Free Republic

London - While others eat their way through advent calendars this Christmas season, two Britons are doing something quite different with their chocolate: using it to drive across the Sahara. More precisely, Andy Pag and John Grimshaw are fueling a 4,473-mile journey from Poole, England, to Timbuktu, Mali, using 3 tons of discarded chocolate converted into 396 gallons of fuel.

Chocolate Is The Most Widely Craved Food, But Is It Really Addictive? ScienceDaily (Sep. 12, 2007) — Chocolate is the most widely and frequently craved food. People readily admit to being 'addicted to chocolate' or willingly label themselves as 'chocoholics'. A popular explanation for this is that chocolate contains mood-enhancing (psychoactive) ingredients that give it special appeal. Polyphenol antioxidant Evidence and logic, however, find little support for this. Substances present in chocolate which have been highlighted as potentially pharmacologically significant include serotonin, tryptophan, phenylethylamine, tyramine and cannabinoids. However, many of these compounds exist in higher concentrations in other foods with...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is calling for a boycott of M&Ms, Twix candy bars and other snack foods made by Mars Inc, claiming the company funds experiments that kill mice, rats, guinea pigs and rabbits. "In violation of its own written policy, the candy company is currently funding a study at the University of California, San Francisco, that uses rats. The rats are force fed by having plastic tubes shoved down their throats, and they are then cut open and killed," PETA said in a statement. "In response to this new information, PETA...

Ancient beer pots point to origins of chocolate 22:00 12 November 2007 NewScientist.com news service Jeff Hecht Earlier long-necked pots would have been used for beer making. Chemical evidence in a pot such as this is seen as proof that beer brewing involved fermenting cacao (Illustration: PNAS/National Academy of Sciences) Chocolate was first produced by the ancients as a by-product of beer, suggests a new archaeological study. And evidence from drinking vessels left by the Mesoamericans who developed chocolate suggests that the source of chocolate, cacao, was first used 500 years earlier than thought. Mesoamericans – who flourished in central...

Most of us need no excuse to tuck into a bar of chocolate. But here's one anyway. Choxi+ is made by Prestat, chocolatiers to the Queen. And it is bursting with healthboosting antioxidants - natural compounds said to stave off everything from heart disease to cancer. Refinements to the manufacturing process mean the product, which goes on sale today, is said to contain up to three times more antioxidants than other brands. So high are the levels that just two small squares apparently contain more antioxidants than a pound of Brussels sprouts or an incredible 5lbs of apples. And the...

If that craving for chocolate sometimes feels like it is coming from deep in your gut, that's because maybe it is. A small study links the type of bacteria living in people's digestive system to a desire for chocolate. Everyone has a vast community of microbes in their guts. But people who crave daily chocolate show signs of having different colonies of bacteria than people who are immune to chocolate's allure. That may be the case for other foods, too. The idea could eventually lead to treating some types of obesity by changing the composition of the trillions of bacteria...

Think twice before biting into a chocolate to loose yourself in its taste - you might actually be chewing a wee bit more then you bargained for. On Wednesday (August 29).. worms and moths crawled out of a box of chocolates imitating a popular international brand, and even a few larvae. But by the time this was noticed, a few chocolate balls had been consumed. The chocolates were picked up by a Korean consumer on his trip to China. But local manufactoring experts say it looks as though the contamination happened during the manufactoring process. "It seems to be seriously...

"A Taste for Chocolate," at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich through Feb. 24, is like a hazelnut truffle - small, but oh-so-rich. Though the exhibit is only a fraction of the size of the 2003 "Chocolate" show that had visitors salivating at the American Museum of Natural History, it covers the same 2,000-year period in natural and cultural history and does so just as beautifully. "A Taste for Chocolate" is an excellent example of how you can create the maximum effect with a minimum of materials when you know how to choose and package those objects. And when those objects...

(MOUNT LAUREL, N.J.)--Campbell Soup Co. is putting Godiva up for sale, saying the decadent Belgium chocolate does not fit with the company's focus on healthy, down-home foods. The Camden-based company announced Thursday that it has hired Centerview Partners LLC to advise it on what to do with Godiva Chocolatier, which the company has owned for more than 40 years, but says has never fit squarely into any of its main business units. Analyst Mitch Pinheiro, who follows the company for Janney Montgomery Scott, said the company would need to get around $900 million for Godiva to avoid diluting earnings. Pinheiro...

Cadbury's let salmonella get into bars By Nick Britten Last Updated: 2:05am BST 14/07/2007 Cadbury Schweppes deliberately allowed salmonella to contaminate its chocolate bars in order to save money, a court was told yesterday. Thirty people became ill after eating infected chocolate The Birmingham-based company triggered a major salmonella outbreak last June, which left 30 people ill and three in hospital, after changing its testing systems from a zero-tolerance policy to one in which food containing an "allowable" level of the bacteria was permitted. Birmingham Crown Court heard that chocolate was easily contaminated by salmonella and Cadbury felt it was...

