TV review: Chocolate mystery still in pieces

Reuters

DARK FLAVOURS: What's Really in our Food? couldn't tell us why chocolate is so addictive, but it did get results from its palm-oil-or-not-palm-oil street taste test.

Relevant offers

TV

Which theme is worse: Bones or NCIS? Tuning in to TV-watching pooches Is Kutcher an upgrade over Sheen? Star claims Home and Away racism Let's do the time jump again Lying celebrities are surprisingly bearable Grey's Anatomy with guns Which CSI era is your favourite? Anna Hutchison back for Go Girls Paul Henry's disjointed return to TV

Though it's a methodically informative programme, What's Really In Our Food?, TV3 Tuesday, fell at the ultimate hurdle this week. It simply could not explain chocolate.

After an exhaustive half hour, Petra Bagust and a procession of experts comprehensively failed to answer the question that has been bugging mankind since the Spanish conquered the Aztecs and someone had the bright idea of adding that other intoxicating substance, sugar, to the funny brown bean: what is it about this stuff that makes it so addictive?

It only added to the mystique of the great brown staple food that the experts couldn't even agree whether it was addictive. For pity's sake, have they never met a normal child, a pre-menstrual woman or a labrador?

The theories, and their debunking, were numerous. For instance, are we just in it for the sugar rush? But since we do not prize fruit or marshmallows or rusks the way we do chocolate, this seemed only a small piece of the puzzle.

The various scary-sounding chemicals present in chocolate were presented one by one, like suspects in an identity parade - caffeine, antioxidants, theobromine, phenethylamine - and each dismissed as innocent, or only mildly implicated. Yes, these various substances do make us feel sexy or perky or happy.

But not from chocolate. For any one of chocolate's chemicals to have the impact of near-intoxication we know so well, we would have to eat ridiculous quantities at a sitting, so tiny is the loading of each chemical. And then, of course, we'd be horribly sick, which would defeat the purpose.

Predictably, a psychologist came up with a repressive theory: that we crave chocolate because we've been raised to think of it as forbidden fruit. But why does the guilt not interfere overly with the pleasure? The health police conspire to make us feel guilty about eating all manner of nice-tasting food, yet none of it enjoys the exalted status of chocolate.

As always, the reminiscences of Dot and Elvie, two elderly ladies knowledgeable about food, who are always filmed in sepia tones, were instructive - but not, this time, conclusive. The trouble with chocolate, they said, was it was no longer a rare and special treat food, but an everyday food. How true.

Yet still, we are addicted to it. We can have it all we like, yet still we can't get enough of it. And even if we only think we are addicted to it, addiction is largely a matter of brain chemistry, so to think addicted is to be addicted.

While on the subject, What's Really In Our Food? could hardly have left out the landmark example of what's not in our food, especially as it's not in our food any more by consumer demand. Bagust took a detour into the recent outrage of the palm oil additive to the stuff in the purple wrapper, and performed a fairly conclusive street taste test on the old versus the new Dairy Milk that proved that, as always, the customer was right.

The chocolate baron's spokesman yet again expressed regret at the now-aborted ingredient change, and again tried to convince us that the substitution of palm oil was designed to make the product healthier, not to cut costs.

This has not been widely believed, because one thing we do know about chocolate is that we don't eat it for the good of our health, antioxidants notwithstanding.

The programme also put chocolate snobs in their place on a couple of points, establishing that the fashionable super-dark chocolate is not better for you than common, vulgar milk chocolate, because it tends to contain more saturated fat, and that white chocolate, regarded as an imposter by purists, is still authentic chocolate because it is made with cocoa solids.

But, unusually for this series, the net effect was to leave us none the wiser - if rather better informed about why we were none the wiser. And, needless to say, jonesing for a fix.

* What do you think? Post your comments below.

- © Fairfax NZ News

Newest First

Oldest First

CWelly   #8   11:32 am Nov 16 2009

We like to eat chocolate, because it tastes like heaven. Haha. I could definately taste the change in cadbury chocolate. The taste changed from rich and delicious to shallow and weird. im glad i wasnt the only one who thought so too. Chocolate is good. I do not consider it to be fatty, or bad. I dont eat it everyday either, usually just on the weekends. Could demolish a whole big family block easy.

ElloMyLovers   #7   11:02 am Nov 16 2009

Jane. Chocolate is poisonous for dogs, feed the chocolate to your kids or pre mentrual lady friends, NOT the labrador.

Nols   #6   01:09 am Nov 13 2009

Cadbury has admitted its error and (apparently) will not be using palm oil again (Australian ACA programme). Now i'm just waiting for all those horrible slabs to be replaced by the good stuff! To be honest, I don't care why chocolate is addictive. There is nothing better that a slab of Cadbury's dairy milk (minus the palm oil of course) and a good book.

jasmine   #5   04:33 pm Nov 12 2009

it is the taste that's the problem for me. when the 'new' cadbury chocolate came out, it just tasted quite horrible. rather than tasting like chocolate, it tasted like plain old sugar and 'flavours'. i stopped eating it altogether because the taste i loved was gone, seemingly for good. i don't really like the idea of additional palm oil, considering it's in so many foods, but the taste - 'twas horrible! chocolate should have cocoa butter and cocoa mass, not much else...

Choc lover   #4   03:45 pm Nov 12 2009

I JUST LOVE ANY CHOC WITH NUTS :)

harrysnapperorgans   #3   12:31 pm Nov 12 2009

'For any one of chocolate's chemicals to have the impact of near-intoxication we know so well, we would have to eat ridiculous quantities at a sitting, so tiny is the loading of each chemical.'

Reminds me of a flatmate I had who ate 4 and a half blocks of Cadbury chocolate in a single sitting. Yes, over a kilo of chocolate. He had claimed he could eat six king sized blocks in a 24hr period - he didn't make it.

Interesting to watch though - he couldn't walk straight, he had pupils like saucers, was babbling almost incoherently and he had one hell of a hangover the next day.

Dr Science   #2   12:20 pm Nov 12 2009

Palm oil - a silky smooth lubricant that has been freshly pressed from the hands of the orangutan.

Ness   #1   11:51 am Nov 12 2009

So they are taking the palm oil out of dairy milk but what about cadburys other chocolates? I like dark chocolate, will I be able to have cadbury energy or is it still being made with palm oil?