F chocolate manufacturers

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Torn Mind

Lifer
Nov 25, 2012
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Two bars of 65g 45% dark chocolate with one cup of coffee is enough to give me an immense sense of well-being for the day. I can't do this every day coz the effect doesn't last if I keep doing it. Have to wait a day or two before I can trigger the good feeling again.
That's the insulin and caffeine, and replenishment of glycogen stores.

Had to eat a bunch of fruit and croissants this week to TOFTT, so yeah, I also feel like a sharp tool mentally.
 
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That's the insulin and caffeine, and replenishment of glycogen stores.
I've read that the endorphins from chocolate flavanols increase blood flow to the liver and brain so that's also a part of it.






If I have nothing but bitter dark chocolate, I would still eat it. Better than dealing with a lot of old age complications.
 

Torn Mind

Lifer
Nov 25, 2012
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I've read that the endorphins from chocolate flavanols increase blood flow to the liver and brain so that's also a part of it.






If I have nothing but bitter dark chocolate, I would still eat it. Better than dealing with a lot of old age complications.
My point is that 45% dark chocolate would still have enough sugar to trigger a insulin response.
I don't doubt it the other chemicals has some minor contributions with regards to "feeling good", but insulin-triggering foods(the starchy component) have a much larger pleasure effect.

I recently ate some 3oz fried potatoes, that stuff was sure damn good. This week has been a substantial break from the norm of the past many months for me. Fat people are often mentally damaged and the insulin-triggering food's comfort effect is basically opiate by food. Dopamine gets released.
 
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This week has been a substantial break from the norm of the past many months for me.
Were you overweight / trying to lose weight to attain your self imposed weight goals? I gain weight easily. Then I have to drink juices a day or two to get my pants to loosen up.
 

Muse

Lifer
Jul 11, 2001
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Certain city centers in Cali are so flush with money that plain store brands like Lindt are not that "high class". Kinda like owning a Benz in L.A is not that special. Although Ghiardelli does have a store there.
My impression is that they are out of San Francisco and enjoy a reputation there therefore. That would account for their having a store in L.A., the largest city in the state (in terms of population and land mass). But I have never been impressed with their chocolate... ever.

Yeah, Lindt is everywhere here. My local indy produce intensive supermarket has a staggering variety of Lindt. I wouldn't expect to see it in a chocolate specialty store in S.F. I'm not really into trying every dang chocolate out there. So many, and lots of them are organic, but I am usually disappointed when I try one. I'm sure that many are pretty good, maybe great, but I'm usually not willing to try them. I am really not a chocoholic. I always have a bunch in the house, though. I also have a lot of alcoholic beverages, but am very take it or leave it with that stuff. I have had two 3 ounce glasses of cheap cab in the last 2 weeks, which is about average. Oh, I did drink one 12 ounce bottle of ale, which is unusual for me... on a whim.
 
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I am really not a chocoholic. I always have a bunch in the house, though. I also have a lot of alcoholic beverages, but am very take it or leave it with that stuff.

Jeanne Louise Calment was quite the mystery when she was alive and has remained that way even in her death. In 1997 she died at 122 years old, and when asked about her secrets to longevity, she said chocolate, port wine, and olive oil.

I believe you possess the elements that make up the secret to a healthy long life. Just need to consume them moderately.
 

Torn Mind

Lifer
Nov 25, 2012
12,004
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Were you overweight / trying to lose weight to attain your self imposed weight goals? I gain weight easily. Then I have to drink juices a day or two to get my pants to loosen up.
Dental matters are were my initial focus. Though seeing how prediabetes is basically "science and industry's" way to implement legalized malpractice, I've come to the belief that I'm killing two or three birds with one stone by not eating in a self-harming manner. The third matter is that surgery is fucking dangerous, especially for LOW blood pressure people like myself and my entire immediate family. Insurance is piece of shit(private or public it don't matter, the adjudicators will all rule to profit the entity they work for), so it's best to avoid ever having to get one.

I'm driven more out of contempt of losing money and time than anything else, along with powerlessness a person has when someone else becomes your "guardian" or you have to drugs that sap your energy(chemo). Initial dentist hangs patients out to dry in order to cause damage and practice #2 took $150 for an X-ray and tried to make bank through exploiting ambiguity(I did not need a root canal and crown). It's the same reason I got into car repair; a piece of shit unethical mechanic was the trigger. Anyone concerned about me having an eating disorder need not worry. I eat plenty, and plenty of fat as well, but not shitty fats.

The diet is basically low-carb meets "Mediterranean", although I would just say I'm just covering all the micros plus "special sauces" in "real food" from all the kingdoms.

