Before Chocolate: From Ritual Drink to Global Obsession | Spencer Hyman

SPEAKER_03 0:00 Our obsession as a species with chocolate stretches right back into the ancient world. But chocolate bars as we know them, well, they come a lot later.

SPEAKER_00 0:11 From sacrificial ceremonies to medicines for strength and sexual stamina, and even as a form of currency, our ancient ancestors used the cocoa bean very differently.

SPEAKER_03 0:23 And while it's thought the legend of chocolate begins in Mexico with the Aztecs, there may be an earlier peoples who opened Pandora's chocolate box.

SPEAKER_00 0:34 Hi Molly. And I'm Matt, and this is What We Did Before, the podcast where we explore the history of modern inventions.

SPEAKER_03 0:43 Now, in 1870, it's estimated around 50 million people drank chocolate. But when we transitioned to eating it, well, global consumption increased tenfold. Now we consume more than 7 million metric tons of the stuff each year.

SPEAKER_00 1:00 That's a fact that we learnt from Spencer Hyman of Coco Runners, a company that sells craft chocolate made by growers around the world. He's a true chocolate aficionado and knows more about its storied history than most.

SPEAKER_01 1:14 So if you want actually another great stat, at any one point in the UK, it is believed that there are more households in them with chocolate than looper.

SPEAKER_03 1:22 In this episode, Spencer guides us through chocolate's use in the ancient world, the many eureka moments that led to it becoming a global phenomenon, and why most modern chocolate barely deserves the name.

SPEAKER_00 1:36 And if you're enjoying what we're doing, please subscribe to the channel. It really helps us out massively. Now, on to Spencer.

SPEAKER_03 1:44 Spencer, it's an absolute pleasure having you on what we did before. So I kind of want to start just by exploring, you know, when chocolate first began to be used by our ancestors, really. How would ancient humans have been consuming it?

SPEAKER_01 2:01 So I think um it's a great question, and it's a great honor to be here. So I think that chocolate's a fruit, cacao is a fruit, and inside uh the pod is a delicious white pulp and some very, very bitter and astringent seeds. And almost certainly the way that people would have first enjoyed Theobroma cacao is by having the pulp. And what we believe happened is that about 3,500 BC, people worked out that you could actually make a light beer from the pulp because it ferments quite quickly or quite naturally. And so that's the thing that they probably first enjoyed. And then gradually they realized that as a byproduct of this fermentation of the beer, that the bitter and astringent seeds became a little bit more tasty and a little bit more nutritious. And they eventually worked out that you could also make a drink by crushing these seeds or beans together. But that that that seems to take a place a little bit later. And we're not really sure when people first figured it out. The the earliest evidence we've got is from about 3,500 BC in in a place called Santa Anna, Florida. But who knows, they may find some other bits of pottery which show traces of theobromian which date it back even further.

SPEAKER_03 3:04 I love that. Um be like just the desire to drink alcohol seems to have fueled so many innovations of mankind, um, as we discussed in our episode with Nicola Twilley about the origins of uh refrigeration. So it's it's fascinating that people, you know, our obsession with alcohol really is what drives humanity forward.

SPEAKER_01 3:25 Yeah, no, it's de I mean, the the sort of theory that it was bread is is coming under you know a lot of challenge. The theory that it was bread that sort of got us all to you know become farmers and grow wheats and everything else like that. It seems almost as if it's the other way around. It's actually our delight in the intoxicating effects of beer from wheat is probably what encouraged people to then get planting and make bread as a sort of you know quick way to store and make your beer when you're in a hurry. Um and I think probably and possibly the same like is likely to have actually happened with chocolate, that that's the initial way that people were consuming it, sucking the seeds because it's a delicious, very nutritious pulp, and then working out that you could make a really, really cracking light beer chicha from the pulp as well.

SPEAKER_03 4:04 I love this idea that sort of ancient humans were just hammered all the time.

SPEAKER_01 4:08 I don't think they were hammered all the time. I just think it, you know, it was a good way to sort of, you know, I mean that there is this sort of slingerland theory that that that what makes human civilization possible is the fact that we learn to trust one another, and it's much easier to do that if you're a little bit drunk, because it's easy it's harder to lie when you're drunk. Um so it's a it's an intriguing sort of theory, and also that it relaxes people that that that you know, and so you're more likely to be amenable to you know sitting down and talking to somebody or not as the case may be.

SPEAKER_00 4:32 So what were these early sort of hot chocolates and this beer drink like? Have we got any sort of frame of reference to how this would taste compared to sort of modern day?

SPEAKER_01 4:42 We have a little bit of a frame of reference and also how they would have consumed it, because we have shards of pottery which people can now analyze and try and see what they're doing with it. And in fact, one of the interesting things from these shards of pottery is that you can actually sort of tell how people were pouring it. And we think that actually one of the um interesting aspects is that the froth, so the bubbles you sort of get from pouring the chocolate, were actually incredibly um important to people. And we know this later by the time we get to the sort of Aztecs and the Incas, but looking at the necks of the bottles from you know, like a thousand BC, it looks as if it's been happening for quite a long time as well. But in terms of what they were adding to it, pretty much anything goes. So definitely vanilla, um, uh definitely chili. Uh, we know that both of those were being added to it, and possibly some sweetness. There's a fantastic scientist called Howard Shapiro who's convinced that it's basically cornier apples, which sort of would add some sweetness to it too. So it may not have just been, you know, us in the West who basically add sugar to make it a little bit more attractive.

SPEAKER_00 5:40 Yeah, you sort of think that these are kind of more modern things that we would do, right? Adding flavours to the chocolate, adding vanilla, um, salted caramel, obviously very popular and things like that. But it sounds like it's Yeah, I think salted caramel came a little bit later. Yeah, but it's things that um we've been doing for some time then. We've been sort of altering and adding sort of sweetness to it.

SPEAKER_01 6:01 Yeah, I think the great thing about drinking or, and we'll come to talk about this later, eating chocolate is that it's very, very nutritious and very, very filling. And so, you know, it was used throughout Aztec and Inca and Olmec and Mayan cultures for all sorts of different people. I mean, everything from you know the way that soldiers would sort of march on it and have it for breakfast through to the way that the royal court would sort of use it as a sort of you know, um a bonding exercise. And that that that continues through history, if you like. It's it's sort of always been an aristocratic product at one end, and at another end, it's been a great sort of source of, for want of a better word, fuel. So the British Navy arguably are one of the first people to invent factories which you make food in. And these early factories are actually making chocolate, part of the daily rations for the British Navy in the 1820s and 30s, along with biscuits, but but down at Deptford. So arguably one of the first factories to make food, you know, make a processed food, is is the chocolate as a drink, making the making the sort of solids to then turn it into a drink.

SPEAKER_03 7:00 You could sort of see why we've been adding sweetness to it though, because dark chocolate or 100% chocolate really is an acquired taste. I will never forget when I was a young boy and I tried dark dark chocolate, I had a piece, I thought that's that's chocolate, that's lovely. And I just could not get the taste of it off my tongue for about three hours afterwards. Now I'm I absolutely love dark chocolate. I even did one of your wonderful tasting sessions, Spencer, where uh you have a a hundred percent chocolate uh in there for trying. Um my wife was uh mildly disgusted, and I absolutely loved it, but it's not something that everybody is going to enjoy, right? That sweetness element is kind of essential in many ways.

