365 Days of Earrings

Friday, December 2, 2011

Chocolate: My Favorite Organic Chemical

I love these earrings. Not as much as I love chocolate... but I really like them. I wore them today with hopes that a dose of chocolate would get me through this last day of a long school week.

I ate a dose after lunch, and another after dinner tonight. Small doses--a square of 85% chocolate. Mmm.

Like Madame Pomfrey, the Hogwarts' school nurse, and many research scientists, I believe in the healing powers of chocolate. Small doses, taken when needed, lift the spirits. I've believed this for years, long before research began to support this notion. The antioxidant effects of cocoa's flavinols are good for the heart, says a source as credible as the Cleveland Clinic: http://my.clevelandclinic.org/heart/prevention/nutrition/chocolate.aspx

Part of what I love about these earrings is the diagram showing the structure of this organic chemical. Chocolate, like every natural product that we consume, is a "chemical." 

Lots of well-educated, well-intentioned people express and abhorrence of chemicals in our food. I know what they mean--a natural product like maple syrup, supplanted by an artificial product full of substances like sodium hexametaphospate. But pure maple syrup is full of chemicals, too.

Water is a chemical. So is the air we breathe. And so is chocolate. Special thanks to Kevin Abbot of Jabebo who sold me this pair of earrings when I visited his shop last summer. And to my husband John who knows that a bar of dark chocolate is my favorite gift. Next to a pair of earrings, that is.  

1 comment:

Phoebe said...

Love this! Especially the part about Madame Pomfrey. It reminds me of the chocolate bars you sent me last year when I had Mono, with a note about "taking a dose." Clearly it's medicine for the soul.