okay, that was
nice to be chucked, um chuck. Yes, well you just
kind of screwed up my intro question. Oh really, what
was it? I have ever had chocolate? Do you know
about chocolate? Yeah? I know a little bit about chocolate.

(01:49):
I do too now. Um. And I was surprised at
reading this article how closely this episode will probably resemble
our coffee episode. And you're gonna say that it's just
like they're almost like to beans in the same pod. Yeah,
and some of the processes are similar, and uh yeah,
I totally thought the same thing. Yeah, people are exploited
in much the same way. There's child slavery involved, fair

(02:10):
trade swoops in tries to like correct back. There's beans,
there's roasting, they're drying. Yeah, all sorts of similar processes.
And there's a ficionados who I imagine can tell the
difference between a bean grown one place and being grown
another place, because it makes a difference, as we'll find true.
I think we should finish out. Maybe we could make
a sweet and do wine and then most kind of

(02:31):
three similar Well, no, we we gotta put it in
with our like beer and cheese. We'll call it the
good Life sweet. Let's add yachts at the end, just
to cap it off. Beer, wine, cheese, chocolate, yachts. I
never realized how ugly that word is until just now. Yachts.

(02:52):
That's the way I said it. Even if you say
it like it's spelled as you come up with yachts.
Stupid word, So chuck. Yes, chocolate. It turns out um
is actually a pretty ancient thing, like eating chocolate. It
grows from the cacao tree. Well consuming chocolate, right, okay, yes,

(03:13):
nice cat Um. They found a bowl from somewhere in
Mesoamerica that dates back to I think BC UM and
it has residue chocolate residue in it still, yeah, traces
of it um, So we know that people have been

(03:33):
consuming chocolate since at least BC it's highly unlikely that
we just happened to find the first bowl that was
ever used to consume chocolate for the first time. Um,
and we know that the first first record of somebody
mentioning chocolate came about three d the Maya. We're drinking

(03:56):
it back then, that's right. Yeah, they offered it to
the odds. Yes, it was highly cherished, it was, but
it was a beverage and for chocolate's life it has
been a beverage. Uh, gritty, frothy, kind of a bitter beverage.
And then sometimes they would add cinnamon, hot pepper, um,

(04:21):
hot pepper, and chocolate. By the way, yeah, I do too,
like the chili chocolates A nice sipping chocolate. Well no,
I mean that the hard variety. It's good in like
a sipping chocolate too. Really you can come across that, okay, yeah. Um.
So the Maya were the ones who like really kind
of founded chocolate consumption as we understand it, and then

(04:45):
it was adopted by the Aztecs, who had a pretty
um short memory span apparently because the Aztecs the Triple
Alliance conquered the Maya at some point and said, hey,
we like this chocolate. But we're gonna forget that we
at it from the Maya. We're gonna say we got
it from the god catzel Kotal, right, and he was
the a god who was kicked out of the dominion

(05:08):
of God's forgiving chocolate to the Aztecs, as the Aztecs
tell it, which is not nice. What getting kicked out? Yeah,
for sharing your chocolate, you know, yeah, because you're out
chocolate and you got kicked out of the pantheon. That's right.
In the Aztecs, um called chocolate. I'm pronounced that huacatl.

(05:32):
I think that's probably right. Um. And this thought to
meant I mean bitter water, and like you said, they
would add certain spices to it to make it more palatable.
But the gods and the kings and everyone thought it.
You know, it was like, uh, like a super drink,
so they would drink like tons of it. Well yeah,
months a Zuma was apparently, um fond enough of it

(05:53):
that he drank like fifty cups of it a day.
That's crazy. I think we said that in another one
that sounded familiar it did to me, Yeah, or maybe
he drank lots of coffee. I wonder what it was.
I don't know. Um, it was a currency. Yeah, there was.
Actually it was an actually a sixteenth century az Tech
document that is basically a currency exchange for cocao. You no,

(06:16):
the being for chocolate beans. Yeah. It's like a hundred
of them buys a turkey. Ye. And it's a one
for one exchange for a good tamalia. That's a pretty
good deal. I take that. Yeah. Um, But the point
is this chocolate, like the it was sacred to the Mesoamericans.
It was currency. It was a big deal. Uh. And