SPEAKER_01 7:40 Yeah, I think that, well, humans are instinctively programmed to love things that are sweet. You know, if you put your finger in a bit of sweetness and drip it in a baby's mouth, they'll be very happy. If you put it in quinin or something else, which is bitter or caffeine or something, yeah, they will not be so happy. And I think that tastes are instinctive, whereas learning to appreciate flavor is slightly different. But I think you're right. And so chocolate is full of tannins, it's also got lots of cocoa butter in it, and those are the two reasons why the flavor really lasts. Because as you sort of said, when you put something in your mouth and it's got chocolate in it, it's not like, for example, having a glass of tea where it washes out quite quickly. Um, it stays because that you know you're your your you you the the the fat sort of dissolves and sticks around in your mouth. So you do, and it is naturally full of theobromine and full of lots of polyphenols, which can be quite bitter. So yeah. So a little bit of sugar, you don't need very much, but that that definitely sort of brings out the flavour as well as kills some of the edge of the bitterness.

SPEAKER_03 8:34 And if we do look at the sort of origin story of chocolate, many places suggest that it sort of begins in Mexico with the Aztecs, but there there's a bit of myth and legend to this, and it might not actually be the case, right?

SPEAKER_01 8:48 No, I think that I mean much as Mexican chocolate is amazing and they've got a fantastic history with it, it's pretty clear that the that the fruit, that the tree, started in the Amazonian basin about, you know, Peleopatonists can sort of take take it back to about 10 or 15,000 BC. So it's sort of on the borders of what would be modern-day Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. And certainly people were consuming it at that point down there. It sort of gradually spreads north. It is very, very important to the Aztecs and the Inca, you know, as a source of you know, finance, as a source of money, and as a source of nutrition. And the Mexicans are the first people who we sort of hear about it because that's where the conquistadors first really come into contact with it in a big way. But they weren't the first, we believe, to be consuming chocolate in a major way. That definitely belongs a bit earlier.

SPEAKER_00 9:35 Do we know where and when we do see the sort of earliest archaeological evidence of cacao use?

SPEAKER_01 9:42 Yeah, the earliest one that people have got at the moment is from some shards of pottery at 3,500 BC at a place called Santa Ana, Florida. But but um, you know, there's lots of it in lots of different places. You know, by the 9th or 10th centuries, we can start to see it being written about too, because we now understand a little bit more about how the Mayan glyphs were working. In fact, they were originally translated. Well, this the translation of them was vastly speeded up by the discovery of a guy called David Stewart who worked out that you could um turn these sort of glyphs if you want, so like sort of Egyptian hieroglyphs but slightly different, into sounds. And he worked it out um using cacao as the first one. So, you know, we know at least yeah, so there's it's sort of you know, there are lots of different uses for chocolate in other ways, but but there is this sort of wonderful story about how um this protege from Princeton, um David Stewart, basically worked out how to speed up the way in which you could read the Mayan glyphs left on stone, um, which which nobody had figured out for you know literally you know hundreds of years. And those were one of the one things which the Spaniards did not destroy because they didn't realise that they were well, maybe they did realize, but they didn't destroy those Mayan glyphs, but as they did destroy most of the knots in the knotted language and most of the other books which were around as well. So we don't have a huge amount of evidence, unfortunately, written except for that.

SPEAKER_00 11:02 That's amazing, actually, that uh not only has it had this kind of impact through history, but that even going back into history, it's allowed us to uh be able to process language in that way. That suggests, or maybe uh naively suggests that it was quite an important thing for people back then if they were writing about it and we were able to use it as sort of a hook for decoding their language. Would you say that's right?

SPEAKER_01 11:30 Yeah, no, that's definitely true. I mean, it is incredibly important to their civilization. You know, literally armies would have marched on it, much as the same way that the Royal Navy sailed on it. But in addition to that, if you look at, you know, when Columbus actually first comes across it on his third voyage, he actually dismisses it because he just thinks that they're using what he describes as these almond-like objects as a unit of currency. And in fact, cocoa beans are a unit of currency used right up until the 1850s in large parts of Latin America. You know, you can sort of swap a rabbit for four cocoa beans and that sort of thing. Um, but it is it is incredibly valuable. Um as and in fact, they even had counterfeit cocoa beans, which is a rather sort of interesting idea that you know we still have in museums sort of people that sort of carve bits of stone to be like a cocoa bean and try and sort of you know pass them off as being a unit of currency. So it's not just coins which get counterfeited if you like. Wow.

SPEAKER_03 12:20 Carving stones feels like more effort than just going and harvesting cocoa beans to me.

SPEAKER_01 12:24 Yeah, no, it does struck me as being a little bit strange. Um but anyway, maybe they got some special price for yes, uh that that's always true.

SPEAKER_03 13:31 And and does this tell us then, uh, in the way that they decoded it, about the origin of the word cacao then? Because I think it's actually from uh the word caco, spelt K-A-K-A-W, is that right?

SPEAKER_01 13:43 Yeah, I know it's sort of an omino it's a it's a sort of sound word and it meant sort of fl water and how it would move. And then it gets very confusing because there's sort of a sort of a rather strange myth that the Spanish renamed cacao as chocolate on the grounds that um cacao sounds a little bit like cacao, which in Spanish you know sort of means species. So so but this theory is almost certainly wrong. Um, not least because there's a word for peanut which sounds quite similar, which they didn't do anything with, but also because there's a great historian called Catherine Sampec who's sort of shown that chocolate actually is a sort of term which the Spanish use to describe lots of different ways of preparing things with cocoa beans. And so it doesn't just refer to one thing or one drink. It's it's sort of like it's an imposed word which comes a bit later. But yeah, I know again the history of the etymology of it also is a good way of, as Matt was sort of saying, of understanding how it's being used and how important it is to Mesoamerican and Latin American cultures.

SPEAKER_03 14:37 So we're establishing here that, you know, the cocoa bean was used as currency, we've got sort of different methods of enjoying the chocolate, particularly as a drink. But I mean, what are some of the other ways that these ancient cultures would have actually used chocolate back then?

SPEAKER_01 14:52 Yeah, so again, there's a there's a wonderful sort of series of legends and assertions by the Spanish conquistadors that it's used in all sorts of ritual sacrifices, and that if you want your sort of gruesome, grim stories about sort of people's hearts being dug out and replaced with a cocoa bulk because it looked like the same size. There is some evidence that this is likely to be true, which they can actually sort of see from archaeological ruins, and you can sort of find, you know, unfortunately, sort of bits of blood on various sort of you know, knives and that sort of stuff mixed with cocoa. But it's not clear how extensive the sort of use in rituals and the idea of human sacrifice is really there. But there is definitely something to it, but but how extensive and how big it is, it's not clear at all. I mean, it's very much used in the same way that you sort of, you know, if you have a state banquet, um, you know, somebody would toast somebody with, you know, in in our day, it would be sort of English sparkling wine. Um, and and now it would be, you know, back in the 16th, 15th, or 14th century, they they would sort of, you know, toast one another and get together and have great ceremonies around, you know, drinking the froth of cocoa before they'd sort of recline and go back to their harems and that sort of stuff. So it's it's it's clearly used in noble rituals, and it does seem to sort of go through society because it's also being used by the soldiers as breakfast. So it's sort of it's pretty widespread in how it's used, but it isn't just consumed as a sort of fuel, as it will become a little bit later.

