I wouldn’t suggest we are very different in terms of culture (well, maybe a little) but I’m from the UK and I personally find Hersheys chocolate to be rather disgusting (in relation to other available chocolate). I would suspect that, as many millions of Americans no doubt strongly disagree with me, that there is a strong element of ‘what you know’ or ‘what you’re used to eating’ associated with the taste of chocolate, rather than an intrinsic likeability, at least, with regards to the method of processing and the sugar contents etc..
Everything I was going to contribute has been said, except that
Then you might like the perfectly good inoffensiveness.
I have found that eating chocolate during the beginning of a migraine makes my head experience a fantastic explosion of pain.
Any cause/effec there?
However that does not get at what at least I read as the meat of the question. Is there something to the love of chocolate that is other than the sugar and fat it is usually packaged with (which is indeed a universal palatability trigger)? Something extra that is not merely cultural but that reflects a biological basis?
DSeid got it. It has a chemical that stimulates the pleasue center of the brain. In a high enough dose, it can mimic the effect of SSRIs, the anti-depressants so prevalently prescribed. I think because of this effect, even a small amount is deadly to dogs - I’ve heard a single Hershey bar can kill one.
The ingredient in chocolate that is dangerous to dogs is theobromine. As that chart shows, small amounts can be dangerous for very small dogs. Not so much for very large dogs.
That chemical is not at all the chemical that stimulates the pleasure center.
But that still says nothing basic about chocolate. Every food contains a variety of chemicals that have a variety of effects on the body, some good, some ill. And every chemical is found in a variety of foods. Theobromine is found in tea and the kola nut. So is caffeine, for that matter. That doesn’t mean that theobromine leads to a universal acceptance of chocolate. Caffeine’s affect is going to swamp that for most humans. If you want to argue that caffeine, like sugar, is a universal I’d happily go along with that. But chocolate is merely a capsule that caffeine comes in, like Coca-Cola. You haven’t presented any evidence that anything about chocolate is different or special or unique.
Can’t say I understand your argument here EM … if chocolate’s effect to human inborn centers are via some combination of compounds that also exist separately in various elsewheres, are not individually unique to chocolate, if we can identify some of the components of chocolate that are associated with people liking it, then chocolate is not “naturally liked” … just what it is made of?
Huh?
The confection that most people think of as chocolate is specifically designed to taste good, and people generally do not like it just for the effects. My evidence? Human nature: there will always be someone who tries it once and will never consume something again, and thus never realize the effects. For every substance that arguably is liked for its effects rather than taste, there is a segment of the population that is aware of this–some who continue to like it, and some who don’t. Drinks like coffee and alcohol come to mind.
I would guess that chocolate, in its original form, was probably more like coffee. But the milk chocolate and even dark chocolate of today is liked because of its taste, and not just its effects.
You can even give a baby chocolate and they’ll eat it, and you can’t even do that with salt.
A friend of mine doesn’t like chocolate. I wanted to make chocolate mousse as desert and she told me that she doesn’t like chocolate at all. I was surprised, couldn’t believe that someone doesn’t like this taste. I like dark chocolate the most. Hmmm.
I don’t think “naturally” means “universally” btw. IMHO some are wired to respond to chocolate’s other factors (beyond its being packaged with sugar and fat) more strongly than others. Craving for chocolate, which some have and some do not (and again which seems to me to be more common among females than males) is I think based on those wiring differences, not on cultural factors.
When I came back from a year in Switzerland in which my five year old daughter had discovered Lindt’s milk chocolate, someone gave my daughter a Hershey bar. With great enthusiasm, she bit into it. Her face crumpled, she spit it out and she exclaimed, “This isn’t chocolate!” Forty one years later, she will eat Hershey’s (any port in a storm), but really prefers Lindt’s only now the dark.
I have never tried unsweetened chocolate, but I do like black coffee and I imagine it wouldn’t be bitterer than that and I expect I would still like it.
It is not for nothing that the main ingredient, theobromine, is Greek for “food of the gods”. The Latin name of the tree is theobroma cacao.
What I’m asking for is proof that those wiring differences exist, that any of the responses are unique to or specifically for chocolate, that any of them extend beyond sugar and caffeine, and that chocolate is in any way different from all the other foods that contain sugar and caffeine. Turkey contains tyramine and tryptophan; are you saying that people are wired to respond to turkey?
I want something more than the vague handwaving in this thread that “people like chocolate so there must be something deep about it.” And I want to see proof that the something is more than sugar. Nothing like that has been presented.