Hershey – Life In A Word

Loco for Cocoa

In the last few weeks a purchase of pure gold reached a record high of over $2,400 an ounce. Thanks to uncertain global markets and a stepped-up demand from China, the precious metal is a more popular investment than ever. I find it amazing you can stroll into your local Costco and add gold bars to your shopping basket. The promo was so popular however, Costco ran out of their allotment in a couple of months. But here’s an even bigger concern. I’m worried Costco’s going to run out of chocolate.

It takes a bold headline to get me to read the article, and here’s a recent example: Chocolate Might Never Be the Same. What I hoped would be several paragraphs about a newer or even healthier spin on my favorite confection was anything but. Instead, I was stopped dead in my reading glasses when I saw the words “global shortage”. It seems the world’s supply of cacao beans, which come primarily from West Africa, has been threatened by climate change.

What I found interesting in the story was not so much the reasons for the shortage (drought, disease, aging cacao trees) but rather the speculation on how chocolate as we know it will change. Right away, of course, the cost of high-end products will increase (chocolate was already up 10% in 2023). Down the road, the powers that be may even relax the definition of “chocolate”, which currently requires (only) 10% of a product’s weight in cocoa. And further down the road you’ll find faux chocolate, which doesn’t contain any cocoa at all. Kind of like an Impossible Burger.

My relationship with chocolate, one that has matured beautifully over sixty-plus years, feels a little threatened. Like most kids growing up in the 1960s, I loved Hershey bars… and a lot of other candies that gifted me a mouthful of cavities. Then as a teenager, most of those candies fell by the wayside in favor of chocolate bars like 3 Musketeers, Milky Way, and Snickers. But technically each of those is a “candy bar”, where the only chocolate to be found is the outside coating.

I credit three products for developing my taste for “just chocolate”. First, Nestle’s Toll House Morsels, a bag of which could always be found in my mother’s pantry. Second, Chunky’s foil-covered blocks, which brought appeal to, literally, consuming chunk chocolate. Finally, Ghirardelli’s “Flicks”, colorful foil-covered tubes of what can only be described as oversized Toll House Morsels, sold alongside the popcorn and boxed candies at the movie theater.

Little did I know at the time, I was nowhere near the best that chocolate had to offer. A college year in Europe introduced me to more exotic brands like Perugina, Lindt, and Toblerone, and my taste for chocolate quickly matured from the milk to the dark varieties. Here’s how far I’ve come since then. The percentage of cocoa in a pure bar of Lindt chocolate starts at 70% (and goes all the way to 100% if you’re so bold). My preference? 78%, a far cry from the minimum 10% definition of chocolate. And a far cry from the chocolate bars of my youth.

We’re fortunate to have an authentic Belgian chocolate shop here in our small town. Its proprietor was trained as a chocolate artisan in Belgium, and her creations start with Callebaut chocolate (also from Belgium). Her truffles, as you can imagine, are exquisite. The pure chocolate nibs she sells by the pound are even better. And yet, as if to underscore today’s topic, her shop’s website now warns in a big, bold font: … at this time we are no longer able to accommodate wholesale prices. Meaning her big buyers are now paying as much as we smaller ones. Meaning chocolate is getting more expensive.

If the quality chocolate I’ve learned to love rises to price points I can’t digest, I might be forced to relive my childhood and settle for the “satisfaction” a milk chocolate Snickers bar claims to provide. It’s a regression I don’t look forward to, but at least it beats faux chocolate. Come to think of it, I should pick up a few of those gold bars at Costco. Maybe my Belgian chocolate shop takes more than cash or credit these days.

Some content sourced from The Atlantic article, “Chocolate Might Never Be the Same”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Five High

Last Thursday, my brothers and I took an overnight train from Northern California to Northern Oregon as part of an every-other-year reunion. The trip, which would take eleven hours if you drove from San Jose to Portland instead, took twice that long on the Amtrak Coast Starlight. But the meals come with the ride and everyone gets a bed and a hot shower, so it’s a cozy way to watch the world go by. In hindsight, for all the time sitting and staring out the window, we could’ve been stacking M&M’s. Just five of the colorful candies one atop the other would’ve landed my brothers and me in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Sounds easy, doesn’t it? Buy a bag of plain M&M’s (you’ll have zero chance with the peanut variety), count out five, and let the stacking commence. You’ll get to a tower of two quickly. You’ll get three one atop the other with time and patience. But that’s the proverbial end of the line, my friends. You won’t make it to four. If you did, you’d join the two co-holders of the former world record. Last January, Will Cutbill, a twenty-something British engineer, pushed the record to a stack of five.

The history of M&M’s suggests it’s only appropriate a Brit broke the stacking record. M&M’s were copied (and somehow uniquely patented) from British-made Smarties, the first candy where a hard-shelled coating protected the chocolate inside from melting. Here’s another interesting M&M’s factoid. The first “M” is for Forrest Mars, Sr., the founder of the Mars candy company. The second “M”? Bruce Murrie, the son of the president of Hershey’s Chocolate. No, the companies didn’t join forces to create M&M’s. During the wartime years of the 1940’s Hershey had a monopoly on rationed chocolate so Mars was forced to use them as their supplier. Today, M&M’s have evolved to a “fully Mars” product.

It’s safe to say Will Cutbill wouldn’t have broken the M&M’s stacking record without the pandemic. He was in the middle of the UK’s third lockdown earlier this year when he pondered a lifelong dream of getting into the Guinness book. He also had a bag of M&M’s in his hand at the time. Practice led to more practice, and as you’ll see in the video here, the record-breaking moment came as a happy, unexpected surprise.