SPEAKER_03 16:14 Well, we we have found out, especially in our uh before Christmas episode, uh, Matt, didn't we, that you know, ancient humans sort of were obsessed with um uh sacrifice and and those sorts of rituals. So it wouldn't be, I suppose, that surprising to think that it would have been used as part of that, because many things would have been used as part of ritual sacrifice um thousands of years ago, right?

SPEAKER_01 16:37 Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, you know, I don't know if you've done anything on Valentine's Day yet. It's probably a little bit too tight. But you should definitely look at Lupacalia. If there is a festival which gets taken over by St. Valentine's Day, it's almost certainly this sort of Roman one called Lupacalia, which is um extraordinary in the sense that what it actually has is Romans basically ritually sacrificing goats, blooding the men with it, then basically carving whips out of the goat hide, which they would basically pursue women with on the grounds that this was a good way of finding a successful suitor. And the women were sort of encouraged to believe that this would make them more fertile and also introduced them to different mates.

SPEAKER_03 17:14 This episode is going out in February, so if you are planning your uh Valentine's, don't take uh an ancient Roman view of it and chase your lover down the road with a blood-soaked whip or whatever it was.

SPEAKER_01 17:26 Definitely don't do any whipping, it's not it's not to be encouraged. Take another of the Marquis de Salle's ideas, which is is much better, which is that chocolate is a great way of showing appreciation to your Valentine.

SPEAKER_03 17:37 Yeah, yeah, do the chocolate thing instead.

SPEAKER_01 17:39 Yeah, that's definitely the right thing. So this this this is the sort of thing which the church gradually sort of gets rid of, and then thanks to Chaucer, it sort of comes back as being, you know, a slightly different courtly love and the idea of St. Valentine's Day. And I don't it it I don't really know actually how they invent it and how they invest it. But it's also interesting how chocolate gets weaved into that. It gets sort of weaved into it in the by the Victorians, and in particular by this is one of the few cases of actually Cabarys doing some great marketing and not writing everybody else's piggy bags. They seem to have come up with the idea of actually putting in what they call their fancy boxes. They came up with the idea of actually doing a box of chocolates which you could gift at Valentine's Day, and then you'd have the box left over to sort of put all the cards which the Penny Post had made possible. And the real thing which actually I think makes Valentine's Day mass market is the Penny Post. Chocolate and Valentine's Day is uh is extraordinary. I mean, it picks up on the idea of sex and chocolate, which chocolate has always been associated with the idea of sex from Westerners, and it's not really clear why. I mean, even the very first description we have of it, or one of the first descriptions we have of it with Montezuma, when it goes on about basically, you know, he he consumes the froth of all of this chocolate and then goes off to go and visit his wives, is sort of very suggestive, and later it becomes sort of you know both accused of being something you can sort of use to make people impotent with, and on the other hand to actually use it as an aphrodisiac in the sense of it not just being good at stimulating desire but also good at encouraging fertility.

SPEAKER_03 19:15 You mentioned Montezuma, some people might not know he's sort of an you know, Aztec emperor, and you said that he sort of drank maybe huge amounts of cacao for strength and stamina, and it was all linked to sex in some ways. How much of this is myth and and what is grounded in sort of real historical sources?

SPEAKER_01 19:37 So i there is a little bit in the historical sources, but you have to read them fairly uh loosely. So what happens is there's a chronicler called um Bernal Diaz de Castillo. I'm afraid I don't speak Spanish, so I've completely butchered that. So any Spanish speakers will be sort of very unhappy there. And and he goes on about actually how before he would retire to the night and go off and see his wives, he would basically consume the froth of gold cups filled with chocolate. So the Spanish, I think, are interested in the idea of the gold cups, but what we've all picked up on is the idea that one, he had the froth, and two, you know, he that he then went off to sort of you know go and visit his wives. I mean, I think the other bit, which is quite interesting, is just that it's almost that like he would be retiring and then he'd sort of let you know all of his courtiers and all the nobles drink the rest of it. So it it's there, but it's an interpretation rather than it being sort of what we get later, which is you know, it is very clear that the Marquis de Sade and Casanova and that you know Charles II absolutely believe that this chocolate's gonna do wonders for their sex lives, and they are all over the place in terms of you know trying to procure the stuff. It's not as clear from the sources that that that's what the Aztecs and the Mayans were doing. It's very clear they used it in rituals, it's very important, you know, in the same way that we would have toasts and that you would sort of you know have loving cups and that sort of thing. They do use it in lots of other ceremonies, but those are should we talk about ceremonial cacao? Do you want to do a question on that one?

SPEAKER_00 21:01 Yeah, that would be great. I was just about to actually so um cacao sort of used ceremonially in the modern day. Is there something that we can, you know, is it still used quite uh in some cultures, or is it something that's more on the fringes?

SPEAKER_01 21:15 Well, so I think ceremonial cacao actually is is very revealing of what actually happens with the conquistadors and in the 16th, 17th century Latin America, because the short answer is ceremonial cacao is great. Uh, it's to be encouraged by people who do yoga because breathing exercises, relaxing at the end of that with other people and drinking lovely hot chocolate, has got to be good for you. But the idea that this has some sort of you know, Aztec, Olmec, Mayan, Chinchipei, or whatever history is is pretty thin. But what it does show, I mean, I think the history is that about 20 years ago, uh a couple of very smart people, Keith Wilson and Jared Baer, I think, um, noticed that ayahuasca ceremonies were coming back into power. And also we had, you know, all the attention coming back again with psilocyber and magic mushrooms and all that. And it is very clear that those were ceremonies which the Aztecs and the Incas and the Olmecs and you know everybody who could get their hands on it were indulging in. But these are banned very, very quickly by the Spaniards because they don't want a substance which, you know, basically gives you psychosis, um, not least because it sort of confuses and contrasts a little bit with the Eucharist. So that is banned and it is driven underground. The argument that chocolate also was used in that way and was driven underground is is spurious. That doesn't seem to be the case. I mean, there is this, you know, that if you look at the arguments as to where ceremony of cacao comes from, this argument that somehow it is being used like ayahuasca is and was, is is pretty difficult to sort of see any evidence of. I mean, there's nothing in Mayan culture, even today, you know, really where other than a few shamans who have spotted this as you know a good opportunity to uh Uh, make a bit of money and license their brand, if you like. I think what it shows is that whereas the Catholic Church and the Spanish are really worried about ayahuasca, cybercybin, oleolia, all the other psychedelics, and ban those, they don't ban cacao. They adapt it, they use it in slightly different ways, they do bring it back to Europe. Um, it's only in the early 21st century that a couple of people like Keith Wilson come back and argue that somehow, just as there are these magical ayahuasca ceremonies which have lasted underground for 500 years, and the same with psilocybin in the 1950s, it there is no evidence that anything like this happened in cacao. That's just not the way it was working. But having said that, you know, breathing, relaxing with other people, having a cup of you know, well-crafted 100% chocolate, it's got to be good for you. Yeah, it's gotta be good for you. But I don't think the historical argument washes.

SPEAKER_03 23:52 Have you done a cacao ceremony?

