Can chocolate really make you feel like you're in love?

Introduction: After chocolate is eaten, the PEA in it is quickly broken down into phenylacetic acid, with little chance of reaching the brain, and thus cannot make people "spark". Therefore, the reason chocolate makes lovers "spark" is probably the same as why diamonds also excite lovers—it's mainly the "connotation" it carries, not the substances it contains.

Essentially, chocolate is a type of candy, but it clearly surpasses other candies—not only serving as an "ambassador of love" on Valentine's Day, but also being used to convey congratulations, apologies, and gratitude in the West by giving a box of chocolate. So, what exactly is chocolate, and what makes it so special?

The core ingredients of chocolate are cocoa butter and cocoa powder. After cocoa beans undergo fermentation, roasting, and peeling, they are ground and pressed into "cocoa liquor", also known as "cocoa mass". The cocoa liquor can be separated into cocoa butter and cocoa powder, which are then further processed into other foods.

Cocoa butter is actually a vegetable oil. Common vegetable oils, such as soybean oil, rapeseed oil, peanut oil, and corn oil, are mainly composed of unsaturated fats. However, cocoa butter is quite special, with a high saturated fat content, typically around 60%. The melting point of an oil is mainly determined by its saturated fat content. Vegetable oils generally have low melting points and are liquid at room temperature, while animal fats have high melting points and are solid at room temperature. Because of its high saturated fat content, cocoa butter is similar to animal fat, with a melting point between 34°C and 38°C. This allows it to be solid at room temperature yet melt in the mouth, the so-called "melts in your mouth, not in your hand". Cocoa powder is the residue from cocoa beans after the cocoa butter has been extracted, similar to "soy cake" after soybeans are pressed for oil. Many unique components of cocoa beans, such as the minerals iron, magnesium, manganese, and zinc, as well as various polyphenol compounds, are mainly left in the cocoa powder. Cocoa powder contains about 60% carbohydrates, 20% protein, and over 10% fat.

Classic French Chocolate Mousse

 

A World of Different Chocolates

A typical chocolate requires adding cocoa butter to the cocoa liquor. This means that the cocoa butter content in chocolate is higher than in the cocoa liquor itself. Additionally, some varieties of chocolate also add milk or milk powder, as well as other ingredients like sugar. The combination of different ingredients creates the various types of chocolate.

P>As a fat, cocoa butter is the source of chocolate's unique texture. The polyphenol compounds and other trace components in cocoa powder contribute greatly to chocolate's flavor. Of course, cocoa butter also contains many aromatic substances. Because cocoa powder contains polyphenol compounds, typical chocolate is dark and has a certain bitterness. Therefore, "dark chocolate" is the "authentic" one with the most intense "chocolate flavor", but its flavor is not necessarily the best.

P>White chocolate contains no cocoa powder at all and is mainly a product of sugar, milk, and cocoa butter. The United States, the EU, and Japan all require that white chocolate contain at least 20% cocoa butter.

P>The actual variety of chocolates is even greater than this, and the legal names and requirements vary from country to country. In short, it's just different combinations of ingredients like cocoa powder, cocoa butter, milk, and sugar.

P>In addition to these ingredients, the most noteworthy is "cocoa butter substitute". Cocoa butter is relatively expensive, so there is a market for cheaper alternatives, and palm oil has come into play. Like cocoa butter, it is an oil high in saturated fat. Through some industrial processes, such as hydrogenation and fractionation, an oil with physical properties very similar to cocoa butter can be obtained from palm oil, which is "cocoa butter substitute". A lower-grade substitute might use general hydrogenated vegetable oil. In terms of mouthfeel, cocoa butter substitute can be very convincing, but it lacks the inherent flavor of cocoa butter. Furthermore, hydrogenated vegetable oils contain some trans fats, making them even "inferior". According to Chinese standards, if the amount of cocoa butter substitute used in chocolate exceeds 5%, it must be indicated on the label.

Chocolate Ganache Cocoa Roll

 

The Details Determine the Chocolate

The flavor and texture of chocolate are closely related to its ingredient composition. And given a fixed ingredient composition, the texture is mainly determined by the size and shape of the particles.

P>To the naked eye, cocoa powder after grinding and pressing is already very fine. However, the human tongue is extremely sensitive. Experiments have shown that when particles are larger than 50 microns (roughly the diameter of an average person's hair), the tongue can perceive a "grittiness". Moreover, the cocoa powder obtained from grinding and pressing has a jagged and uneven shape, which further worsens the mouthfeel. During prolonged mixing, the particles collide with each other, not only wearing off their sharp edges but also breaking them apart, which can greatly improve the texture.

