For those of us who are serious chocolate addicts, there are two times every year — Easter and Halloween — that are positively perilous. I basically can’t go into CVS. All those Cadbury eggs and chocolate bunnies at Easter call out to me.
Unfortunately, I answer. They know they have me on speed dial.
I have been promised that at my funeral, some seriously unflattering (actually downright vicious) chocolate stories will abound. The kids will relate how I had them hide the Halloween candy from me but then rifled through their rooms for it when they were at their dad’s. Or how when they went out trick-or-treating, I had them stop by the house from time to time to dump out their bags so I could poach the mini Mounds bars.
It is not surprising that I have long collected articles about the genuine health benefits of chocolate. Apparently it’s full of antioxidants and all kinds of other heart- and brain-enhancing benefits that I don’t look at too closely because the words in front of those benefits are always “when eaten in moderation.”
It doesn’t seem to matter how much I try to restrain myself. I’ve attributed my inability to lose weight to the Lindor truffles commercial: “Do you dream in chocolate?” You betcha. That’s what’s sabotaging my dietary efforts: all that chocolate I consume in my sleep.
My ever-skeptical primary care physician suggested I should consider eating less chocolate in my sleep, and while I’m at it, start exercising in my sleep as well. She just never lets up.
But here’s where I think you have to view nutrition creatively.
For example, unknown to any but the most dedicated wrapper-reading chocoholics, one can supply 100% of one’s daily calcium, riboflavin, protein and fiber requirements (never mind a whopping 50% of your daily iron) with only 25 vending-machine-size packages of M&Ms — all with no trans fats and staying well within your daily sodium and cholesterol allotments.
It is unclear how there can actually be any fiber in M&Ms, but the label says there is, and surely they wouldn’t lie about it. Must be the cornstarch? (Source: “Nutrition Through Candy: Eating Your Way to Better Health with Sugar and Red Dye No. 2,” by Inga.)
One of my most serious chocolate addictions involves Nutella, a chocolate hazelnut heroin popular in Europe and even more popular with me. This stuff was a mainstay of my diet during the time we lived in Sweden. I never even knew it existed until then.
Nutella has actually been available for quite awhile in the U.S. in the peanut butter aisle. Its most common application is as a spread on white bread, the breakfast of non-champions.
But in Inga-think, Nutella is hazelnuts, which are definitely healthy for you, enrobed in a bit of that antioxidant cocoa powder. How can this not be a health food?
Nutella makes a sinfully oozy filling for a crepe. (The crepe is also supposed to have fruit, but I regard this as a distracting contaminant.) It’s equally great on ice cream.
I long ago concluded that putting Nutella on bread only dilutes its rich, chocolately gooeyness. It ideally should be mainlined, er, consumed in its purest right-out-of the-jar form.
But sadly, someone of my age and avoirdupois does have to show some restraint. I pledged to restrict myself to a tablespoon per day — 100 calories, 6 grams of fat; no worse than peanut butter.
It turns out, however, that if you use a soup spoon (the equivalent of a tablespoon) and you buy the large economy-size jar of Nutella, you can get the spoon buried into the Nutella jar about five inches up the handle. Then with dedicated practice (it’s all in the wrist), one twists the spoon until a giganto glob of Nutella at least 3 inches in diameter is wrapped around it. A power drill may be employed if necessary.
Of course, to get full immersion of the spoon into the Nutella, one’s fingers often inadvertently end up in the contents of the jar — sometimes one’s entire thumb! And if one is not careful, the index and middle fingers as well! Which must be licked!
Which is the only explanation as to why a large economy-size jar of Nutella has at best three tablespoons in it. This is also how I lived in Stockholm with no car, walked five miles a day and gained 12 pounds.
Fortunately for me, Easter is over and those mini Mounds bars in their mega-size Halloween-portioned bags won’t be taunting me at CVS for at least five months. But Nutella, alas, will still be on the supermarket shelf, shamelessly calling out to me.
Inga’s lighthearted looks at life appear regularly in the La Jolla Light. Reach her at [email protected]. ♦
