Chocolate is my drug of choice, especially Ghirardelli dark but I stop at around 70%. Higher than that and it is just bitter. I have some form of dark chocolate most days and usually limited to 2-3 squares.
Funny aside, when we gave my niece a piece of dark Ghirardelli when she was 2, she threw her head back, eyes rolled back and lids fluttered, and she let out a big sigh of satisfaction.
I think it’s fair to say that, regardless of funding source, most folk are accepting of studies endorsing whatever it is that’s their particular indulgance…and vice versa.
The chocolate thing always makes me smile. Especially when so many are claiming sugar free eating habits as part of their healthy lifestyle. It’s confectionery. Posh confectionery maybe with varying degrees of poshness…but still confectionery. And there’s nothing wrong with that (heck, out of respect for my younger colleagues, I think you should shovel the stuff in like it’s going out of style) … but it’s not a health food.
Edit: I’m currently trying to upload my recent foray into perfecting a recipe for chocolate covered pretzels. Most recent… and best yet…is Ghirardelli dark chocolate with a hint of sea salt, dried cherries and, of course, pretzels (crushed) Even if I were a skeptic, this combo would convince me that the food industry knows its stuff WRT ultra processed food. Just the right amount of fat, salt and sugar (energy, electrolytes and mouth “feel”) to overcome any sensory specific satiety, tap into our primitive hard wiring for survival and make this stuff very more-ish. I wouldn’t give a thank you to any one in isolation.
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“Confirmation bias”. We have seen entire “news” networks built on nothing more than telling their target audience what they want to hear.
Steve
Two of mine also. Baker’s Square French Silk Pie is good, but needs to have chocolate whipped cream. Too bad they keep closing restaurants.
One cup (8-9 oz) of sugar coffee about 2pm every day. I use Maxwell House International Coffee Cafe Francais and add more sugar.
My grandmother got me hooked in the mid-60s when she made me something similar. She would heat milk on the stove, put one teaspoon of Sanka in a 12-oz glass, add a teaspoon or two of sugar, then pour the warmed milk into the glass until it was full. Now THERE is a sugar rush, especially in cool/cold weather. But it was summer, so…
Have you had their brownies?
Spreading the addiction. Not part of the solution.
Oh yeah. We’re just about finished with the batch DW made for the holidays!!! THE BEST!!
'38Packard
This may not be family friendly…but…
Orgasmic
Huberman has a good podcast on caffeine, how it works, what to avoid, and how to maximize its benefits:
Syke,
The problem is the audience for that sort of article. Often obsessive gym rats. Things do not go as planned.
I was joking with a PT earlier this year, “how many guys pumping weights end up seeing him”? He shot back, “75%”, laughing, but then, “I do not know the actual percentage but most of them”.
This is American where nothing is ever enough.
This not really chocolate. Heck, it’s not chocolate at all, it’s basically sugar and flour.
One of my favorites is Green&Blacks 85% but it has been very difficult to find lately (I used to buy it by the 10-pack on amazon). Seems to be the smoothest of the high cocoa chocolates with low sugar. But TJs is also pretty good. I also eat Lily’s, Beyond Good, Chocolove, Valrhona, and others.
Here’s a photo of most of my current stash.
NOTE: Just after posting this I found a great deal for Green&Blacks chocolate and ordered a carton of 10!
My dad is thin. He eats about six pounds of dark chocolate a week. Maybe four to five but in that ball park. He likes the dark chocolate three pound bars from Trader Joes. The Belgian stuff.
Back in “the day” I used to drink the contents of a 12 cup coffee maker each day - usually of some “pretty tasty” coffee (Sumatran, Kenyan, etc.).
Nowadays, I generally limit my intake to a couple of mugs in the morning and, maybe, a Turkish coffee at lunch time. That said, I’ve started noshing on Aldi’s dark chocolate with hazelnuts bars as desert after dinner (not the whole slab, but maybe a “slice or two”). I would say these moderately priced bars (about $2.65) are as good as you can find outside of an artesian shop.
Jeff
I credit a similar concoction for my relative disregard for sugary stuff. When I was growing up “coffee” in our house (and most of my cronies) was something called Camp coffee. I don’t know if anything similar was available in the US but it was a cordial like substance that came in a bottle and was a combo of coffee, chicory and sugar. My mum used to put it in warm milk and that’s what I thought coffee was…and I didn’t care for it. Only drank tea which itself was always made with two heaped teaspoons of sugar. This was the 1950s so might well have been a reaction to the deprivations of WWII and sugar finally being freely available.
I was a very faddy eater as a kid and I think that one day I must’ve picked up a cup of tea before mum had a chance to put the sugar in and decided I preferred it. One food fad that’s lasted, lo, this past half century and a bit. One quite comical reaction among some of my relatives (who I fancy thought my mum indulged me a bit too much for not being more insistent on dietary conformation) was to try to feed me sugar by “stealth”…not realising that the rehab that taste buds undergo made me super sensitive to anything artificially sweetened. On one visit to my auntie’s, she made us all a nice cuppa tea and brought it in and announced she knew I didn’t take sugar … so she only put 1/2 a spoonful in. I’m pretty sure she wanted to give me a smack for being so argumentative when I couldn’t choke it down.
For sure, I fancy the next few weeks, with the New Year Resolutionaries lurching up from the recliner and hitting the gym, provide a very nice stimulus package for PTs…physical therapists and personal trainers alike. A bit like Halloween for dentists and endocrinologists. Then it’ll be back to business as usual.
A better question would’ve been to ask the proportion of folk he sees who are following a rational training strategy vs those whose woes are a consequence of too much sitting.
Your dad has excellent taste in chocolate. I love those, and, in general, Belgian stuff rules the chocolate world in my opinion.
(not picking on Jeff) don’t grocery stores in your neighborhoods have a produce department? My snack last night, while watching “Hogan’s Heroes”, was a couple bananas and some peas. Really scored at the grocery store a couple weeks ago. Normally, Washington State red delicious apples are better than Michigan, bigger, juicer, and sweeter. But the store had a deal I couldn’t pass up: 3lb bag of Michigan red delicious for a buck. Score! Still tiny, but knocked it out of the park for sweet and juicy. Yum!
Steve
Got to know someone locally at SB who was a “diet expert”. I think he worked for a Jenny Craig sort of operation back when. He broke his ankle years ago and gained close to 80 pounds. He wanted to discuss how I lost 50 lbs but he kept saying he was a diet expert. Kind of a doctor heal thyself situation but without the doctor. He is a nice guy but all his expert diet ideas were wrong at least according to Noom which I used.
As far as rational exercise…it is not adding fifty pounds of muscle.
@MarkR you’re killing me!
Wendy (promising to swear off chocolate forever – is there a 12 step program?)
Same here. One of my enduring memories is visiting the Valrhona factory store during a visit to France. Samples are unlimited and free. Very dangerous!
My other addiction was capsaicin. I was a serious chile-head. But nearing 60 I suddenly, apropos of nothing, developed a total intolerance to capsaicin. Now I can’t consume any without reacting like a first-timer: pain, sweating, etc. It’s like an allergy. Nobody seems to have any idea what might be the cause, nor has seen such a thing before.
Truly annoying! But at least I can drown my sorrows in chocolate.
-IGU-
I think going with high quality chocolate, high cocoa chocolate, and low sugar chocolate, along with limiting quantity each day would work well. It takes me about a week to finish one 3 oz bar. For example, I had none at all yet today and it’s 10pm already.
