Chocolate Week

If you’re an absolute choc-aholic, you’ll love Chocolate Week!

Held from 15-21 October 2018, it is seven solid days of indulging your sweet-tooth and trying out the best chocolate in the UK!

We’ve got the classic Dairy Milk, Mars, the Yorkie, Walnut Whip, the Milky Bar … I could go on, but I’m just making myself hungry!   I especially used to love Willy Wonka’s chocolate bar that cracked and melted in your mouth!

Of course people have their dark chocolate and white chocolate preferences depending on their pallet!  Women joke about preferring dark chocolate to sex – and chocolate is a well-known aphrodisiac.  Casanova was known for eating chocolate before sleeping with his conquests!

Speaking of jokes I like this one: If I eat dark and white chocolate equally am I eating a balanced diet?!  Chocolate makes us feel so good but is there any real explanation behind it (aside from the delicious taste and texture of course!)?  It is thought that substances like serotonin and phenylethylamine produce a high in your brain that makes you feel giddy and generally more attractive.  It’s also thought to release endorphins which makes us feel oh, so happy!

And the even more fantastic news is that it can actually be very good for you!  It’s also well known that women crave chocolate around the time of menstruation.  Some scientists think this is because chocolate contains magnesium and women are lacking it at this point of the cycle.

Other than magnesium chocolate contains iron, potassium and more great vitamins that keep us healthy and well.  Probably that and the fact we’re feeling a bit sorry for ourselves and could do with a pick me up.  Any excuse!

It’s thought that Hernan Cortes, one of Christopher Columbus’s ambassadors first received cocoa as a gift from an Aztec emperor.  He took cocoa back to Spain in 1527 where the Spanish kept it a secret for over a century, and they taxed it so highly that only the rich people could afford it.

Eventually in around 1650, chocolate came to the UK and the Chocolate Houses of London were born, but it was still a drink for the rich.  It was only in the 18th and 19th century that it began to be produced in the chocolate form we recognise today!

Chocolate Week 2018 looks set to be bigger and better than ever, with chocolate tasting and chocolate making demonstrations being held around the country.

It’s time to get those taste buds tingling!