Australia's Black Dog Institute, a non-profit educational and research institute with interest and expertise in the treatment and diagnosis of depression and bipolar disorder, has, via a study of 3,000 people, made a revolutionary discovery. Sort of. Of those in the study (all of whom demonstrated various symptoms associated with depression) 45% craved chocolate. The fact that women all over the world have known about chocolate staving off some of the symptoms of depression since some time in the mid-eighteenth century in no way diminishes the value of the study. Particularly because of that 45% who craved chocolate, 60% found that chocolate improved their mood if they indulged while depressed (that's 27% of the overall study participants, for those eating chocolate at home).

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When I tell friends and family about child labor, some are positively horrified. Didn’t we outlaw that years ago because it’s so dangerous, they ask? But when I mention its use in third world countries, many people get high and mighty about it. “Well, isn’t it better than no job at all? They can feed their families this way,” they retort comfortably, content to continue buying their products at cheap prices.

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Do we really need an excuse to eat more fudge in our lives? Maybe we should all just take down those Chik-Fil-A signs that say “Eat Mor Chikin” and replace them with “Eat More Fudge.” Wouldn’t we all be so much happier as a result? I think the pounds gained would probably be about the same, so no adverse health benefits there. Whether you can only stand a bit at a time, or you could enjoy the richness of fudge all day, every day, June 16 is definitely a day to indulge.

In honor of National Fudge Day, you can take part by…

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This PDF of the military's specification for oatmeal cookies and brownies, document MIL-C-44072C, [PDF] has been making the rounds on the internet lately, most recently on Metafilter.  Some people think it's a hoax, a hilarious send-up of the US Military's culture of bureaucracy.  But there are enough people vouching for its credentials that I'm willing to believe it's real.

More to the point, does it work?

After reading the spec, I decided that I absolutely had to try it for myself.  


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As delicious as Lindt chocolates are, they are definitively not fair trade.  This raises a lot of ethical questions and objections from me, but I did end up buying the chocolate, didn't I?  What can I say; it was on sale.  Apparently my ethical objections go out the window in the face of an orange "50% Off"  card.  Sad but true.

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To complement my relatively plain choice of regular old milk chocolate from Endangered Species Chocolate, I also bought a bar of "exotic" chocolate from Green & Black's.  Maya Gold is described on the label as "Bittersweet dark chocolate with orange and spices."  Which spices, exactly?  I was curious to find out.


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Otters are delicious!

After watching that dismaying documentary "Chocolate: The Bitter Truth" I resolved to purchase more fair trade chocolate.  Honestly I have always shied away from the more expensive bars, because… well, they're expensive!  I wasn't really aware of the difference between fair trade and "regular" chocolate.  Most of your high end chocolate bars are organic, or fair trade, or just really fancy, or some darned thing.  I couldn't keep track.  


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Ever Wonder Where Cocoa Beans Come From?

I recently watched a BBC documentary called "Chocolate: The Bitter Truth."  And, wow.  This is a hard-hitting documentary about the human cost of chocolate, 60% of which is grown in a narrow tropical belt in West Africa, both Ghana and the Ivory Coast.  This documentary isn't yet available in America, but you can read an excellent article which sums up the documentary's contents here on the BBC website.

It turns out that chocolate is about as bad as diamonds, ethically speaking.  There are international and national rules regarding child labor, which the cocoa growers flagrantly violate.  Children are pressed into service with dangerous tools, instead of being in school as the law demands.


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Just Don't Get Close Enough To Smell It!

I'm skeptical of anything that uses the word "European."   Especially if you call your product a "Fine European" item, that just screams "amateur hour" to me.  Add to that the (perhaps unfair) stigma of being deeply discounted at the store, and I had pretty low expectations.  I bought this 5.3 ounce/150 gram bar of chocolate on sale for a mere dollar - cheaper than a Hershey bar of comparable size.  I was skeptical, as you might imagine!


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Nothing can beat Tina Fey's advertisement for a Brownie Husband......except of course an actual brownie husband....