SPEAKER_01 23:55 Yeah, yeah, quite a few times. We I was very skeptical. I do them with a guy um who actually we actually sell some ceremonial cacao. There's a great company um called Forever Cacao, who we work with, um Pablo at Spool, who's an ex um DJ from Ibiza, who's sort of you know found seen the light and now basically sells great chocolate. And he's sort of you know adapted to doing that. And and you know, I mean he's quite right that you know it is a fruit of the gods, we do name it for that. It is very much respected in the same way that all crops are respected in Latin America. And you know, if you get a group of 20 people relaxed, calm, play them some nice music and get them to breathe together, it is magical. But I think that's more to do with the breathing.

SPEAKER_03 24:36 What's the difference between a ceremonial um piece of cacao? Is it still a bar of chocolate of some description or is it completely different?

SPEAKER_01 24:44 Really, it's just the naming. So it I mean, and that's the problem. It's it's a it's it's you know, people often sort of compare it to ceremonial match and say, well, what makes it ceremonial? It's just basically branding it. What it basically is, it's a block of chocolate or it's some cocoa powder, which in theory uh has been blessed by a shaman, but often hasn't been. Um and it will have, it won't have been as processed as sort of you know your supermarket 100%, because it it will be much rougher and it won't have been fully tempered. Um but it's just basically um cocoa beans ground having been roasted um and and then with the magic of ceremonial cacao label stamped on it. You could just as easily do it with a hundred percent chocolate bar.

SPEAKER_03 25:25 Yeah, I think it's interesting because um I don't think it's actually essential that an ingredient used within a ceremony has psychoactive effects for it to have that ability to bring people together, as you're sort of uh uh you're alluding to. Um there's something about the sort of the ritual of doing it together, which can make you still feel like you're um ascending to sort of a different state, a different mind state. And so having something that you can um have as the centerpiece for that is still important. And if that's chocolate or if that's wine or if that's something uh else completely, it almost doesn't matter, but chocolate just seems to fit the bill quite well.

SPEAKER_01 26:05 Yes, I think that's absolutely right. I mean, I'm a great fan of it. I mean, I think you know, I think it it it's a great drink to share. I mean, one of the great things about chocolate is that almost everybody likes it. And it it isn't alcoholic, it isn't psychedelic, but psychologically it is very calming, it is a vasodilator, a theobramine is a vasodilator, so that you know it'll it it will sort of you know address coughs. It used to be a um sort of given on prescription for asthmatics in the 1920s. And yeah, psychologically, after a yoga session or before a yoga session to sort of you know bring people together and get them in the moment, it will work brilliantly. It's just not clear that that's exactly how the uh Mayans, the Aztecs, the Olmets, or the Incas would have been using it.

SPEAKER_00 26:45 So actually, something that you mentioned before, um, just briefly, was that you know chocolate is kind of universally loved or or almost universally loved. And that's pretty much worldwide. So I was just sort of wondering if you have any uh thoughts or theories on why it's achieved such a status, other than obviously just the fact that it tastes good. It's almost aside from the influence of culture, history, and geography, like everyone worldwide seems to have a positive opinion about chocolate.

SPEAKER_01 27:16 Yeah, I well, I think that also sort of helps explain the argument as to why it's potentially the pioneer of ultra-processed food today, because it paves the way and shows the way that you can create junk foods if you like, even though it is in and of itself, it's not a junk food, but you can make it into one. I think it's partly that it is incredibly complex in terms of the flavors it has, and humans really like complexity of flavor. I think it's partly in the sense that when it is made either into a drink, and we'll discuss this, and when it becomes to be consumed as a bar, it's extraordinarily interesting from a textural standpoint. It sort of literally melts in your mouth. And that I think plays a huge role. And as the melting then sort of compounds the fact that it has this flavor complexity because it means that the flavors stay there and they push on for longer, etc. But I also think that candidly it's because it is also a pretty good vector for other flavors and other tastes, in particular for sugar. So I think that the thing which really makes it take off is the sort of Sydney Metz argument about sugar, which is that sugar is the thing which makes, you know, which dramatically changes the way that people will consume, make and eat foods. Um I think chocolate is there. I mean, it is interesting because for a long time people were sort of sort of saying, well, will China and Asia get into chocolate? And you know, it is true they they consume far less, but all the signs are now that they are also, you know, discovering a sweet tooth, if you like. And chocolate is a great way to explore that sweet tooth.

SPEAKER_03 28:52 So is that quite recent then that they weren't like we were we are in the West, like completely obsessed with chocolate?

SPEAKER_01 28:59 Yeah, I know, and they're only starting to get obsessed with it now. Um and it's strange. I mean, there are some other you know, parts of the world where chocolate is only now becoming really massive. So, like the Middle East, you know, even they even though they've got a history of you know loving sweet things because you break iftar with a date, etc., only now recently uh are people actually coating their dates, for example, to break the fast of Ramadan and having that um as a new sort of addition. But traditionally, the Middle East really never got into chocolate in the same way. I mean, Turkey still, you know, now actually is getting into chocolate. It's become much bigger, but it's they never drank chocolate in the same way they drank um coffee far more. And China, it's just scratching, you know, uh it it's just starting. They don't seem to have the same sweet tooth that we have, which is where chocolate in part at least comes through. And they didn't need it as rations for their armies or their the their navies, and it didn't become a status symbol in quite the same way that it did in you know 18th, 19th century Europe or 17th century Europe too.

SPEAKER_00 30:06 Are there any ancient forms or variants of the cocoa bean that don't exist today or rarely exist now?

SPEAKER_01 30:13 Yeah, the answer to that is almost certainly that there are variants. I mean, uh cocoa is slightly different to other foods and fruits, which confuses the genetics a lot. So historically, what you'll sort of see is that people talked about four variants of cacao. They talked about Criollo, Forestero, Trinitario, and Nacional. And that's sort of, you know, that's the way it was up until the 20th century. And then people suddenly discover that actually it's an incredibly promiscuous fruit and there are loads of different variants. And just to make it even more confusing, the real trouble with when you talk about varieties of cacao is that when you open a cocoa pod, you get lots of different varieties of cacao in those seeds. So, in the same way that if you sort of take the parallel of if you take an apple off a tree and you take another apple off a tree, or if you take two grapes off the same vine, they're going to taste remarkably similar, assume you have the same level of maturity and everything. That's why you can sort of talk about, you know, a cox's apple, or you can talk about, you know, a um you know Cabernet Sauvignon or something. You can't really do that with chocolate because you're actually having the seeds. And just as if you plant an apple seed, the apple which comes off that tree won't taste the same as the one that you had before because it'll be, you know, the parents will be two parents rather than just one. It gets very difficult to talk about genetics in cacao, although people are doing it extensively and they've come up with at least sort of 28 different variants now. And there it is clear that because it's also very, very subject to disease, there will be some variants which have died out. Um but you know, there are new variants being created all the time too. So it it but it it you can't really talk about it in the same way that you could talk about genetics for most other fruit where you're eating the flesh of the fruit, not the seed.

SPEAKER_00 31:57 And for those of us maybe that have just m had a bar of cadbury's every now and then or you know, haven't really explored chocolate that much, is there much variety between sort of the different uh variations of the beans in terms of taste?