Fatty fish, like sardines, was more of an accidental windfall mentally. Helped my COVID brain fog quite a bit but physically I wasn't quite there; the soy products helped with chilling out the remaining physical aftereffects, like heart agitation, which was still present in early March of this year. Maybe those plant estrogens were just what I needed. For the soy, it all began with drinking some clearance "Silk Ultra" felt good even though it tasted weird and it clearly sat long on the shelf. Later, one of my daily foods would be tofu, along with peanut butter, and a fatty fish like wild pink salmon. Due to harvest season, cara cara oranges were consumed from March to April daily, and then sweet potatoes .


Weight is irrelevant to me. I actually gained weight to 60 kg but then lost it from March to May without even thinking about it. I'm more focused on the likes of magnesium and other chemicals. I don't give a shit about "clean" eating or the bullshit called "detox".

My sister, in her lack of wisdom, decided to cook 40 oz of pasta all at once two days ago when perishables were still uneaten in the house. I managed to eat 12 oz of the pasta, peas, mayonnaise, and fish she blended together. I then managed to eat a whole pound of ground beef with some onions later that night; that's the power of insulin crashing and triggering hunger in the hypothalamus.

The reason I broke routine was in part because my mom still uses the "free food welfare", which wound up dumping a ton of grapes, oranges, sweet potatoes, croissants, etc this week, along with a giant pile of uneaten potatoes more than 8 months old laying around the house because I initially avoided nearly all starch and sugar products after April 2021. .
 
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I then managed to eat a whole pound of ground beef with some onions later that night;
Onions with meat make a good combination in preventing the harmful effects of red meat. However, I think I saw a study that said people eating meat are 50% more likely to get diabetes than vegetarians. I myself was eating a lot of chicken before my blood glucose went out of control in 2018. Suffered almost two years eating salads and hummus with different herbal supplements like Berberine to control my blood glucose, until I came upon the real reason (diabetes is more of a fat metabolism disorder). Went on the rice diet for 15 days (it was just white rice and fruits), which left me pretty weak and underweight but all results since then point to hyperglycemia being gone. Now my main objective is to undo the damage diabetes caused to my blood vessels. Easier said than done. Still trying different food eating habits to try to repair that damage.

By the way, I completely agree with your distrust of the medical "professionals". Very few of them out there who care more about healing and less about cashing in on the sickness of the unlucky people who unwittingly walk into their den.
 
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Torn Mind

Lifer
Nov 25, 2012
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Onions with meat make a good combination in preventing the harmful effects of red meat. However, I think I saw a study that said people eating meat are 50% more likely to get diabetes than vegetarians. I myself was eating a lot of chicken before my blood glucose went out of control in 2018. Suffered almost two years eating salads and hummus with different herbal supplements like Berberine to control my blood glucose, until I came upon the real reason (diabetes is more of a fat metabolism disorder). Went on the rice diet for 15 days (it was just white rice and fruits), which left me pretty weak and underweight but all results since then point to hyperglycemia being gone. Now my main objective is to undue the damage diabetes caused to my blood vessels. Easier said than done. Still trying different food eating habits to try to repair that damage.

By the way, I completely agree with your distrust of the medical "professionals". Very few of them out there who care more about healing and less about cashing in on the sickness of the unlucky people who unwittingly walk into their den.
Nutrition is an infantile science still stuck in beta testing mode. It's because unlike other fields, it's insulated from being forced to really analyze a cause of a crisis like economics was forced to do so many times. Market crashes tick people off and cast a spotlight. Dead people from health crises cannot advocate for themselves and "funding gatekeeping" can get results that favor the funder of the study. Plus, the type of people rolling into the profession are sort of messed up from the start. Probable they have their own insecurities causing them to be obsessive about food, and for the vegans, they care more about "animals" than humans and will sacrifice human health to prop up that diet.

One of the fundamentals matters of good science is disambiguating variables. "Meats" are almost never eaten alone nor like a wild predator first eating liver and heart. It's flavored up with spices, starches, salt and sugars. It is not a "x" but rather an "xz" variable. The micronutrient profile is substantially different between fish and land mammals, and it is arguable that at least the fatty fishes are almost a perfectly comprehensive food.

I highly doubt a bare, unseasoned American chicken would be particularly pleasing to eat for anyone. Breading is one way of enhancing the taste. Another is sauces. The organs a primal animal would target first, like liver or heart, are rejected by humans living in a modern industrial and now "techy" society.

It's a pretty basic fact that insulin inhibits glucagon, the main catabolic hormone. Yet people are encouraged to continue insulin-stimulating food combos.