(06:37):
then the Spaniards came along and they said, what are
you guys drinking? And they took a sip and they
spit it out, and then they tried it again, like
maybe it's okay. And there's some pretty good quotes about
what the Spaniards thought of chocolate and how it tasted. Yeah.
One of them, uh, comes from a Jesuit missionary and

(06:58):
he said it is is loathsome to such as they're
not acquainted with it, having a scum or froth. That
is very unpleasant taste. Yeah. I also saw another quote
that said, um, it was a Spaniard who referred to
chocolate as a bitter drink for pigs. Yeah, I get,
I mean really bitter chocolate I can't stomach no, and
that's what they were drinking. I mean like the concept

(07:19):
of sweet chocolate came thanks to Europe, and it came
about this time. So, um, who was it that conquered
the Aztecs? Cortez the killer Um. Cortez basically said all right,
I'm gonna take this chocolate and we're gonna see what
Europe does to it. And Europe went crazy for it.

(07:40):
Of course they sweetened it, right, that was the That
was Europe's big addition to chocolate, adding sugarcane or honey
or molasses or something to the chocolate to sweeten. And
all of a sudden, Europe is like, we like this,
let's enslave the people. Cortez comes back and says, good news.
They love the chocolate, and monte Zuma and the rest

(08:01):
of the Triple Allianes for like, that's great, we don't care.
It's like, don't know, this does pertain to you. There's
good news and bad news. Bad news is you have
a new great father, meet my thunderstick, the boomstick. Uh
so what the Europeans did? They enslaved them for a while,
and then the demand rose, so they said, hey, why
don't we just start growing this stuff in territories that

(08:22):
we um have conquered, which is you can only grow
the cacou tree within about twenty degrees north or south
of the equator the tropics. Yeah yeah, um, and it
likes very wet conditions. And it's also apparently the cacou
tree is really um finicky, which we'll talk about but um.

(08:42):
When they did figure out that they could plan it
along the tropics, the cost of chocolate dropped tremendously in Europe,
which was necessary to make it, you know, something that
wasn't just for royalty, right. And then still at this
time people were consuming it as a drink even in
Europe as well, but they were sweetening it um. And
then so you would have a person who got ahold

(09:03):
of the beans, roasted them, uh, and then made their
own chocolate and then sold it all in one place.
Then the industrial revolution happened and everybody applied the principles
of industry to everything. It basically, smash everything right exactly,
and see what happens to using machine and smash it
unless you're a luddy. And then you smash the machine itself. Right. Um.

(09:24):
There was a Dutch entrepreneur name Conrad Johannes van Houten.
Do you think in the millhouse? How can you not know? Um?
And he was the first one to press the cacao
bean um, which separates and we'll get into all this later,
but essentially separated the cacao into the butter and the powder,
the dry part, right. And he figured out if you

(09:46):
add a little more butter back into it, which is strange, Um,
you can make a bar. Yeah. Or if you ad
a little alkali, be a little less bitter, a little
more palatable. And then Joseph Fry and englishman said, hey,
why don't we have a little sugar, maybe a little
more cocoa butter, And now we have the first chocolate bar. Okay,

(10:07):
so I have it wrong. Joseph Fry invented the cocoa,
the chocolate bar. Van Houten invented Dutch cocoa, which is
a sweeter cocoa powder. And Rodolph Lynt, if you you
might recognize that, still, how do you not like lint?
He invented conking in seventy nine and we'll get into
what that is later, but it's a pretty important process.
But it's conk like the shell. Yeah, because the first

(10:30):
like a shell. Um. But we'll get into what that means.
But it basically makes it smoother and more affordable. You
can mass produce it as like the chocolate bars we
know and love. And then uh, in the early nine hundreds,
all this is going on within a few decades. There's
like all these sudden quick advances in chocolate that that

(10:50):
takes chocolate from this frothy, gritty, bitter drink to chocolate
as we understand it today, starting in the ninety century.
And then I think in the nineteen o four early
d a guy with the last name of Nestley about
to add milk powder, and then we had milk chocolate