SPEAKER_01 32:12 Yes, there's yeah, there's huge variety in terms of taste. There's also huge variety in terms of some of the nutritional benefits. So for example, cacao is very, very high in magnesium, but depending on where it's grown, it will have very different levels of magnesium inside that too. Yes. I mean, inside your cadre's bar, though, you know, the primary ingredient I'm afraid is is sugar. And it's pretty difficult to sort of tell what else is going on inside that.

SPEAKER_03 32:34 Just brown coloured sugar. Um that actually brings me quite neatly onto this part of the discussion, which really starts to get into the modern day version of the chocolate bar and really onto the health implications of what we've done to it over the many years. Um and there's there's an interesting, I think we should start with why chocolate was shaped into bars in the first place, because although this is sort of um tangentially linked to health, this is really, I guess, what helps it become this mass manufactured good that it is today.

SPEAKER_01 33:08 Yeah, I I so I uh you're right. I mean, the the the big sort of change in chocolate in the 19th century is that as a consequence of trying to reduce the amount of cocoa butter that you have in the drinking chocolate, a very smart Brit, Joseph Fry, in the 1840s, somehow or other works out that if you fold some of the cocoa butter that you've squeezed out of the cocoa bean using the hydraulic press, you can then actually create a stable solid out of the cakes that people were using to make the drinking chocolate. You could actually create a stable solid which you could start to sell with something which people would eat. I mean, certainly people were eating chocolate a bit before then, but the idea that it was you could have chocolate bars is made possible by fries working out that you can fold the cocoa butter back into the cakes that we used to, you know, crumble and then make into the drinking chocolate. So the invention of the bar really kicks off chocolate as being something which is very easy to consume anywhere. You can literally have it on the go, you can put it in your pocket, you can have it for breakfast. And then there are two other developments which really cause it to skyrocket. One of them is the discovery of conching and grinding, which basically means that instead of having very grainy chocolate, you can have incredibly smooth chocolate. So, like Matt was sort of saying, this wonderful chocolate which melts in your mouth. That's invented by the Swiss in the 1870s, 1880s by Lint. And then in parallel, um, the idea of actually being able to add milk to chocolate, milk powder. And this arguably is the first, it's the first what's called bliss point food. So if you look at how you know junk foods work, they work through a couple of ways to um, not to put too fine a point on it, abuse your instinctive love of various tastes. So they you love, I mean, humans are programmed to love sugar, salt and fat. We're also programmed to eat um lots of varieties of different foods. So you've got this sort of on the one hand what's called the bliss point, which is the sugar salt and fat Moscowitz, and then you've got sensory-specific satiety, on the other hand, which is the roles argument that, you know, it's the buffet effect, that if you're given lots of variety, you keep on eating because you want to try different stuff. And chocolate really is the pioneer of both of those. So way before the 1950s, 1960s, 70s, get going with junk food and crisps and everything else, chocolate's already there. So it's got the bliss point with Daniel Peter and Nestle figuring out how to put the milk powder in the chocolate, which makes it incredibly Moorish. And then in parallel, all the great discoveries of the chocolate bars of the 1920s, 1930s involve lots of different textures, whether it be the Kit Kat, the Mars bar, you know, you name it, they're all about giving you this variety. And that is the reason why I think chocolate just becomes ubiquitous because it, you know, it is basically hacking our instinctive love for scoffing. And that's why it just and it's very, very portable. It's very, very easy. The other thing about the bar, of course, is that one of the things that junk food relies on is that it be widely available. And and the bar is extremely portable, extremely easy to sell in lots of different stores. But above all, it's one of the first foods to be sold in vending machines. So if you look at what's actually happening on the 1920s train stations, they are actually reformulating chocolate so that it can go into vending machines and be sold in bars on every train station. So it it it pioneers a lot of the aspects which we now associate with the junk food revolution. You know, it's that it's arguably, along with biscuits, the first which is actually put into a factory which is sort of powered by modern power means. It arguably it's one of the first to actually use a lot of the processing tricks. So, you know, the hydraulic press is actually invented by Brit, um Joseph Branner, who's a locksmith, he wants to flush loose, but it's really given its most power in food by the van Hoetens that that the Dutch guys who work out that you can use this to squeeze the cocoa butter out uh and then make the drinking chocolate, etc. And then you've also got all the additives of emulsifiers, you know, soy lessoth then is originally patented actually to be used in chocolate.

SPEAKER_00 37:09 Yeah, I can see a real clear, the way you've described that is amazing because I can see a real clear timeline from all of these various separate inventions to kind of where we are today in our relationship with chocolate. But I want to go back to maybe the first point that you mentioned on that, which is um I think in 1847 you said Joseph Fry created the first chocolate bar. So was he really the first, or were there other sort of solid bars before then that we've sort of seen evidence of?

SPEAKER_01 37:40 Well, there are definitely solid cakes before then, because that's how the drinking chocolate would have been sold. And it's you know unrealistic to expect that, you know, much as I'm sure all of us will have raided our mum's cupboard at some point to have a go at the cooking chocolate, I think it's very unlikely that that you know that our our equivalents 150 years ago weren't sort of you know like grabbing that the drinking chocolate cake and eating a bit of it. But his idea to turn it into something which was designed for eating, that he is credited with being that. But it's definitely not the first thing which people ate with chocolate. You know, again, you know, chocolate Easter eggs date back to the turn of the 18th century, you know, either in Milan or in Paris. So, no, we were eating chocolate before then, but we weren't necessarily eating chocolate bars. I mean, everybody, I mean the weird thing about chocolate and chocolate's history is that it is incredibly under-researched. There's some brilliant um historians of it, you know, Clarence Smith, for example, and Co. But but it it most of the time it just repeats a lot of the stuff that's been sort of said before. And so it's not as well sort of written about as say something like sugar or even tea or coffee, partly because it is just treated as an everyday commodity and it's just part of you know what everybody does. So it is a little bit more difficult to sort of articulate exactly what's happening. And as an example of that, um recently the Germans have claimed using some archives and in East Germany that they were actually the first people to make milk chocolate back in the 1820s, not the Swiss. But it it you know, we've got nothing except for a couple of adverts suggesting this. But it you know, historians you know have not looked at it nearly as much as they have looked at the other drinks and many other foods.

SPEAKER_03 39:18 And it's sort of not surprising, I suppose, um, to see some conflicts because given how loved chocolate is, there will be many people who sort sort of want to lay claim to its various iterations and inventions throughout the years because it's you know it's quite an honour, quite a prestige to be associated with the invention of the chocolate bar in some way. Yes, I think that's true.

SPEAKER_01 39:40 And I think once history is written, it's very difficult to unwrite it. And I think you need you need a marketing department to sort of you know stake your claim. And for example, the British Navy, you know, doesn't stake its claim to kicking off the factory to make biscuits and to make chocolate in the 1820s and the 1830s. It's but that's clearly the first factory to be making chocolate well before anyone else's.

SPEAKER_03 40:01 Can you uh explore that a bit more deeply then? Because you mentioned it before, of course. But um, yeah, how what was the role in the British Navy's uh sort of invention with chocolate and biscuits?

