The Chocolate Mystique
1/23/2003 | | Alumna and chocolatier Mary Leonard. Photo by Dan Marshall |
By Diane Richard
As dusk deepens on an autumn evening, Mary Leonard (B.A. ’76, B.S. ’78) opens her doors wide and asks a simple question: “Would you like champagne with your truffle?”
Faced with this greeting, visitors to Chocolat Céleste stumble not. Yes, they say. Heavens yes!
A handful of people gather in the St. Paul chocolates shop owned by Leonard. They come to nibble on Celestial Sweeties (truffles tinged with Frangelico liqueur) and Orange Blossoms (with shavings of orange zest on top). These and other balls of pure chocolate decadence are paired with a sparkling wine, a cabernet sauvignon or framboise, a raspberry-flavored liqueur.
Kristofer (M.D. ’69) and Kristen (M.A. ’71) Lund were among the croqueurs, a term claimed by French chocoholics that means “crunchers.” The St. Paul couple had been driving home when they spotted the tasting along University Avenue near Highway 280. The prospects of spoiling their dinner lured them in.
“If it’s chocolate, I’ll eat it,” says Dr. Lund. “Kristen is more discerning. I have no class.”
No longer, if Leonard—who holds a degree in foods in business from the University of Minnesota—and other fine chocolatiers of the world can help it. Leonard is in the business of creating croqueurs with class. Or, at least, those who know their Mars Bars from their Michel Cluizel.
***
Once a month, platters of truffles sit on robed tables and bottles of wine stand at attention at Chocolat Céleste (French for “celestial,” or heavenly). Leonard hovers nearby to fill glasses and educate visitors about the nuances of cocoa, or cacao, as Spanish colonists to the Americas, home of the bean, spelled it. She snaps open clear plastic boxes filled with all sorts of chocolates of diverse pedigree, from Venezuelan to Belgian and with cocoa liquor concentrations ranging from 30 percent to 70 percent, for customers to sample.
Leonard encourages visitors to smell and then bite into a piece, letting it melt across their tongues to explore the changing flavors. “This one’s really earthy,” she says of a deep-brown chunk, her guests nodding their agreement.
Of course, Leonard educates customers as a way to sell her own handcrafted edibles, which run $2.50 a truffle and up. She buys fine-imported chocolate—her favorite is an Italian blend called Irca—to lavish over her own creations. Many of her wares sell to foodies via the Internet (see link above). But some leave with customers from the sales room of her production facility, where her employees spend their days plunging toffee and whipped-cream-and-butter ganache into big bowls of rich, glossy chocolate.
Earlier dreams of working at the test kitchens of Betty Crocker or General Mills, combined with entrepreneurial drive and a serious sweet tooth, explain Leonard’s present undertaking as a “unique boutique chocolatier” devoted to selling the freshest chocolates possible (that, Leonard says, is Chocolat Céleste’s point of difference from, say, Godiva, whose goods can be months old when sold).
Carving a niche in the rough-and-tumble world of chocolate—where world markets, monsoons and droughts, and civil wars dictate cocoa prices and Hershey’s and M&M/Mars Inc. preside like two-ton chocolate rabbits—is no small feat.
Gary Reineccius (B.S. ’64, M.S. ’67), a professor of food, science, and nutrition at the University who wrote his dissertation on chocolate flavor, admires the moxie shown by Leonard, his former student. “You bet we’re proud of her,” he says. “It takes a lot of guts to start a new business and put your money on the line and your life on the line.”
***
Mary Leonard’s business is but one example of the world’s ever-growing passion for chocolate. Its rise has been compared to the success of fine wines and gourmet coffee.
It’s no wonder. Theobroma cacao, the rain-forest tree that gives us the cocoa bean, translates to “food of the gods.” Constituting a $13 billion retail industry in the United States, whose citizens consumed 3.1 billion pounds in 2001, chocolate has earned its place as one of nature’s most celebrated gifts.
Today, it even has snob appeal. Especially when it comes to the $4 to $6 per 3-ounce chocolate bar, with its appellation of “single-origin” (for chocolate using beans from a particular country, region, or plantation) and “varietal” (single species of bean); a label listing its cocoa liquor concentration (unsweetened chocolate is “100 percent pure,” and the addition of sugar and other ingredients proportionally diminishes the percentage); and its gilded packaging. Michel Cluizel, a fine bar from France, is considered by many to be among the best.
All these things have extended the chocolate market far beyond the grocery-store candy aisle. As Professional Candy Buyer magazine recently reported, premium chocolate may be just the affordable luxury Americans crave in these troubled times.