(11:11):
and the humanity achieved its pinnacle. That's right, Uh, Henry
or Henry Nestlee and Milton Hersheet very important dudes. Um,
And that was that was for milk chocolate. But you know,
you can also make dark chocolate less bitter by some
of the same processes, because you know, when you buy
the dark chocolate has a percentage of and the higher

(11:34):
the percentage, the more bitter it is. I can't go
above like seventies. My max is it? Do your your
mouth just start catching on fire, your teeth fall out
or what happened? Like that bitter chocolate taste some people
love super super bittery. I'm a super taster with bitter. Um.
Do you remember in our taste episode we talked about

(11:55):
super tasters. Like, since that episode, I've noticed that with bitter,
like I taste it way more than most people. Yeah,
and um, how do you like your chocolate? Like I
can handle dark chocolate, but like it tastes really bitter
to me. But like I can barely handle grapefruit. I
had to train myself to enjoy grapefruit, and I don't
like grapefruit. Yeah. Maybe you're a bitter super taste too, maybe,

(12:18):
but if you I can tell you that just practice
makes perfect with drinking grapefruit to Oh well for me
eating chocolate, right, um? And I like I sprinkle a
little sea salt on it now too, which is really
like that? Oh yeah yeah that's pretty good. Yeah. Um,
all right, So let's get into the seed or the
bean a little bit. Uh. They growing pods on a tree,

(12:38):
and the tree itself is they grow taller than ft.
But for um cultivation, they trim them so they don't
grow above ten or twelve is the height that they
try to keep them at. Yeah, because people I climb
up and pick them. Yeah, this is this is something
I find very interesting about climb I think they use

(12:58):
a long along tool like a telescopic um knife. Yeah. Um,
but this is it's the cocao trees are so fickle
that they actually have kept chocolate production as like a
family business. Yeah. You can't mass produce these things. You

(13:20):
can't mass harvest these things. It's still got to be
done by hand because the pods and the seeds don't
all ripen at the same time, so you can't just
drive a machine in there and be like get all
those pods out, and so you have to do them
like individually, one by one when they're ready to come
off the tree. Plus. Um. The harvesting a seed pod,
which is about the shape of a long orange football

(13:42):
about twelve inches long. Um. The way you harvest it
is really important because if you break off the bloom
that it's growing out of, you will damage it so
that no other pods grow out of that. So it's
a really really finicky tree. It is, you know, um
of the world's cocao is grown by just two and

(14:04):
a half million farmers, all of them working five to
ten acre plots, family plots, like a family farming business
for sure. Yeah, we like we said earlier it was
earlier it was meso America, but now most of the
farms are in Africa and West Africa. Codvoir is like
the chocolate coco producing that ivory coast. Yeah, okay, but

(14:25):
they prefer copdvoir, I think so. Uh yeah, they produce
more than a million metric tons just on the cope
davoir excuse me per year. Um. There are only three
types of three varieties of bean, and the they are
the for for astero, and it's the most common because

(14:45):
it yields the most beans, has the most chuckolated taste too, yeah,
and it's the hardiest, so they do better. Um. And
then on the other side of the coin you have
the creolo, which is very complex but very difficult to grow,
very delicate, and the small percentage of all the cacao
beans that are harvested, right. And then there's the trinitario,

(15:06):
which is a hybrid of the creoleo. So how we're
saying it in the forest stero that somebody took a
forest stero to Trinidad where they were growing creolo and
they hybridized. So you have like basically this full spectrum
of finicky and then different tastes of chocolate. Yeah, and

(15:27):
they and like we said earlier, like with coffee and
like with grapes for wine. If you're in aficionado, you
know what what geographical location will produce different flavors and tastes.
And companies when they make chocolate are very picky about
and secretive about exactly where they get their beans. Some
it's all one farm, uh something I like to do