P>The earliest "refiners" were drum-shaped containers filled with many small stones. The drum would rotate continuously, and the chocolate ingredients would be ground and polished by the colliding stones. The "refining" efficiency was a leap forward compared to simple mixing. In the chocolate manufacturing process, refining can take as little as a few hours, while top-tier chocolate can require dozens or even nearly a hundred hours of refining.

P>With the development of food science, refiner designs have become more sophisticated. People also discovered that adding an emulsifier—most commonly lecithin—could greatly increase refining efficiency. In this high-intensity refining process, cocoa powder particles can be reduced to about 20 microns in size and become round on the surface, so that even the sensitive tongue cannot feel their presence. Furthermore, the refining process generates a lot of heat, which melts the cocoa butter. When chocolate ingredients enter the refiner, they are like dough. The melting of the cocoa butter and the reduction in size of the cocoa powder cause them to emerge as a thick liquid. Not only that, the heating and grinding processes also cause the cocoa powder to release more aromatic substances, further enhancing the flavor.

P>In addition, the flavor and texture of chocolate are also closely related to its solidification process. Chocolate ingredients contain a large amount of fat, which solidifies within a certain temperature range. Within this range, fat particles solidified at different temperatures will have different sizes and different melting points. In ideal chocolate, the fat particles should be small and uniform, melting at around 34°C. A person's palm is usually below this temperature, while the oral cavity is slightly above it, which allows for the "melts in your mouth, not in your hand" effect. And how to achieve such a melting temperature is the "secret recipe" of each manufacturer.

Truffle Chocolate

 

The Love of Chocolate

Most people have times when they really want to eat a certain food. In food science, this craving is called "craving", a Chinese term that captures its meaning well.

P>In fact, women are more prone to craving certain foods than men, especially those high in sugar and fat. One hypothesis is that sugar promotes the release of serotonin in the brain. Serotonin, also known as "5-hydroxytryptamine", can have a calming effect, reduce irritability, and bring feelings of pleasure and happiness. However, this is just a hypothesis and is not strongly supported by scientific evidence.

P>Chocolate is one of the most beloved foods. In 1991, researchers Paul Rozin and others from the University of Pennsylvania published a study in the journal *Appetite*, investigating the food preferences of several hundred undergraduates and their parents. The result was that chocolate was the most favored: among all foods, 40% of women and 15% of men said they craved chocolate. Considering that chocolate is just one of many craved foods, this proportion is quite high. A further analysis found that among women who craved chocolate, more than half had cravings that were related to their menstrual cycle: the period just before and the day or two after menstruation were the times when they craved chocolate the most.

P>There has been some research on why people crave chocolate, but no convincing conclusions have been reached. A popular hypothesis is that chocolate contains phenylethylamine (PEA). This neurostimulant can make people more energetic and excited. When PEA is released in the brain, people's breathing and heart rate increase, their palms sweat, and their faces flush—exactly like the "spark" people describe when they see someone they are attracted to. This hypothesis is very popular with chocolate marketers, and chocolate has thus been given the connotation of a "messenger of love".

P>However, this hypothesis is not very reliable. Because after chocolate is eaten, the PEA in it is quickly broken down into phenylacetic acid, with little chance of reaching the brain, and thus cannot make people "spark". Therefore, the reason chocolate makes lovers "spark" is probably the same as why diamonds also excite lovers—it's mainly the "connotation" it carries, not the substances it contains.

P>In 1994, researchers from the Department of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania published a study in *Physiology & Behavior* on the components of chocolate that satisfy cravings. The researchers (Willa Michener and Paul Rozin) recruited many undergraduate volunteers, selected those who craved chocolate as subjects, and gave them six options: milk chocolate; white chocolate with the same sweetness, calorie content, and mouthfeel as milk chocolate but without chocolate-specific components; a cocoa capsule containing chocolate-specific components; a placebo capsule; white chocolate plus a cocoa capsule; or nothing. When they felt a craving for chocolate, they would consume one of these options and describe their level of "craving" before, after, and 90 minutes after eating. To "describe the craving level", they would make a mark on a 100-millimeter line, where the far left represented "just noticed (want to eat chocolate)" and the far right represented "cannot control (the urge to eat chocolate)", with marks further to the right indicating a stronger craving.