SPEAKER_01 40:11 So again, it's it's it's it's very, very underreported and very, very under-researched. But the Navy needed foods which you could um transport very easily and which are pretty small and which are very you know gonna last for a long time when you ship them. And so part of the daily rations of the British Navy in the you know 1800s through to the 1870s and and beyond, actually, and right the way it's used actually right in both world wars as well, is biscuits, tack, and those are industrialized very quickly in the 1820s, 1830s. Once you start to get factories emerging, they they are biscuit factories. But in parallel to that, you know, everyone thinks about the grog of rum that a British sailor would get. Well, they'd also get given some drinking chocolate every day. And that drinking chocolate needed to be made and processed. And there are various estimates which suggest that the British Navy is actually consuming about 20 to 30 percent of all the chocolate, all the cocoa beans, which are basically shipped to the UK to give people these rations. And you you you know, you need factories to be making that stuff, and well, you don't need, but once you have factories, you can start using it. And the the earliest food factories in I think are actually these. I mean, obviously, people are making them in workshops before then, but actually, you know, if you define a factory as being sort of, you know, one person using like 15 different machines and you have power enhancing what one per what people can do, then I think that would be the argument that for biscuits and for chocolate, it's the British Navy in the 1810s, 1820s, 1830s who kick off the first factory-made foods.

SPEAKER_03 41:46 And and you did um touch on this before, but um when you were discussing the processing of chocolate, you mentioned uh the Dutch. So there is this process called Dutching, and that itself has an origin story which may not actually be Dutch, right?

SPEAKER_01 42:02 So No, no, it's definitely British. So so the the the Dutching involves two different things, and you're it's it's basically by a father and son team in the Netherlands. Quite why and how they came to invent it, my own personal favourite theory, but it's difficult to prove this, is that the Dutch at this point had lovely beards, and so they were very concerned when you drink chocolate, a little bit like Matt has. You've got to be a bit careful with chocolate because it's got lots of cocoa butter in it. And what you don't want is any of that cocoa butter getting into your beer because on a cold day, when you walk outside, it will congeal when you come back in. So you want to have less of it. So that's a theory. But anyway, what is definitely clear is that it is quite gritty, it's quite grainy, it's quite fatty, and so they want to find a way to improve it. And lots of different techniques are used. One of the ways is you can literally hang cocoa beans from the, you know, in a sack from the roof, and some of the cocoa butter will come down. But what the van Houtens discovered was that you could use a hydraulic press to squeeze this out. So they are credited with this, but it's a little bit unfair because there's an amazing inveterate, British inventor called Joseph Brammer, who's best known for locks. But in the 1890s, sorry, 1790s, Joseph Brammer is experimenting with ways to flush WCs, toilets, and invents the first hydraulic press to do this. And it's this which the Van Houtens used to create the Dutch press. Dutching actually refers to another discovery made a little bit later by the son of Van Houten. And what this involves actually is that the cocoa mass, so the squeezed cocoa after some of the butter's been taken out of it, is washed in an alkaline solution because this reduces some of the bitterness and it also changes the colour to a slightly more appealing reddish colour, which people liked at the time. It also unfortunately destroys quite a lot of the nutrients, but that's what the sort of Dutch press is. It's these two innovations. One is the washing in an alkaline solution, and then the other is this use of a hydraulic press originally developed to flush toilets with.

SPEAKER_00 43:52 So we reached this point in history where you outline this timeline uh where we started to see the chocolate that we know today. So full of sugar, milk, all sorts of other stuff. And there's Daniel Peter's Eureka moment with uh being able to sort of put milk into chocolate. Um, can we talk about what that looked like and kind of what led to kind of this discovery?

SPEAKER_01 44:22 Yeah, so I think it's it's a couple of different things. It it it it this there's the the Swiss sort of do two great things for chocolate. They discovered this thing called grinding and conching, which is how you make a smooth bar, which literally melts in your mouth. So the bars that fries have were very much what are called stone ground. And if you want to try those today, come to a tasting or get one of Tazo's bars. They're grainy, they're gritty, they're very nice, but they are not what you expect from a chocolate bar, which literally melts in your mouth. So the first thing is that this is this great discovery by Lint of he accidentally leaves his grinder on over the weekend as the apocryphal story, comes back, discovers this sort of molten liquid, massive chocolate. And when you grind Grind chocolate, it has this unique feature, which is that you can grind the solids, the dark bits, if you like, down to below 20 microns so that the human tongue can't detect that it's not a liquid, especially when it's coated with cocoa butter. And then if you temper it the right way, tempering being a sort of fancy term for crystallization, if you crystallize it the right way, what happens is that it's a solid at room temperature, but then it melts at human body temperature. And so this creates the first bit, which is how it becomes so delicious. And then the second bit, though, is that you know, if you add a bit of milk to it, and a little bit of salt in particular, which comes later, but if you add a bit of milk to it, it becomes the first bliss point food because it's sugar, salt, and fat. And, you know, it's already got fat in it, but the addition of the milk powder helps. And Daniel Peter's great discovery is twofold. So the first thing he does is you can't add liquid to chocolate at any point in the process because it all goes horribly pear-shaped when you're grinding it, your contrary just all gums up and goes a bit wrong. So you can't add milk liquid to it. But Nestle had obviously shown that you can add milk powder. But Daniel Peter's great insight is that you don't want to add milk powder because otherwise you're going to end up with chocolate like Hershey's. In other words, it goes butyric and it sort of smells a bit like baby vomit or rotten chocolate, you know, rotten milk or something like that. So his great addition is basically that you you um use condensed milk. And condensed milk does not go butyric. So that the whereas, you know, for most Europeans, we will think that Hershey's is um a little bit tangy and acrid in their terminology, in our sense, it smells of vomit because it's got butyric acid added to it. And that's the natural end of milk. Milk goes butyric. That's my palmer's ad smells the same thing. Um, but you don't really want that in chocolate. So that's Daniel Peter's great contribution is to figure out a way to add not just milk powder, but a milk powder which doesn't go butyric.

SPEAKER_03 46:48 But if you don't want that in chocolate, why is it that the Hershey's bar is still successful in America?

SPEAKER_01 46:54 I think because they associate it now, and once you get habituated to taste, and I'm using the word taste very differently to the word flavor, which is sort of, you know, your your ability to sort of detect flavors with your olfactory system, so smelling with your mouth. I think tastes become habitual and they're a little bit harder to break. And so Americans expect their chocolate to have that tangy and acrid feature to it. So, you know, one of the best ways to get sued by any chocolate company is to say they've changed the formula. Um, you know, you can you can accuse them of lots of things like destroying the planet or using child labor or anything else like that, and they won't be very happy about it, but they get really worried if if if you know somebody starts writing it, it doesn't taste the same. You know, that that really worries them. Because you know, another aspect of ultra-processed foods is that you get people to crave them. And if you want somebody to crave a food, you actually have to get it consistent.

SPEAKER_03 47:42 Talking about ultra-processed food, how is chocolate actually made today? Because I think um I've heard you describe the process of making a modern chocolate bar more like uh creating a sort of molded paste. Is that right?

SPEAKER_01 47:56 Yeah, so I think that there are sort of, you know, it's a bit like you you've sort of got the ready meal or the chicken nugget analogy, which is that you know, if you if you want to cook, you can either buy a ready meal and stick it in the microwave, or you can buy the ingredients and assemble it together. And the great contributions of the Belgians to the world of chocolate is they made it much easier for everybody to become a cook, in the same way that ready meals made it easy for anybody to make a meal very quickly and very easily by just sticking it in the microwave. The Belgians did the same with this invention of what they call couverture. So what they basically did was they made big blocks of chocolate so that the makers no longer had to buy beans, grind them, you know, conch them, roast them, etc. They could basically just buy the chocolate ready-made and then just turn it into chocolate bars and add a bit of flavoring to it. And that is how a lot of chocolate bars are still made today. That the maker does not touch cocoa beans. And it makes a much more consistent product, but it won't give you the complexity of flavor that you will get from people who are trying to find the best beans and trying to make the best chocolate.