I know what foods cause me a binge trigger, and they all happen to have a sweet or starchy component. Appetite expansion leads to overeating of everything, and ultimately caloric excess. And starches and sugars happen to be the appetite expanders in food.
 
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I highly doubt a bare, unseasoned American chicken would be particularly pleasing to eat for anyone.
I can attest from eating badly made bland rotisserie chicken a few times that it not only tastes like eating cardboard but also similarly hard to swallow.
 
Nov 17, 2019
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I eat canned chicken. And canned pork. And canned beef. And canned lots of other stuff. I've even had canned chocolate. At least I think it's chocolate.

Vintage Sealed Tiny Can Hershey's Chocolate Syrup 5.5 Oz New NOS NO ...
 
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Canned anything is pretty bad for health due to preservatives and high sodium content. If I had to due to no choice, I would drain the liquid, wash the food thoroughly with water and then add salt/pepper sparingly for taste and some salad to round out the nutrient profile of the meal.

Probably the only thing I haven't washed is canned light meat tuna in olive oil and canned hummus.
 

Torn Mind

Lifer
Nov 25, 2012
12,004
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Canned anything is pretty bad for health due to preservatives and high sodium content. If I had to due to no choice, I would drain the liquid, wash the food thoroughly with water and then add salt/pepper sparingly for taste and some salad to round out the nutrient profile of the meal.
The lining of the cans worries me the most. BPA replacements might be just as bad or worse.
 

Kaido

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I've read that the endorphins from chocolate flavanols increase blood flow to the liver and brain so that's also a part of it.

If I have nothing but bitter dark chocolate, I would still eat it. Better than dealing with a lot of old age complications.

Anecdotal information that will be immediately dismissed by everyone who reads it: I have a huge number of family & friends who have cancer. The cancer doctor at the hospital takes everyone off chocolate. Apparently it strongly causes or contributes to cancer. However, there's also supposedly enormous industry pressure to sweep this information under the table (chocolate is a $50 billion dollar market in the U.S.). And even if they did make it public, it's just about impossible to penetrate cultural beliefs & in particular people's worldviews:


This has happened in other food industries. imo the sugar industry's deceit is worse than the tobacco industry hiding the truth about how smoking impacts our health:


In practice, I think it's like anything else: we're going to die anyone at some point, so it's really about how good & bad the ride is along the way. Used in moderation, I think that using sugar & chocolate is fine for most people. If you can enjoy some goodies but also not put yourself into diabetic ketosis, then that's probably a pretty good balance if you like those ingredients!
 

Kaido

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The guy I mentioned above in the thread, the owner of a small European food import company whose very small warehouse was in Oakland, CA told me that the sign of a quality chocolate bar was how it breaks. If it breaks cleanly leaving a very smooth surface at the break that signifies quality. Cheaper chocolate will not break cleanly and smoothly like that.

I have never considered trying to make chocolate from cocoa beans. What I have done is make some pretty fine English toffee, for which you need some good chocolate, have also made some very nice chocolate mousse. I have bought quite a variety of quality cocoa powders, principally to make hot cocoa. My favorite remains Droste.

So there's a few different kind of chocolate products available on the market. In theory, everything comes from the bean of the cacao pod. From there, you have true chocolate & you have compound chocolate. Most of the American products available are compound chocolate, which removes/reduces the cocoa fat & replace it with vegetable fat (cheaper) & some type of sweetener:


With true chocolate, you typically have the cocoa mass (bean mush, which is later flattened into liquid using a melanger), cocoa fat, sugar, and maybe like milk powder. It goes through several crystallization stages (sort of like water, steam, and ice) in a process called tempering. Properly-tempered chocolate has several characteristics, including the signature "snap" that you mentioned. I actually use my sous-vide wand to do my tempering at home:


The reason European chocolates are so much better has to do with the laws regarding chocolate. In America, chocolate is only required to be 10% cocoa. In Europe, the minimum is 20%. If you've ever had a European Cadbury bar, those are 23% cocoa, whereas a Hershey's bar is only 11% cocoa:


Then there's even more watered-down products, like Almond Bark (a brand name used for inexpensive melting chocolate, aka Candiquik), which is great for doing stuff like dipping Oreos or cake pops with, as it's very easy to work with & holds up well. There's also couveture chocolate, which is true chocolate, but has a higher percentage of cocoa butter (31% minimum), so that it's easy to melt. The difference is that couveture still needs to be melted, whereas Almond Bark type of products simply need to be melted, making the cheap stuff a lot easier to work with:


I'm not a chocolate snob; there are different products & reasons why you would use different types of chocolate, including the "cheap stuff". I got into bean-to-bar because my juicer (Champion-brand masticating) is capable of doing 2 tasks:

1. Splitting beans
2. Creating cocoa mass

So basically, I can roast the beans in my APO, then split the beans from the husk/shell in the Champion, the take the resulting broken beans (nibs, can optionally roast the nibs at this point too for a different flavor) & grind those into cocoa mass (also called cacao liquor, baking chocolate, etc.), throw those into the melanger to liquify, add sugar, milk powder, lecithin etc., then make my chocolate from there, so that I get full control over the final product. It's amazing to me that human beings were inspired to take nasty-taking beans, go through this whole crazy process, and make wonderful chocolate out of it lol. So the owner you mentioned was correct: true chocolate has a signature snap to it, which compound chocolate doesn't have. It's not better or worse, it just depends on what you like. I love Snickers & Kit-Kat bars, probably because I grew up with them & have nostalgia for them, but I also appreciate real chocolate bars. If you can find Milkboy Swiss Chocolates locally (like at World Market), their Alpine Milk chocolate is one of my favorite ones available state-side:


The process to make chocolate is a bit tedious & particular, and requires some special tools, but it's not hard, especially because you can split it up over time. I'm still refining my process to get what I'm looking for, as there are some very specific milk & dark chocolate flavors I'm going after. There's a lot of factors that go into flavoring true chocolate, including:

1. The beans themselves: the type of beans, the environment (location), the drying process on-location, etc.
2. The processing of the beans, including the bean-roasting process & optionally the nib-roasting process
3. What's added to the liquified beans (cacao silk, milk powder, sugar, etc.)

The nice thing is, you can jump into making custom chocolates at a variety of levels! Full bean-to-bar is a pretty serious setup, requiring time, precision procedures, and expensive equipment. Fortunately a lot of the prices have gone down (ex.$600 APO, >$400 Champion juicer, >$500 melangers, etc.), but you can also just buy quality chocolate & do sous-vide tempering with a vac-seal bag, or even do basic procedures like the seeding method. For compound chocolate, you can simply microwave it or use a double broiler to melt it down, no tempering required, so if you want to make basic chocolates, chocolate bars, candy bars, chocolate truffles, and chocolate desserts, it's not a huge pain in the neck! You can even use chocolate chips to make some pretty good treats!

And that's the fun of it...there's multiple levels & depths available, different flavors of cocoa powder & chocolate, there's hot chocolate & mole sauce & chocolate bars & chocolate ganache & chocolate syrup, there's South American beans & African beans, all kinds of stuff to dive into! It's been a fun rabbit hole getting into the whole process of chocolateering. One of my IT clients owns a specialty chocolate shop (100% vegan & organic, $32/pound, SUPER successful despite the cost!) so I've gotten to see a lot of the processes hands-on, which is really cool! I'm currently assembling a coating attachment for my Kitchenaid like this one, which will be fun for chocolate-coated stuff like nuts, raisins, cereal pieces, etc.:


Most of my preferences lie in commercial candy (Reese's PB cups etc.). Lindt & others have good bars, and if you can find a quality chocolate shop in your area, that's a great place to check out different styles of hand-made chocolates. Personally, 60% is kind of my stopping point for pure bars, although I use 72% in a lot of my cookies & other projects, like sous-vide pot de cremes. What's crazy is the access to have to tools & ingredients at home...I can do a sous-vide pot de creme with fancy chocolate & have it come out better than a $20 dessert at a local high-end restaurant, which is super awesome haha!
 
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VirtualLarry

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Kaido

Elite Member & Kitchen Overlord
Feb 14, 2004
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Cacao is harvested by child slaves.

Slavery within the chocolate world is an ENORMOUS issue:


More than a million child laborers are estimated to work on the Ivory Coast and Ghana chocolate systems alone & there's an estimated 1.6 million total child laborers in the entire industry. It's pretty messed up, but so is every other industry: recycling is a sham, 170 million children are involved in child labor, forced labor drives the electronics industry, it's just a huge mess all around! However, there are some really amazing initiatives for cocoa alternatives in the works, such as QOA:


And WNWN:


The premise behind the "Hunger Games" movies is more revealing as truth in action, with the rich central state being supported by the slave-labor districts. The problem pretty much boils down to a matter of incentives. For example, American companies need to save money, so they outsource. Outsourcing is done to save money, meaning workers get ripped off (slave labor, forced labor, poor working conditions, etc.) in order to meet the demand. But they need money, so they do what they have to do. It's not all bad...some companies do right by their employees, but there is an awful amount of bad stuff out there.