<p>OAKDALE, Calif. - On a warm May weekend in this Central Valley town, the irony was thick.</p> <p>As usual, the annual Chocolate Festival was drawing hordes of fun-seekers. But Hershey Co., Oakdale's biggest employer and the nation's biggest candy company, is closing its plant here, eliminating all 575 jobs. The company will open a factory in Monterrey, Mexico, to handle the production.</p>

On a warm May weekend in this Central Valley town, the irony was as thick as melting fudge. As usual, the annual Chocolate Festival was drawing hordes of fun-seekers. However, they were streaming in by the thousands just two weeks after Hershey Co. — Oakdale's biggest employer and the nation's biggest candy company — announced its plan to close its sprawling plant, eliminate all 575 jobs and open a new factory in Monterrey, Mexico. On one side of busy Yosemite Avenue, the festival drew children to games where they slathered their heads in syrup as their parents patiently stood in...

I've been hearing rumors for a couple of weeks now that New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin is considering running for Governor. I finally found a news outlet that confirms this rumor, thanks to freelance journalist Jason Berry, who appeared on Informed Sources last night to predict that Nagin will run for Governor. Hat tip to Library Chronicles. As an aside, is this Jason Berry the author of Amazing Grace, an account of Charles Evers' run for Governor in Mississippi back in 1972? But back to the issue at hand - Ray Nagin running for Governor of Louisiana. This makes...

SAN FRANCISCO (Map, News) - If you walk into any drug or grocery store this month and troll the surplus Easter candy section, you might find Too Tall Bunny. Legally, Too Tall Bunny isn’t chocolate at all, but on first glance it’s hard to tell. The candy rabbit is glossy and brown. Its box depicts rabbits in cute basketball uniforms, engaging in “Easter Madness.” It’s six ounces of edibility with a vaguely malted taste and consistency, with its box declaring it made of “hollow double crisp.” “Chocolate” is nowhere to be found on the package. According to standards set out...

British researchers say they are stunned to discover people get more of a buzz from eating chocolate than passionately kissing their lovers. "These results really surprised and intrigued us," psychologist Dr David Lewis said after leading a study that recorded brain activity and heart rate from volunteers who tasted pieces of dark chocolate or kissed their partners. "There is no doubt that chocolate beats kissing hands down when it comes to providing a long-lasting body and brain buzz - a buzz that, in many cases, lasted four times as long as the most passionate kiss."

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Chocoholics were given further reason to rejoice on Saturday when a small clinical study showed that dark chocolate improves the function of blood vessels. While the researchers cautioned against bingeing on bon bons, they said the findings of the trial were clear and called for larger such studies to confirm the results."In this sample of healthy adults, dark chocolate ingestion over a short period of time was shown to significantly improve (blood vessel) function," said Dr. Valentine Yanchou Njike of Yale Prevention Research Center, a co-investigator of the study.The results, presented at the annual American College...

?Here's something silly. Let's celebrate chocolate?? Enjoy American Chocolate WeekMarch 18 thru March 23! ? Most people cannot resist the temptation of eating chocolates. Occasion or no occasion, chocolates are an all-the-year-round cause for celebration. Chocolates have been subject to a lot of debates on health related issues. However, here are some cool facts: Chocolate products contain ingredients that can prevent and retard tooth decay. The amount of fat in a chocolate bar is not very high and in fact, in moderate quantity, can be used in a low-fat diet program. Chocolates do not contribute to cholesterol formation. The...

The health benefits of epicatechin, a compound found in cocoa, are so striking that it may rival penicillin and anaesthesia in terms of importance to public health, reports Marina Murphy in Chemistry & Industry, the magazine of the SCI. Norman Hollenberg, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, told C&I that epicatechin is so important that it should be considered a vitamin. Hollenberg has spent years studying the benefits of cocoa drinking on the Kuna people in Panama. He found that the risk of 4 of the 5 most common killer diseases: stroke, heart failure, cancer and diabetes, is reduced...

A new study by Tulane University demographer Mark VanLandingham puts New Orleans' per capita murder rate at 96 per 100-thousxand people last year -- the highest in the nation. There have been various other estimates of the per-capita murder rate, based on various population estimates in the city after Hurricane Katrina. VanLandingham's method takes into account the large change in New Orleans' population over the course of the year. That method takes into account the far lower population of the city in the early months of the year. In his study, VanLandingham used a group of the most widely accepted...

A pocketful of crumpled foil wrappers with a leftover plume or two will give you away. You've been into the chocolate. Again. But a Kiss is just a Kiss and well, it's only 25 calories or so. We love our Kisses, so much so that 100 years after Milton S. Hershey turned out the first flat-bottomed chocolate Kiss with the paper plume, we're going through 80 million a day. That's a lot of co-workers to blame. The bite-size chocolate seems innocent enough; it would take 99 to equal a pound of chocolate, and most of us can stop at a...