(15:48):
a nice blend, but that's a trade secret. But um,
just because you have a forest stero bean and one
part of the country doesn't mean old tastes the same
as in the other part. So so not only do
these different varieties produce different tastes, like depending on where
you grew a specific variety, it'll tastes different from that
same variety grown elsewhere. That's right, um. And those trees

(16:10):
we should say are called the theod roma cocao. They
were named by linneus Um and it translates to cacao,
food of the gods. And those those three varieties aren't
the only three, but they're the three dominant varieties growing worldwide.
Oh they're more than that. Okay, Um, so I guess

(16:30):
we should get into a little bit about the process. Yeah,
because what interested me is the all those European additions
to the process of producing chocolate are still based on
the original ancient means of growing and producing chocolate. So
it's like, go through the process of producing chocolate, then

(16:52):
you just take it through these additional steps to make
chocolate as well. You understand it, which is pretty cool
because they're still they're doing this ancient method. Yeah. Like
still you've heard there's more than one way to skinn
of cat, there's only one way to make chocolate. You know.
Machinery he has improved, but you're right, it's still the same,
which is really neat. Uh. So you have these ripen

(17:13):
pods like we talked about, they change color from green
to orange. Uh. And then it's time to cut them down. Uh.
And then the beans and pulpa removed and left to ferment,
which is exactly what you think. They cover it up
with banana leaves and stuff and let the moisture seep
out of it slowly. Um. Yeah, and this is one
of the few things where alcohol is just a byproduct

(17:34):
of the fermentation process rather than the goal, right, because
they I'm sure some people drink this chocolate alcohol, but
the part is discarded, is it. Yeah, as far as
I know, I don't think Nestleie's bottling it or anything. Yeah,
but I bet the farm workers might have a wonder
what that tastes like. I'll bet it's awful. I'm sure
it is. Uh So, in the in the cacao bean

(17:56):
um there's things like bacteria and yeas that produce acids
and gases, and they break down some of those sugars
over the course of this the this uh fermentation process,
and they're gonna end up dark brown in the end,
right after about a week of fermenting ye and then
they pack them in the jute bags, take them to
the buyers. They grade the beans because you know, they

(18:17):
it's very specific, like the quality of the bean. You'll
get a certain price, you know, depending on how good
they are. And then it goes on to the next step,
which is where the companies who produced chocolate by the
seeds from the buyers. That's right, and that those sugars
being broken down in the fermentation process become very very
important at this step because the first thing you do

(18:39):
is you take all of your cocao beans and roast them.
And when you're roasting and I in this article it
says that sometimes you you just roast the nibs first.
I've found that pretty much everybody roasts the bean and
then roast the nibs separately later on. Yeah, the nib
is actually the meat. Yeah, what's actually what becomes chocolate, right.

(19:03):
A cacao bean has a shell that you take off
in the meat inside is a cocoa nib um. So
you roast the bean first, and then later on you
roast the nib itself. And as you're roasting it, what
you're doing is creating something called the Mayard reaction, which
is basically the sugars that were broken down and exposed

(19:26):
during fermentation are combined with amino acids that are also
present in the cocao, and when placed together in the
presence of heat, you have something called flavor compounds that
are produced. And depending on the amino acid present, whether
it's cheese or whether it's beer or whether whatever it
is bread um, the the sugars and the amino acids

(19:50):
are going to react differently to create different flavors, and
with chocolate specifically, these different amino acids produced chocolate flavor. Yeah,
it's uh, non intematic browning. And if it's not just chocolate,
I mean if you like pretzels, or if you like
if you like the flavor of anything, well, no, that's
not true. It's only certain things to have this reaction. Yeah,
like um, bread when it's toasted or baked. Um, a

(20:14):
steak when it's browned, anything important, French fries. Uh. And
so the roasting process it's anywhere from thirty minutes to
a couple of hours at about two fifty degrees fahrenheit
or higher. And every company has their own methods for this.
You know, everyone's gonna have their own specific like roasting process,

(20:34):
but that's a general thing, right. Uh So the next
thing that happened is you need to to get that
nib extracted, and so they quickly cool the beans and
send them through what's called a cracker and a fanner
that splits the shell and blows off the shell and
you're left with a nib. And then at that point