One of the companies I really like is Manoa Chocolate out of Hawaii:


Per their website, "Hawaii is the only state in the U.S. with a climate appropriate for commercially cultivating the tropical fruit tree (Theobroma Cacao). Not only could making chocolate in Hawaii from Hawaiian grown cacao be a sustainable business, but it has the potential to generate an industry. The prospect of sparking an agricultural movement, from which you can create quality, value added products like chocolate is what kickstarted me on this journey." So it's difficult because we don't have a lot of opportunities within the country to grow our own cocoa beans ethically & sustainably, but there ARE people out there spearheading these initiatives!

Anyway, these are all solvable problems. However, it requires government action to create laws & to properly enforce them, as even within the Fairtrade chocolate support system, audits are easy for farmers to evade. But governments are run by lobbyists, and lobbyists have a LOT of money available! Like with forced labor in the electronics industry, Apple currently has $200 BILLION in cash (and spent more than $7 million in lobbying, at least that we know of!), Alphabet has $170 billion in cash, Microsoft has $130 billion in cash, etc. So there's a hamster wheel loop of ineffectiveness going on that isn't going to be solved anytime soon, not just due to lack of legal incentives (and lack of company morals), but also due to consumer market demand.

We could, of course, place the blame squarely on the consumers, but where do you draw the line? Computers, clothing, food, everything is made under duress, to some extent! Even within America, we demonstrate high degrees of corporate greed; so many places are trying to unionize these days, it's crazy! There are imbalances everywhere...we have a national shortage of baby formula, and yet we're sending $40 billion dollars to the Ukraine, which obviously isn't without merit either! We can vilify ourselves & others as much as we want, too, but even if we harp on people for say using plastics, we still use plastic everything in our lives...pill bottles, toothbrushes, Gatorade bottles, plastic printers, plastic computer mice, the list is endless! Misuse of people, money, and resources is rampant & is very difficult to reconcile.
 

Shmee

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Chocolate is tasty. I like dark, milk, and white. All of them are good.
 

lxskllr

No Lifer
Nov 30, 2004
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Anecdotal information that will be immediately dismissed by everyone who reads it: I have a huge number of family & friends who have cancer. The cancer doctor at the hospital takes everyone off chocolate. Apparently it strongly causes or contributes to cancer. However, there's also supposedly enormous industry pressure to sweep this information under the table (chocolate is a $50 billion dollar market in the U.S.). And even if they did make it public, it's just about impossible to penetrate cultural beliefs & in particular people's worldviews:
That sword cuts both ways. I'd have to read a good paper or two that links chocolate to cancer. That's one random doctor's opinion, and I hear stupid shit from professionals all the time. Like I've said before, the only difference between a doctor and a walmart clerk is a bit of school. They're the same person.

That said, I don't have strong feelings either way, and results one way or the other won't affect or change my life(choices). It would be interesting to read a study though.
 
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Torn Mind

Lifer
Nov 25, 2012
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Anecdotal information that will be immediately dismissed by everyone who reads it: I have a huge number of family & friends who have cancer. The cancer doctor at the hospital takes everyone off chocolate. Apparently it strongly causes or contributes to cancer. However, there's also supposedly enormous industry pressure to sweep this information under the table (chocolate is a $50 billion dollar market in the U.S.). And even if they did make it public, it's just about impossible to penetrate cultural beliefs & in particular people's worldviews:


This has happened in other food industries. imo the sugar industry's deceit is worse than the tobacco industry hiding the truth about how smoking impacts our health:


In practice, I think it's like anything else: we're going to die anyone at some point, so it's really about how good & bad the ride is along the way. Used in moderation, I think that using sugar & chocolate is fine for most people. If you can enjoy some goodies but also not put yourself into diabetic ketosis, then that's probably a pretty good balance if you like those ingredients!
I believe "high-fat" for mice are actually only 36% that is actually fat while the remaining contents are carbohydrate and protein.

This article seems to be a more realistic counterbalance to the hyped up titles for a news cycle bomb back in 2016. https://news.cancerresearchuk.org/2016/12/08/can-cutting-out-chocolate-really-hold-cancer-at-bay/

The article you linked points out conflict of interest in industry funded research, which is a legitimate concern.

However, sugar-free chocolate objectively does have some useful nutrients such as magnesium and it is possible it's bad for cancer because the antioxidants also winds up protecting cancer cells.

Anecdotes depend on what exactly happened. If someone has glioblastoma and he switches to a keto diet, that anecdote can be taken somewhat seriously as a almost surely fatal cancer being tamed must have had a physical cause to make the unusual happen.