A Confession! And All Good Things in Moderation

I'm a chocolate person. Some people are not. I find that odd, of course. 

So here's a confession... I have stashes of chocolate lying around my house and in my car and in at least three of my purses. When I was a kid, my grandpa was like this. We used to laugh about it. He wasn't the chocolate bar type - he was a box guy. As a kid with severe allergies, those boxed chocolate bon bon shaped things with their random fillings were a danger zone for me. But I remember finding little boxes of them all around his apartment in the Bronx and getting a chuckle out of it but also being upset that I couldn't indulge. 

As an adult, I like to have a bit of chocolate every day. It usually amounts to a one or two inch square. And with such a flood of delicious chocolate products on the market today, it's hard not to indulge. Of course I have my rules. I never buy milk chocolate. I'll only buy bars that are at least 55% cocoa (my sweet spot, as it were, is 70% or more cocoa bars) and my top three fave flavors are orange peel, candied ginger and mint. That sweet melty goodness of the square on my tongue can round out any day nicely. 


I've read countless articles praising small amounts of chocolate. Some have gone so far as to say that dark chocolate is healthy, like this article. I was overjoyed to read this article from the Huffington Post this spring about the relationship between chocolate and cholesterol. And this one from ABC News, Dark Chocolate for a Healthier Heart, is sure to please chocolate lovers. 

Today we see articles galore about too much of this and not enough of that. And eat this for a healthy heart, but not if you have diabetes. And avoid this if you don't want gout but get lots of it if you want abs of steel. It's dizzying. I'm okay with having a little bit of chocolate every day. I live my life healthfully. I eat well and exercise regularly and always have. One chocolate bar can last 2 weeks or more in my house. So am I advocating running out and buying up the world's cocoa beans and expecting that to cure life's ills? No way. I dont think that a headline in a few magazines should justify lifestyle behaviors that are beyond the scope of rational. So why, you might ask, do I have what I describe as stashes? Good question. If I'm out and unable to stop what I'm doing but need a bite of something, I can whip out of square of that chocolate bar. If I'm sitting in traffic, starving and cursing myself for driving in the first place, one square of that trusty chocolate saves the day. We all know that eating a chocolate bar a day isn't healthy. But a bite or two seems okay to me. I'm able to stop after that. All good things in moderation.