(20:54):
the nib is ready to go to the mill to
be ground well, or it's roasted and then ground into
chocolate liquor. So it's it's roasted again before its ground. Yes, okay, yeah,
yeah for sure. Like if anything, the nibs the thing
you want to roast. For sure. This article insinuates that, um,
you might not roast the bean, You're just gonna roast

(21:19):
the nib. You definitely roast the nib first because that's
where the flavor compounds come from. But you can roast
the nib inside the bean too, right yeah, okay, like
as a two step process. So now it goes to
the grinder a melingingur, which is French, and there are
these big granite rollers that basically basically mash up those

(21:39):
nibs into a paste they called the mass. Then that
goes into a press at about six thousand pounds per
square inch a man, it's a whole lot. Uh so
much that it actually melts the cocoa butter into a
liquid called chocolate liquor. Pressure from pressure, just from pressure
in friction. Oh okay, well that produces he So that's

(22:02):
your chocolate liquor, even though it's not alcoholic at all.
And that was Van Houten that came up with the
process you just described, right, He's the one who figured
out how to separate powder from buttery. Yeah, Millpool, Millhouse
van Mountain. Uh. So then you've got your two components.
It basically separates, and you've got your liquid cocoa butter
at this point and your powder. Um, it's called a

(22:25):
press cake, your dried powder is or cocoa cake cococake.
I like that better actually do too. Um. So depending
on what where, what what your purpose is from here,
you might go in some different directions. If you're just
gonna make like Nestley Quick, you know, chocolate milk mix,
you're going to pulverize that powder into a finer powder.

(22:45):
So that's another thing I saw on the Gara Deli
site when they were describing how they make chocolate. It
sounds like you would pulverize that that um cocoa cake
no matter what. And then the harder or the more
you pulverize it, um, the the smaller the micron of
the the chocolate cocoa powder UM. And so the the

(23:09):
finer that is, the less grainy your end result chocolate
will be. So, like Garrett Delli says, that they grind
there's down to nineteen microns because they want a very
smooth product exactly because circura delli. And then the butter
or whatever you introduced back into, whether it's cocoa butter
or say like um, canola oil or something, you can

(23:31):
also have an impact on the quality of the chocolate made. Yeah,
and if you're reintroducing cocoa butter, it's a better quality
obviously than vegetable oil. Um. All right. This is also
where you add in sugar some other flavorings. Let the
thin what is that I was hoping you don't. It's
an emulsifier, so you know, makes it a fluffier, lighter

(23:53):
all right. That to me is like the fact of
the podcast. Like how many times have you looked at
an ingredients list? Have been it's left up in Yeah,
it's an emotive fire friends, that's the fact of the podcast. Yeah,
strangely all right, I haven't picked mine yet. Maybe cococake good.
Uh So, next up we have the process that Lint

(24:16):
figured out early on that we talked about conking. And
some people say this was an accident because he forgotten
left it in a monoge're too long, right, which may
be true, who knows. But basically what you get is
a smooth liquid, which makes it easier to mold into
chocolate bars. So I looked again on the Gara Deli site.
They had UM. Basically the conquer or, the conking machine

(24:39):
is just like a huge vat with two paddles, like
constantly going around. Yeah. I've seen other ones too. Uh.
It was just bizarre how this article reads like like
they almost I think they literally call it a magic
process that people don't fully understand. And basically to me,
it was like, no, you're just kind of mixing these
ingredients together for a very long time and such that

(25:01):
the cocoa powder, every grain, every micron of cocoa powder
becomes coated with cocoa butter. It's just really intense mixing exactly.
It's not magic, right, Yeah, I just thought that was
really strange. Yeah, that article agreed, it was really insane.
Clown posse is conking is magic? Yeah, that's funny. Uh,

(25:23):
So it's not magic, it's just really really thorough thorough mixing.
UM evenly distributes that cocoa butter that polishes the particles,
makes everything super smooth and delicious, generates a little bit
of heat, yeah, which helps create more flavor compounds because um,
in this time, it's with the sugars and the amino

(25:43):
acids in the milk, mining with those things in the
chocolate too, which takes you to flavor country. And it's
where the that Malliard Malliard, that's what I'm talking about
reaction happens. Yeah, because it happens again because it's producing heat,
and then finally it introduces air, which removes even more bitterness.