P>Each subject needed to complete all six samples at least once to be considered a valid sample. In the end, 34 volunteers met the requirement, with 17 of them completing each sample twice. The statistical results found that when they ate nothing, the craving values before, after, and 90 minutes later were 70, 70, and 52, respectively. When they ate milk chocolate, the values were 74, 16, and 13, which clearly showed the effect of chocolate in satisfying the craving. For the white chocolate without chocolate-specific components, the three craving values were 70, 33, and 28, which, although not as obvious as milk chocolate, was still quite effective. The craving values for the placebo capsule were 71, 65, and 52. Interestingly, for the cocoa capsule that contained chocolate-specific components but lacked the corresponding sweetness, mouthfeel, and calories, the three craving values were 67, 66, and 51, which were basically the same as the placebo or eating nothing. This suggests that it is not the "active ingredients" in chocolate that satisfy the craving, but the sweetness, mouthfeel, and calories it provides.

P>Of course, this experiment had its limitations. Besides the limited number of participants, those volunteers who were too severely craving were excluded because they could not complete all the experimental requirements. Furthermore, because the unique flavor of chocolate requires cocoa components to be produced, a double-blind experiment was not possible. In other words, the subjects could guess what they had eaten, which might have also affected their descriptions of their craving levels.

Chocolate Almond Cake

 

Healthy or Harmful

Although women love chocolate, they have always been worried about its effect on health, especially whether it is detrimental to maintaining their figure.

P>The "chocolate is good for cardiovascular health" heavily promoted by chocolate manufacturers is not entirely unfounded. Cocoa contains a large amount of polyphenol compounds, which have good antioxidant properties. In addition, it is rich in minerals such as iron, magnesium, manganese, and zinc. These substances are indeed beneficial to health.

P>There has been no shortage of research on the health effects of cocoa or chocolate, but high-quality research is not abundant. In November 2011, the *British Medical Journal* (BMJ) published a meta-analysis led by Oscar H Franco from the University of Cambridge. The research team searched various biomedical academic journal databases for studies on the effects of chocolate on cardiovascular disease, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and other conditions. By October 2010, they only found 7 studies that met the quality requirements, none of which were randomized, double-blind, controlled trials; they were all epidemiological surveys. These 7 studies involved a total of more than 114,000 volunteers, with follow-up periods ranging from 8 to 16 years. Five of these studies showed that eating chocolate had a positive effect on cardiovascular health. Because the various studies classified chocolate consumption differently, this meta-analysis compared the incidence rates of the "highest chocolate consumption" group and the "lowest chocolate consumption" group. The result was that compared to the group with the lowest consumption, the group with the highest consumption had a 37% lower incidence of cardiovascular disease and a 29% lower rate of stroke. The problem is that the definition of "highest consumption" was not the same in different studies; in some it was "more than once a week", in others "more than once a day", and in others "more than five times a week".

P>Although these studies have their limitations, they suggest that eating chocolate may have some benefits for cardiovascular health. However, it is important to note that the "chocolate" referred to here is generally "real chocolate"—the kinds that contain cocoa powder. Many studies, and some even directly specifying "dark chocolate" or "cocoa", point to its effects.

P>For fashion-conscious women, a bigger concern than protecting their cardiovascular health is the problem of gaining weight. "Will eating chocolate make me gain weight" is one of the most common questions from women who love chocolate. But whether you gain or lose weight is not determined by any single specific food. It depends on the difference between total calorie intake and total calorie expenditure. If you eat chocolate and can eat less of other foods to reduce calorie intake, then it can be beneficial for weight loss. If you eat it in addition to your normal diet, even just a small piece, it still adds a small amount of calories, which contributes to weight gain. Regardless of the type, a 30-gram piece of chocolate has about 150 calories. A small order of McDonald's french fries is just over 200 calories. So, when considering whether eating chocolate will make you gain weight, what you should really consider is: by eating chocolate, what other food can you eat less of to "compensate"?

Chocolate Macaron

 

Should You Eat Chocolate

"Real" chocolate, varieties with high cocoa powder content like dark chocolate and milk chocolate, is often expensive. And their "protective effect" on the cardiovascular system is related to this cocoa powder content. Their effects, even as summarized by the BMJ, are similar to the benefits brought by eating more vegetables, fruits, and whole grains. If the purpose is solely to "protect the cardiovascular system", then eating chocolate is a "high investment, low return" proposition, which is not cost-effective. Considering the high fat that comes along with them, eating vegetables and fruits is undoubtedly a more reliable and beneficial choice.

P>Most people probably eat chocolate not for health reasons, but for enjoyment. Indeed, chocolate can make many people feel happy. If weight and money are not issues, buying some high-quality chocolate to eat is a great form of enjoyment. If it's just to satisfy a craving, according to the University of Pennsylvania study, even "cheap chocolate" can be effective as long as it can fool the senses.

Chocolate Cupcake