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at Mon, 10 Nov 2003 02:31:56 GMT in >,
(Mark Thorson) wrote :

>Alex Rast wrote:
>
>>...
>> Cocoa is a defatted,
>> powdered derivative of the cacao bean. Chocolate is a product
>> of the cocoa bean wherein the bean has been roasted, de-hulled,
>> ground, turned into a very smooth, thick liquid (usually by conching),
>> and solidified.
>
>You are misrepresenting the comparison. Cocoa is also roasted,
>dehulled, and ground. You omitted those features from the list of
>attributes for cocoa.

Only in the interests of conserving space in the description. It's tedious
and repetitive to write the same information twice. There was therefore a
choice of which product to attach the process description to. Without this
description, chocolate is more elusive to define correctly, and has a
greater probability of being misunderstood. Therefore, I chose to attach
the designation to chocolate.

....
>
>Every bar I've ever seen that was labelled "unsweetened
>chocolate" did in fact contain added sugar.

It would seem that you have not seen many unsweetened chocolates because
I've seen many that do not list sugar among their ingredients.

But that's not particularly relevant, as I discuss below.

>They didn't
>necessarily have enough sugar to make them sweet, but
>did have enough to make them chocolate.

This is an interesting statement. On the one hand, you concede that there
is such a product as unsweetened chocolate. Then you say that this product
contains sugar, only to claim that it doesn't have enough sugar to make it
sweet. But in your original post you claim:

>85% and above is not chocolate...
>The difference between a 77% (or less) bar and 85% is that there
>is no sweetness at 85%.

So according to the claim you just advanced in regards to unsweetened
chocolate, an 85% chocolate would be unsweetened chocolate. But that still
leaves no doubt that it would be chocolate, not cocoa.

I would also assert that assuming it's valid to label a chocolate as
unsweetened even if it contained undetectable amounts of sugar, in fact
such chocolates as are on the market that are labelled as such have sugar
percentages far below that of an 85% chocolate. Nonetheless, in view of
what you have just claimed, it doesn't matter either way.

>
>However, the bars you've^H^H^H^H^H^Hcertain people
>have been eating -- with extreme cocoa contents of 85-99%
>are essentially bars of cocoa with just enough cocoa butter
>and/or sugar to allow consolidating them into a solid bar.
>These bars are cocoa converted from powder to solid,
>which is a product distinct from the confection known as
>chocolate.

Consider that the cacao bean, in its raw state, contains about 50% cocoa
butter. That's easily enough to allow it, when dehulled, roasted, and
ground, to condense into a solid. If it were not, then it would not be
necessary, as it is in the cocoa manufacture process, to extract cocoa
butter from the mass in order to produce cocoa. So in any event, it's not
necessary to add sugar to condense chocolate into a solid. But the
definitions of what is chocolate and what is cocoa don't depend on the
process used to arrive at the result. Would you then claim that a cocoa
powder to which cocoa butter and sugar were added, such that the final
cocoa solids percentage were 50% (a typical semisweet chocolate), were
cocoa? Since such an object would be a bar, indistinguishable from other
chocolate bars in the store, it again would be chocolate. Thus the
percentage is immaterial in defining whether the product is chocolate or
cocoa, nor is the manufacturing process. It's the physical format that is
the defining factor.

>> You'll also note that this
>> same individual wrote further down:
>>
>> " IMHO the perfect balance of sugar to chocolate
>> happens in the 66% - 75% range. "
>>
>> Which even according to your definition is within the
>> chocoholic range. QED.
>
>A hardened COCOA ABUSER might pay enough
>lip service to the idea that he could be satisfied with
>a 66-75% bar, to maintain his denial that he isn't
>really that far gone.

Note, however, the wording. It says "perfect balance", not "satisfactory
balance". This is an indication of genuine preference, not minimal
acceptability. It's improbable that a person making such a claim could fall
into the scope of your definition, however erroneous, of cocoa abuse.

> He should ask himself -- could
>I get by without solid cocoa or even a dark chocolate
>bar for a month? A week? Could I get along on
>just milk chocolate or white chocolate for that length
>of time?

This is a poor test because it does not account for levels of intoxicant
consumed. Recall that the original proposition was that a distinction be
made between sugar addiction and chocolate addiction. Now, it's well
understood that chocolate contains various addictive substances. These
substances are, naturally, going to be less concentrated the lower the
percentage chocolate consumed. But now, take a hypothetical chocoholic
whose first choice, is, say, a 66% bar. If he switched to milk chocolate,
say, one with a 33% concentration, in order to end up consuming the same
amount of addictive substance, he would merely need to eat twice the
amount. He could equally well meet the need by consuming 2/3 the amount of
pure unsweetened chocolate. Meanwhile, on the basis of intoxicant levels,
the same would be true of a hypothetical cocoa-holic, whether you adopt my
definition or yours. So that kind of test would not be enough to
distinguish the 2 categories based on the level of addictive substance
present. Therefore, it would become entirely a matter of format. I can
easily acknowledge that there can be such a thing as a cocoa-holic, but
such an individual would have to find that his needs could not be met with
a solid, bar-form chocolate product. It would have to be the dry powdered
format or the milky drink. But the test would have to include measured
amounts to distinguish that from chocoholism as I have defined it.

>> Meanwhile, there are individuals who can easily taste sweetness
>> in an 85% bar. And the difference between 85% and 100% is
>> pretty noticeable.
>
>Only after habituating to abuse at that level. If it were possible
>to go to 150%, such a person would probably find an 85% bar
>annoyingly, intolerably sweet. (Molly, hide the cocoa pipe.)

Habituation is indeed a danger and this applies to chocoholics. However,
there are plenty of people who can taste sweetness in an 85% bar even if
they're manifestly not chocoholics or cocoa-holics. Actually, it's possible
to achieve the intoxicant concentration of 150%, and here's where cocoa-
holism is indeed a possibility. Recall that pure 100% chocolate is about
50% cocoa butter. The intoxicants lie in the non-cocoa-butter constituents
of the chocolate. Meanwhile, cocoa is defatted chocolate. A "high-fat"
formulation has about 25% cocoa butter, thus leading to your 150%
concentration. A "low-fat" formulation has about 10% cocoa butter - up to
180%! There are even "nonfat" formulations which would be 200%. All this is
relative to a 100% unsweeteened chocolate. So it's hard to argue that a
cocoa-holic couldn't easily be more habituated than a chocoholic. It's also
conceivable that some people who considered themselves chocoholics would
actually be cocoa-holics. This would manifest in a persistent, lingering
dissatisfaction upon consumption of a 100% chocolate, or a requirement to
consume inordinately large amounts to achieve satisfaction.

>
>> We all know that the first person to accuse is usually the guilty
>> party...
>
>Ah, first denial, then redirection. The hallmarks of an addict.
>If you have to ask whether you have a problem, it means you
>have a problem.
>

This is a pretty circular proposition. The same claims made by the one
party, can just as easily be made by the other party, by levelling the same
accusation at that other party. I suppose I *did* ask for it. But since we
are in the position of Mutually Assured Accusations, on this one point we
are at a stalemate.

--
Alex Rast

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