SPEAKER_00 48:55 So could you walk us through exactly how um making like a normal chocolate bar, I say normal, but um what a mainstream chocolate bar like a Cadbury's that really doesn't resemble kind of real chocolate or historical chocolate versus, let's say, like a craft chocolate. A craft chocolate, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 49:17 So what a craft chocolate will do is it will it's like scratch cooking versus sort of ready meal cooking. So what will happen in craft chocolate is on the farm, it's relatively similar except for the attention which is paid to different stages. So the way that chocolate gets from sort of you know farm to table, if you like, is that you grow it, it grows generally in forests, although it can be growing in specially crazed estates, although that's very difficult with chocolate. It is generally a smallholder farming activity. You know, you work with the farmer, you tell them how you want the beans fermented, you tell them a little bit about like the drying process that you want, you tell them what flavor profile you're looking at so that can be factored back into the fermentation. And then you take the beans, and you yourself will basically take the beans, you'll sort them to make certain there's no bad beans in there, then what you'll do is you'll roast them to a special recipe, and then what you'll do is you will then take the shell off, and then you will grind them, and then you will turn them into bars. When you have industrial chocolate, after it's been dried, what will happen to it then is it will go through one of two routes. It will either be uh roasted, deshelled, turned into cocoa mass, and then pulverized in the Dutch process that we talked about earlier, and then the blocks will be basically sent to people to make chocolate cakes, chocolate biscuits, or whatever out of. Or what will happen is it will get to big manufacturers or to big processors like Calibo or like Calgill or like Olam. And what they will often do with it is they will nib roast it, which basically means that they take the shells off before they roast it. They'll also roast it at a super high temperature because they are very, very concerned about any diseases which may have got into their supply chains. So they'll often roast it to 400 degrees. And then what they will do is um then roast it but for a far longer at a far higher temperature than you would get in craft chocolate because they're trying to get a consistent flavor. And if they've got any defects because something's been overfermented or underfermented or you know, um overdried or anything, that will sort of mask it, and then they'll add other things to it like vanilla in and other flavouring agents and sugar, so that you don't detect those problem notes.

SPEAKER_00 51:22 Very interesting, actually. So I can totally see um that, and it seems obvious saying it now, but it's not something that I have really thought about that much, to be honest, is that the process in sort of mass-produced chocolate is really just you can see why they've made some steps to it make sure it's the highest yield and the lowest risk and the most consistency, but those steps do take away from the taste or maybe the nutrients. They'll take away from the flavour, yeah. From the flavor, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 51:57 I mean, they're trying basically look, the the story of most food in the 20th century is the consolidation and the commoditization of its supply. So in any food that you care to mention, or almost any food, you know, there are three or four foods which account for 60% of all the calories that we eat on the planet, and they're controlled by four companies, the ABCDs, which nobody really knows about, that they basically consolidated and commoditized the stuff that is then used to industrialize and make the chocolate out of. Or not just chocolate any food out of, you know, whether it be you know your breads or anything else. So it's the consolidation of the commoditization of the supply chain. So you know, if it's wheat, if it's soy, if it's any of those products, they've all had it done to them. And you have to commoditize it because then you can get it as cheaply as you possibly can. I mean, one of the um more bizarre things about chocolate is that it has an exemption from the, I think it's 2012, the EU brought in a regulation which said you had to put on any food stuff. You have to say the country of origin. So if you buy carrots now, or if you go to the supermarket and you see sort of some broccoli, it will have to tell you where it's from. Chocolate has an exemption to this on three grounds. And they literally, this is the argument they have, and it's public. The first argument is that the primary ingredient in most chocolate bars is not chocolate but sugar, so we shouldn't have to declare it because it's there. The second argument is that um chocolate is not grown in Europe, so it'll confuse people if we tell them that it's grown in different West African countries. And then the third argument is they actually had the audacity to say that um, well, we might have to increase our prices by 30% because part of our efficiencies are that we can play off one country against another. So we don't want to have to sort of say if it comes from Ghana or the Cote d'Ivoire or Togo, we just want to be able to play them off against one another. Because if you've got a commodity crop, that's what you can do. Wow. That that that literally is the reason why now you are starting to see on chocolate bars the country of origin, but you don't have to put it on by law. It's not like a carrot, it's not like a um, you know, a banana where you actually have to say where it comes from. You don't have to do that with chocolate for this exemption.

SPEAKER_00 53:55 We've spoken a bit, or and you've mentioned, uh, sort of this taste and flavour and how we've really sort of hacked our senses with uh particularly modern chocolate. Can we sort of explore and whether we've whether the way that we've experienced these senses has kind of changed over the centuries, sort of as a result of us maybe like refining chocolate in this in this way?

SPEAKER_01 54:19 Yes. And I think you're you're you're hitting the sort of you know, the nub of the health argument. So look, there are lots of things which make junk foods possible. You know, industrialization, commoditization, fantastic advertising, fantastic marketing, you know, all that sort of stuff. But in the end, it's because we want to scoff. And scoffing is something which we do instinctively because our instincts are to have stuff that's sugar, sweet, and fat, etc. But it's a little bit more than that. If you look at the really big changes, I think, in food over the last, say, 50 years, it's not just that we scoff more, but it's also that we are not eating together as much. And if you put those together, so we are encouraged to sort of, you know, if you look at, you know, 80% of people who work in London in office blocks, when they eat lunch, even though they're working next to their colleagues, will actually just grab a you know, a ready meal, bag of crisps, and a fizzy drink and just have it at their desks rather than socializing. So if you don't socialize over food, and if you have food which is only about the tastes, you lose the language of flavor. And if you don't have the language of flavor, you won't savor food as much. And I think that the move to solitary eating, the move to snacking, and the move to scoffing, what we want to try and get back to is more savouring and sharing of food. And to do those, you need a language. But the language comes from a fluency of actually discussing it and talking about it with one another. So everybody can describe something which is sweet, or if it's sour, if it's salty, or if it's bitter. You know, if you put something, if you give somebody something and you say, is it sweet, is it sour, is it salty, they will be able to answer that. If you then get somebody to try and describe the flavors, they really struggle because it's it's not like colour, where if you look at a rainbow, we can all agree on the different colours because we've been taught to do that. You actually have to learn the language to be able to articulate it. And because of the way that your sense of flavor works, which is your sense of smell, it goes straight into your brain. Actually, you do need to pick up the language to be able to appreciate it correctly. So, you know, if you want to sit back and savour foods, then I think you need to teach people the language of it. And that involves stopping people scoffing as much and solitary eating, etc., which is problematic. I mean, you're going against, literally, you are going against human nature in scoffing. And if you don't, it's a bit like sort of, you know, if you ban mobile phones from schools, yes, you will probably encourage kids to, you know, study a bit more. But if you want them to buy books, you've actually got to not just teach them to read, but to love reading. And similarly, if you want them, instead of going on TikTok and everything else, but go out and play sports, you have to give them a facility. I I sort of, I think I've given this to Ollie before, but if you give somebody a pair of running shoes and tell them to run every day for a week, they'll hate you. But at the end of the month, a fair number of people will actually have got into jogging because they will discover what fun it is. If you drop somebody into a swimming pool or a pond every day for a week, they're going to absolutely hate you by the end of the week. And at the end of the month, they're going to kill you. Because, you know, you have to teach people how to do it. And you have to teach people just how to savor and slow down their eating and be more mindful. You know, we talked a little bit about ceremonial cacao and the the benefits of mindfulness in general and sharing. And that's another good example of it.