(26:04):
So that that's the purpose of the magic of conking.
Then we have to temper it. Tempering. They don't even
really say what it is either, So you know how
like if you make candy, you have to have a
candy thermometer or else it's gonna just be completely screwed up.
And like a candy recipe will be like, do not
go past this temperature. So they figured out that there's

(26:25):
six stages of crystal formation. Well, we gotta say what
tempering is. First I thought, I was, well, it's stirring. Oh,
it's magic stirring. It's stirring, heating and cooling and reheating
while you're stirring. Yeah, that's what tempering is exactly. But
what you're doing on a chemical level, uh, is that
you're you're forming cocoa crystals, and there's six types of

(26:49):
cocoa crystals that can possibly form in chocolate, and they've
figured out that type five crystals are the ones that
make the best chocolate. So you want to heat your
chocolate up to the point where all these Type one
through four crystals turn into type five crystals, but not
so much that your type five crystals turn into type

(27:10):
six crystals, because at that point, um, you're fired. If
you're work in a chocolate factory. Man, you make type
six crystals, you're in big trouble. Well, they have machines
that do this now, right, but before sure fire you
on the spot for making type six crystals, or if
you set the machine wrong, they can find you. Right,
you're gonna get fired. One where you're another that someone's
getting fired. But you also don't want it. So you

(27:32):
don't want the temperature to go to stop before it
hits nine degrees fahrenheit, which is apparently the magic temperature
for type five crystal. Spirrel fields just have type four crystals,
which apparently aren't any good. So think about this process
that's been undergone that started with picking seed pods by
hand fermending them under bananalys. How they figured that out though,
Like who first looked at these disgusting looking things and said, hey,

(27:55):
I bet that would be good? Like haven't you wondered
how many people had to die to figure out like
what we can and can't eat it? Like along the
way there there had to be a lot of like, well,
so we stay away from that. Uh, let's try this
weird looking thing next. Who's up the first people to
eat anything? I'm sure the first person that looked at

(28:16):
the cow and said, you know that in that furry
creature inside that lies some pretty nice meat. Uh yeah,
I agree. I like that Stuff's like going back to
the beginnings. But this process is just mind boggling just
to make chocolate. And I'm really glad that all these
people came together to contribute to chocolate, to the creation

(28:38):
of chocolate as we understand it and love it today.
Greed sir, Yeah, I love chocolate. So the tempering process,
in the end, besides the chemical gobbygook, is gonna define
how hard and shiny and glossy that chocolate is gonna
end up being. So have we made the chocolate. Yes,
we have. I think you just cool it and then
you press it into bars or whatever. Uh and chuck.

(29:01):
That seems like a fantastic place to put a message. Break,
what do you think? Okay, so we're back to chocolate. Yeah,
so back to chocolate. Uh. We should talk about a
guy named Milton Hershey who was a great guy because

(29:21):
he made chocolate inexpensive and able to get it into
the hands of children for just a few pennies a
bar back in the day. And now people love it worldwide.
They do, and now they can love it in all
sorts of weird ways to like. You know, I love
the chocolate cover potato chips. Yeah, those are good. Chocolate
cover bacon. I can't I don't know if I've ever
had it or not. It's good. Um. Yeah, pretty much

(29:45):
chocolate and anything's fine. Yeah. I like the salt, like
the heat. Um. Along with chocolate. You can get chocolate
facials these days. I don't know about that though. Why not? Yeah,
I don't know. Give me a mud mask, but made
of chocolate, made of mud. Um. We should probably say

(30:06):
who eats the most chocolate in the world. The Americans
probably know. The Americans eat about half as much chocolate
as the Brits, the Germans and the Swiss. The Swiss,
they each eat about twenty four pounds a year. The
average Swiss person eats twenty four pounds of chocolate. Oh man,

