Kept in the Dark

I have often wondered what makes dark chocolate lovely. Now I know and I wish I didn't.

Over the last six months, dark chocolate hit the headlines of at least two top medical journals (including the Journal of the American Medical Association and Circulation); researchers have shown that eating dark chocolate can improve our blood vessels and lower our blood pressure, by virtue of its flavanol content. Surely this good news is fantastic if you - like my wife - happen to be a lover of dark chocolate. That seems too good to be true, "Sweetheart, I bought you a box of chocolate that protects your heart..."

As I go on to read more on the subject of dark chocolate, I realise the fallible nature of dark chocolate myths. The catch is that when chocolate manufacturers make confectionary, the natural cocoa solids can be darkened and the flavanols, which are bitter, removed. During the process of chocolate manufactureing, there is an alkalization step called "Dutching", named after the Dutchman Coenraad Johannes van Houten who discovered that adding alkali salts to cocoa nibs would enhance the taste, texture, and appearance of the cocoa. Dutched cocoa has the bitterness eliminated - together with most of the active flavanols. It ends up with a dark-looking chocolate without flavanol. In a nutshell, there is nothing about the color of the chocolate that will tell us the flavanol content.

Alas, I quickly ran to grab my chocolate Christmas gift. I was drumstruck to find out that flavanol content of the dark chocolate is not even listed on its product label at all.

With that, I put down the chocolate and set out on my jogging exercise.