Marawa Ibrahim – Most hula hoops spun simultaneously

Maybe you’re thinking what I’m thinking. Why can’t one of us become a world record holder as well? As I type, I’m munching on Triscuit wheat crackers. I just built a stack of five on my desk. What if I went to the store and bought several more boxes, then stacked all those crackers to the ceiling of my double-height living room? Wouldn’t I and my Triscuits join the Guinness book as well?

Not so fast, record-setting wannabes. As you should expect, Guinness has a tried-and-true process, not only to establish world records but to decide if they’re worth pursuing. You must submit a formal application (even if attempting to break an existing world record). Your attempt must be deemed ethical (ex. no killing of animals). Your attempt mustn’t be harmful to the participant (ex. excessive consumption of alcohol). Your record must be deemed environmentally friendly. Finally, Guinness must approve the process by which your record will be adjudicated (which in Cutbill’s case included a video instead of an in-person judge). Oh, and unless you’re willing to contribute several thousand dollars to speed things up, plan on a year or more to complete the process.

Mya-Rose Craig – Most northerly climate protest

Now you know why the Guinness book hasn’t grown to a ridiculous number of pages and entries. The content is regularly reviewed against cultural, societal, and environmental standards. Records even slightly in question are removed. For example, Guinness used to list the “largest fish on record” of a given species. Then people started overfeeding fish just to break the record. Guinness realized this kind of manipulation was not only cruel but potentially a source of litigation, so they removed the entries.

This quick dive into the pool of Guinness World Records has me thinking my brothers and I made the right choice in not challenging the M&M’s stacking record. We’d be better off drinking a Guinness than breaking one of their world records (yes, the beer and the book come from the same family). Besides, how would we stack five M&M’s on a rocking, rolling passenger train anyway? Nope, not interested in breaking world records today. But if you don’t mind, I’ll get back to stacking my Triscuits now.

Some content sourced from CNN Business video, “Good luck breaking this deceptively tough world record”, the Guinness World Records website, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Confection Perfection

While grocery shopping the other day, my wife asked me if I’d eat something containing “77% dark chocolate”. I replied casually, “No, my limit’s more like 72%”. To those in the know, the percentages refer to the cacao content; not the broader term “chocolate”. And that level of technical shows you how far I’ve come from the 3 Musketeers bar of my youth.

Each of us taps into our particular coping mechanisms as we deal with impacts of the pandemic. My wife spends countless hours playing brain games on her iPad. More of my neighbors take daily walks than I’ve ever seen before. Me? I’m getting lost in a few rainy-day projects, but more to the subject at hand, I’m tapping into my dark chocolate stash. There’s something therapeutic about a small square of the good stuff slowly dissolving on the tongue. Dark chocolate is medication for troubled times. It sates my soul.

I can’t recall when I graduated from “candy bar” to “chocolate bar”, let alone dark chocolate. Like most kids of the 1970’s, I was drawn to Milky Way, Snickers, Nestle Crunch and the like, due to an annual dose of “fun-size” every Halloween. But somewhere I had an epiphany and realized chocolate was pretty good all by itself. The clincher: studying abroad in Italy during college. Overnight it seemed, I graduated from the products of Hershey’s and Mars to the more refined of Perugina and Ferrero.

The Wall Street Journal recently interviewed Thierry Muret, the executive chef chocolatier at Godiva, and after reading the article I thought, “Now there’s a dream job”. Not so fast, Mr. Goodbar. Turns out Monsieur Muret is an industrial chemistry grad who leans heavily on his knowledge of science to create Godiva-worthy delicacies. Muret’s all about “molecular gastronomy”, or decomposing/recomposing the very elements of chocolate to develop new textures and tastes. Think about that the next time you bite into a Godiva truffle.

This much I know. Chocolate’s most common varieties are “milk”, “dark”, and “white”, and while each contains cocoa butter, they’re better defined by their other ingredients (i.e. the dairy in “milk”). My taste for dark chocolate evolved over a lot of years, the way my coffee matured from “instant” to “espresso”, and my wine from “Chardonnay” to “Cabernet”. The basic versions simply don’t cut it anymore.

Thanks to Monsieur Muret, this much I don’t know about chocolate. There’s a tight temperature range (65°-75° F) where fine chocolate can be “tempered” (shaped into truffles, etc.) without altering its delicate flavor. There’s also a tight time frame to temper, because you don’t want the temperature to fluctuate more than a degree or two. But Muret colors outside of the lines. He throws temperature and time frame to the wind to concoct new textures and tastes. He once spent an entire year perfecting a single ganache. Whoa; that’s taking it to a whole new level.

The path to chocolatier typically goes through culinary school, not the chemistry lab. You start with a pastry degree (pastry degree?) and then specialize in chocolate/confections. Nope, not what I studied in college – not even close. But I do deserve a “tasting degree” for my years of experience.

If the pandemic goes on long enough, I may find the shelves of our grocery store devoid of dark chocolate. No problem: I’ll settle for a good ol’ 3 Musketeers bar instead. Milk chocolate (not to mention the dose of childhood nostalgia) is a passable backup coping mechanism.

The so-called experts say there’s “no high-quality evidence that dark chocolate provides health benefits”. With coping in mind, I couldn’t disagree more.

Some content sourced from the 2/7/2020 Wall Street Journal article, “Nothing Could Be Sweeter Than Being Godiva’s Top Chocolate Chef”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.