This year, the bean even garnered its own 10-city traveling exhibition curated by the Field Museum of Chicago. According to museum officials, “Chocolate” has drawn 300,000 visitors since its opening last Valentine’s Day. Perhaps it was the piped-in aroma of cocoa beans or the promise of samples at the end (though a vermin problem nixed that plan). Or maybe it was simply the rich subject matter that drew them in.
“You say the word chocolate and eyes light up and the mouth starts to water,” says Whitney Owens, an administrator for the exhibition. “It’s intensely personal and such a decadent treat. So learning the history about something that has such a large place in our national consciousness is a fascinating subject.”
Nii Ayite Quaye (M.B.A. ’92) is among the fascinated. Quaye came to the United States from Ghana, a West African country that’s renowned for the high quality of its cocoa beans. His uncle managed a cocoa-processing plant there, so Quaye admits to having been “a little chocolate-spoiled” growing up. After earning his M.B.A. from the U’s Carlson School of Management, Quaye spent a year as a cocoa trader at a large multinational corporation.
So he knows about beans. But when it comes to American chocolate-eating habits, Quaye was perplexed about the supersweet, bland, milky confectionery coatings so many prefer. That is, until recently.
“There’s a weird epicurean thing going on,” Quaye says. “[Chocolate] is the next special thing. We’ve moved from cheeses to wine to high-end beers. It’s the next luxury item.” Quaye, who lives in Edina, Minnesota, hopes it’s a trend that sticks. “I hope people find out how good an experience with a good chocolate can be.”
***
People have hailed chocolate since well before Montezuma reportedly started quaffing 50 goblets of the stuff a day. In the ancient Mayan, Olmec, and Aztec cultures of Central America, cacahuatl (or, in Aztec spelling, xocolatl, from which chocolate gets its name) was revered for its spiritual and medicinal properties.
But what was manna for them was putrid to others. Spanish explorers who tried the thick, frothy brew laced with chilies deemed it “a drink for pigs,” deploring its bitter, oily taste. That the native Americans dyed it red to resemble blood did nothing to further its appeal in the conquistadors’ eyes.
Once chocolate was imported to Europe, in the early 1500s, and combined with cane sugar, however, the Spanish changed their tune. Chocolate soon became the Starbucks of its day, spurring the elite to gather in “chocolate houses” throughout Europe for their daily elixir of hot cocoa. And between the 16th century and early 20th century, chocolate took on cure-all properties, praised for treating ailments from gout to mental fatigue, kidney stones to anemia, low sexual desire to a short lifespan.
A backlash came during the 20th century, when chocolate was blamed for all sorts of ills, including acne, migraines, cavities, and obesity. Science has debunked many of these malignings, though the small amount of caffeine in a chocolate bar (about the same as in a cup of decaffeinated coffee) may indeed aggravate migraines. As for obesity, well, with Americans eating a reported 12 pounds of chocolate a year, those calories can pile up.
More recently, chocolate has received a clean bill of health—when eaten within reason. Researchers say that cocoa—especially in dark chocolate—is chock full of substances that produce feelings of well-being, lift the spirits, and may even promote heart health.
***
One of today’s top researchers on chocolate is Penny Kris-Etherton (Ph.D. ’78), a distinguished professor of nutrition at Penn State University. Much of Kris-Etherton’s research has made recent headlines, some of it thanks to funding from the local chocolate industry, which includes Hershey’s in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
Kris-Etherton’s research team found that cocoa’s polyphenol antioxidants, particularly its concentration of flavonoids, may reduce the risk of developing cardiovascular disease. (Antioxidants are beneficial compounds that scientists say may prevent heart disease. Cocoa contains about eight times the level of polyphenols of that in strawberries and also more than in Brussels sprouts, broccoli and other leafy greens, citrus fruits, and berries. As for flavonoids, a particular type of antioxidant, a 40-gram bar of dark chocolate is equivalent to six apples, four and a half cups of tea, 28 glasses of white wine, or two glasses of red wine.)
Kris-Etherton was also behind recent findings about cocoa butter’s unusual saturated vegetable fat called stearic acid. Unlike most saturated fats, stearic acid, a natural cocoa component, doesn’t appear to increase the cholesterol level in blood. And she co-authored the 2001 paper about cocoa’s favorable effects on artery-clogging LDL, commonly known as “bad cholesterol.” When combined with a healthy diet of fruits and vegetables, products containing cocoa powder and dark chocolate may inhibit atherosclerosis, the report suggests, keeping the arteries from hardening.