(30:32):
I'm sure they're like toblarone. See. I don't like chocolate
snobs because I like a variety of chocolate. People that
turn their nose up at like a milk chocolate bar,
It still tastes good. I like milk chocolate, but also
like the nice dark chocolate. You're equal opportunity chocolate. Dad, chocolate, dude,
it's so good. But Americans eat about twelve pounds a year,
by the way, tended twelve. Uh, there's still a lot

(30:55):
of chocolate. It is chocolate. Um, so we talked earlier. Well,
I guess let's talk a little bit about the health
properties of chocolate. Yes, because that's a big deal. Um.
They have things called flavonoids and finelics, antioxidants that help
protect your heart, same stuff that's found in wine. If

(31:16):
you're eating the dark chocolate, milk chocolate is not good
for you, no, but but it is in some ways,
which I will mention in a second. Okay, Um, but
it can help prevent bad cholesterol or your risk of
heart disease. That's if you're eating dark chocolate and not
a ton of it, like an ounce and a half
or so, right, And I think the pure the chocolate,
the better it is for you, the more flavoroids present. Um.

(31:40):
There's also long it's also been long suspected that chocolate
has an effect on your mood and that it improves
your mood. And I saw a study from two thousand
seven that finally it was like, okay, I think we
all agree that chocolate improves the mood. How how long
does it last? And they figured out that like, if
you're in a bad mood or in any kind of mood,

(32:02):
chocolate will improve your mood. It has a noticeable effect,
but it only lasts for three minutes. Really yeah, and
it's almost instantaneous too. So the researchers were like, well,
it's not possible that it's all of these Like there's
cannabinoids which are also found in pot um, there's uh,
there's other compounds that have an effect on our neurow transmitters.

(32:27):
But it's not possible to eat chocolate and have your
mood improved via that because it takes about an hour
for those compounds to get to our brain and then
allows for three minutes. Yes, and it's immediate, okay, So
it's not those, it's not those. I think that it's
the flavor and the taste and the pleasure that comes
from chocolate hitting the tongue. Well, that's like a good

(32:49):
pan fried steak is good for my mood too, exactly,
you know, right, So you should eat steak and chocolate
a lot because it's good free mood every three minutes
at least. I won't know how long steak class though,
I don't know. But the other, the other exceptional thing
about chocolate hitting your tongue and having probably an effect
on your mood is that remember that um that point

(33:10):
that they bake chocolate crystals too degrees. Well, your tongue
is ninety something and change. It's usually more than that,
so you're the chocolate melts and those flavor crystals melt
just perfectly just touching your tongue too. Yeah, just because
it's a close to our own body temperature, that would
have some sort of effect on your That would explain

(33:32):
why it happens immediately with good chocolate too. Uh. We
should talk about theo bromine for a second. It's a
chemical compound. It's an alkaloid that's in chocolate and some
other foods, plant based foods, and it has a similar
effect is caffeine. And they do use it just like
caffeine to help treat heart conditions, some heart conditions like

(33:55):
narrowing of the blood vessels or stimulating the heart. And
that's also the thing in it that is bad for
your dogs. Oh yeah, theobromine, which is why you don't
want to feed your dog chocolate. No, you don't think
most everyone knows it's by now. A little bit will
make them just kind of sick. But if they eat
too much, they can kill them. It'll make them dead. Yeah,
which is the worst kind of sick. And we mentioned

(34:17):
earlier the child labor uh, sort of like with coffee,
exploiting kids to mine these coffee beans and um, as
many as two hundred thousand children work in the cacao
fields alone, I think. Yeah, and that's just an ivory coast.
So um, and some of them are child slaves. So um.

(34:40):
If you want to not do that, you search out
fair trade or organic. Apparently organic chocolate isn't grown from
those farms supposedly but technically has nothing to do with
it being organic. No, but I think they just said
that the organic farms aren't uh slave farms. So fair

(35:00):
trade as always might call you a little more. What
else is there? You got anything else? I don't think
I have anything else. And the Japanese apparently have a
day two days for chocolate exchange exclusively. There's Valentine's Day
where women give men chocolate, and then there's a White
Day a month later, which is apparently invented by a

(35:22):
candy maker, where men give women chocolate. And even if
you don't like the woman who gave you chocolate, you're
still obligated, obligated to give her chocolate. It's um geary chucko,
which means obligation chocolate. You see. I ignore all those
like clearly corporate sponsored. Right do you call your mom

(35:42):
a Mother's Day and just go go to hell? I do?
Oh you don't yet, and she appreciate the call. Remember
this year now Mother's Day that's different. Mother's Day and
Father's Day. I'll endorse those. Those are completely blatantly made
up holidays. Yeah, but I don't buy them anything. It's

(36:04):
not like there's a well you can you figured out
a way to stick it to the man. It's not
a gift behind that that I have to get. I
believe that there's a woman UM invented Mother's Day and
by the end of her life was like actively vocally
protesting against the celebration of it because it's been hijacked
by UM the greeting card companies. Yeah, I'll I'll usually

(36:28):
do a like go lunch or something like that. Nice,
that's all my mom wants his time? Sure, you know, yeah? Good?
Good for you, Chuck, your good son, try to be UM. Okay,
well that's it for us talking about Chuck his relationship
with his mom, right, I think so. Well, and chocolate.
There's a whole other list of things we can get
into it that's not for this room. Chuck is a

(36:49):
good son. UM. If you want to learn more about chocolate, right, Yeah,
you can type that word into the search bar at
how stuff works dot com. Since I said search bar,
it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this one
from a teacher because you put out the call to teachers,
how can we fix the system? I feel like we

(37:11):
did that together and we got a lot of calls
and emails from teachers. Not calls, just emails. Call out. Uh,
so this is and there are a lot of great
emails and I can only pick one. So this is
from Colin. Hey, guys, have been a history teacher for
the past seven years. It is my profession of choice
and I look forward to being an old fossil of
a teacher one day. You're asking about problems with the

(37:33):
educational system and possible solutions. I come from an interesting angle.
I'm a public school teacher and spent the past six
years at an inner city middle school. There, I experienced
the following challenges one through three. One parents essentially being absent,
therefore having the teachers do the parenting. Number two, lack

(37:54):
of accountability for students while everything is pushed onto the teachers.
And number three unrealistic to ends by the federal government
that is not supported by sufficient funding or resources. Can
you see that list written on a chalkboard? Yeah, like
that as a teacher list. As a teacher list. Uh.
And lastly, my probably most unfortunately, a lack of respect
for my profession. My people have been called parasites and

(38:17):
lazy by certain politicians and are accused of doing next
to nothing and just enjoying summer vacations. In reality, we
are often underpaid and overworked. These are teachers who There
are teachers who do make a good wage. That is
often after twenty plus years in a school system. My
wife and I, due to the economy, have received just
one raise in seven years, so after three quarters of

(38:38):
a decade, we're still almost making the same as a
first year teacher. And uh then he went on to
um talk about charter schools sort of at length, which
I won't get into, but I think we should do
a podcast on charter schools at some point. We need
to do a podcast on like education and education system. Yeah. Sweet.

(39:00):
Uh So, anyways, guys, sorry for the book. I'm sure
an email this long would never be read on the
show that was Reverse Psychology. It was and it worked,
but you guys rock and thanks for taking the time
to even read it. Have a great day. Colin, thanks
Mr C. We appreciate your writing in. We appreciate everybody
writing in. I mean, like, if you put all of
them together, you start to get a clear picture. Because

(39:21):
you know, he named just three there, We've gotten all
sorts of different suggestions. Test standardized testing is a big
one that sure coming up. Um, yeah, there's there's a
lot wrong we found out. Like I think we're kind
of hoping to fix things, but right now I'm just
realizing what a daunting task is basing the US education system.

(39:43):
We'll do our part by podcasting and running our mouths
about it. Okay, well, uh, if you want to get
in touch with us to let us know anything, um,
how to fix anything, a toaster, oven, the education system,
what have you, you can tweet to us, s y
s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com,

(40:03):
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That's right, right, that's right. And then of course you
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(40:23):
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