Still, all of Kris-Etherton’s findings come with this caveat: that cocoa products should only be incorporated—“sensibly and prudently”—in a diet filled with fruits, vegetables, reduced-fat dairy products, fish, nuts, and other healthy foods.
Chocolate “is not a bad food, but you have to be careful about how you eat it,” she says. “Really, what I would like to see happen is for people to figure out healthy ways to eat cocoa or chocolate, using it in a different way, not as a confectionery product.”
For inspiration, she looks to Mexico and Central America. Sauces that combine cocoa and spices, such as Mexican moles, without the added sugar—“that,” she says, “would be delicious.”
***
Many people claim intense chocolate cravings. But does being a chocoholic mean one has an addiction? Pharmacologists have their doubts.
Unquestionably, chemicals found in chocolate produce a sense of euphoria. One, anandamide, actually triggers the same brain cell receptors as THC, the psychoactive chemical in marijuana, though it would take a feast of more than 25 pounds of chocolate to get “high.”
Another chocolate substance, phenylethylamine, is the chemical that’s released in the brain when people fall in love. Its effects lend it an aphrodisiac aura; the Marquis de Sade reportedly asked his wife to send it to him in prison, and Casanova viewed chocolate as we do Viagra. Still, there’s no research saying chocolate improves sexual performance or enhances libido.
These and other brain-active substances in chocolate may be the reason so many women crave chocolate immediately before or during their menstrual periods. They are believed to have a soothing effect on hormones gone temporarily haywire.
None of this, however, suggests that cocoa is chemically addictive in the way that nicotine is. Recent research indicates that the sensory properties of chocolate—its scent, taste, and smooth texture—have as much or more to do with cravings than its chemical composition.
***
About 10 minutes into the tasting at Chocolat Céleste, Mary Leonard has won a customer, if not a complete convert. Dr. Lund describes the dark chocolate truffle he consumed as “explosively wonderful.”
“Kristen always has an eye for chocolate,” he says. “I have a tooth for it.”
Watching his wife, a social worker, contemplate a vast display of imported chocolates across the room, the family physician elaborates on chocolate’s health benefits. “It’s definitely necessary,” he says. “It’s an antidepressant, it’s an aphrodisiac. . . . It’s good for the heart too.”
The Lunds bought a $40 box, a gift for Kristen’s birthday.
“I don’t splurge on chocolate for myself,” she confides as her husband settles the bill. “The last chocolate I got was for our anniversary, so I felt we had to share it 50–50.”
That, evidently, would not be the case for this box.
Diane Richard is a freelance writer in Minneapolis.
 | | | |  | | Chocolate's Bitter Half | If chocolate’s health benefits have made the news recently, so, too, has its reputation for exploiting cocoa laborers. The cocoa trade’s bitter side stretches back to the 16th century, when Mesoamericans, then Africans, were enslaved at plantations.
Harvesting cocoa depends on people power. Cocoa pods, which resemble footballs, must be chopped from the delicate rainforest tree and split open. The seeds, or beans, are then left to ferment and dry in the sun. Finally, the beans are roasted before being ground into the substance we know as chocolate. Much of this labor takes place at small family farms, which employ cheap labor to protect their profits against a volatile world market.
Recent reports have shined a light on inhumane labor practices across Africa, where 90 percent of the world’s cocoa is grown. A 1998 investigation by the United Nations Children’s Fund into local farming practices suggested that as many as 15,000 children between the ages of 9 and 12 were slaves, trafficked to plantations in West Africa. According to the United States Labor Department, another 284,000 children—200,000 of them in war-torn Ivory Coast—work in hazardous conditions in the cocoa business.
Last year, this news spurred the same kind of activism that gave rise to the Fair Trade coffee movement. Outraged consumers contacted lawmakers and launched a letter campaign to the American and European chocolate industries, pressing for cocoa-worker protections and an end to child slavery.
In 2001, the U.S. Chocolate Manufacturers Association (CMA) and its European counterparts ultimately agreed to certify that, by 2005, their members’ products would be free of abusive child labor (many food co-ops and other stores already sell only sustainably produced chocolate, including the brands Endangered Species and Newman’s Own).
“We must—and will—do everything we can to insure that children are not harmed in the growing of cocoa,” says Larry Graham, CMA president, in a release posted at the association’s Web site. “We share with our partners an unwavering commitment to eradicate child and forced labor from the cocoa fields.” —D.R.
|
|
Print View