SPEAKER_03 57:33 I think a good analogy might be, you know, the way that we're using Chat GPT now, um, a lot of people are using it to sort of just create content for them. And they they might ask it, they might put in a prompt and it creates a full article for them. They post that article, maybe it's a student who uses it as their uh their exam entry. And when asked to um, you know, think about the content of that article, they they have no clue because they didn't write it, they didn't read it, none of it is sunk in. Whereas if you spend the time actually sitting there researching the topic, having to think about it, writing it out, going back and rewriting bits, it becomes sort of uh ingrained in your memory. And so, like um, I I think you know, modern chocolate bars, junk food chocolate bars are kind of like chat GPT, we don't spend enough time with them. You know, it's completely thoughtless. So we don't even know what the experience is that we've had of that chocolate bar, other than I enjoyed that 30 seconds, gone on to the next thing. Whereas um, if you spend the time to think about what it is that you're putting in your mouth, like you say, savouring it, really trying to discern if there are different notes of flavour and taste, and trying to pick those apart and try to name them and give them descriptors, then you start to become more adept at that over time. And I think, you know, at Cocoa Run, as we've we've mentioned, you sell craft chocolate, and that's that's kind of what it's all about, isn't it? Other than the fact that you're also doing uh a much better service to the the farmers, um, you're actually paying them what the the sort of value of the chocolate rather than um making it so that it's almost impossible for them to live. You're also bringing back this uh maybe the way that our ancestors experienced chocolate in a way, this sort of focus on enjoying it and really making it an experience.

SPEAKER_01 59:23 Yeah, it's the ritual, and I think you're absolutely right. I mean, the chat GBT analogy is is spot on, which is that you know, this there's I think the writing does two things. It clarifies thinking and then it communicates what you're trying to sort of say. And ChatGBT is actually sort of quite convincing doing the convincing part, but it's not going to help you learn how to think. And you know, back onto Matt's sort of point, I think the other bit which we forget about with modern food is that we don't cook anymore from scratch. And and again, some of this is just like the fridge, some of this is societal. We now basically have most families will have husband and wife working, or husband and husband, you know, most people will have you know both people working, so there is less time to actually cook. If you cook from scratch, you learn about flavor. If you share food, you also can discuss it. But that predicates that the food has actually got some flavor inside it. A lot of junk food is just taste. If you want somebody to carry on eating lots and lots of something, you put a lot of sugar in it because that you only get the sugar hit from basically eating a bit more sugar. The way you get the delight from a great glass of tea or a great cup of coffee or a great chocolate bar is you savour it and you let the flavours wash over you. So it's like, you know, it's not like sort of playing a video game where you're sort of like trying to get the next level. It's more like reading a book which satisfies you as you savour it in a slightly different way, or playing a ball game or anything like that. You know, and there are now obviously video games which do that too, but you I think you're absolutely right. The Chat GBT analogy is spot on. I think that the cooking bit too, the preparing food, you know, and and and I suspect that actually most of the people inside big food who are making chocolate bars don't really know very much about the flavor of a chocolate bar anymore. They don't know what chocolate flavours can be. So let alone what help is there for the rest of us.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:13 So so Spencer, do you think there's like an important role that flavor plays for us to sort of identify what is actually healthy and what isn't?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:23 Yes, I think it's sort of twofold. So I think the first bit that thinking and stepping back about flavor helps with is a sort of slightly strange behavior. But what it actually does is it slows you down. And one of the dangers of eating very fast is that you eat more than you need to. So if you wolf your food down, if you're encouraged us to eat more of it, you will get overfull. You don't need to eat that much. If you slow down the food, you can do that. Now, there are other techniques you can sort of, you know, like tell people to chew their food 20 times or put the knife and fork down between every meal that, or every bite. But that actually, if you just learn to savor, that will really help. And it also encourages more social eating, which has got all sorts of benefits psychologically, et cetera. But I think putting all that to one side, there's another way in which I think flavor is incredibly important in modern nutritional science, if you like, which is that most people think about food in terms of the macronutrients, like, you know, the sort of the carbs, the fats, the proteins, the fiber that you get in the food. So, you know, the sort of car analogy is this is, you know, are you a carb or a protein person? Do you want sort of diesel or electric or petrol in your car? And then there is these other things which everybody talks about and you have to have in foods, which are the micronutrients. So everybody sort of talks about the vitamins and the minerals. And those are incredibly important. If you don't get vitamin C, you get scurvy. You know, if you go and get D, you get rickets, et cetera, et cetera. And what's interesting though is that there is another whole class of things, which actually the guy who discovered vitamin C also tried to call vitamin P for permeable. But unlike the other vitamins, this one doesn't have a one-to-one correlation. What phytonutrients are is basically they're the things which everybody's getting excited about now in terms of your gut health, and they're the they are the things which sort of reduce inflammation. So they're the probiotics, the prebiotics, and all that sort of stuff. They're all the fermented foods and everything like that. What's difficult with those is that they're not part of modern nutrition science in the same way that macros and micros are. So if you pick up a chocolate bar and you look at the ingredients, you can do that, and then you can look at the macros and you can look at the micronutrients, et cetera. But and you can know how much fat there is, you can know how much sugar there is, et cetera. So it tells you quite a bit. But what it doesn't tell you is actually the phytonutrients. And the best way of telling you about the phytonutrients is actually from the flavor. So if you pick up a strawberry from an allotment, it's just bursting with great flavors. You know, you go on an amazing flavor journey. Whereas sadly, if you pick up the sort of cheapest supermarket strawberry, it doesn't give you quite the same, it doesn't give you any flavor, it's just bread to basically have sweetness. And it will be much lower in the phytonutrients. So I think that actually in a strange way, you know, you can do a lot by now sort of taking your phone and using Chat GBT or using Zoe or anything else to basically take a photo of it and ask you if it's healthy or not. But it doesn't actually distinguish. So if you took two chocolate bars, you know, and you just basically just showed that if you show them this, they'd be able to do it. But if you show them the actual chocolate, you can't do it. The best way you can do that is actually learning to appreciate flavour because it shows you whether the beans have been well looked after, how they've been harvested, how they've been grown, what the soil's like, etc. You know, flavour is your best guarantee at the moment for all those bits which aren't on the ingredients list.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:30 Yeah, it's really interesting that you say that it the flavor has a link back to how it was grown and harvested, because you know, there seems to be some ethical similarities between modern craft chocolate and how cacao was valued historically. Um, one connection though, I've been lucky enough to um experience uh Cocoa Runner's chocolate bars, they are fantastic, but they are more pricey than what you would get in the supermarket. You can pay literally a pound for a chocolate bar um at Tesco, whereas it's not the case um with a craft chocolate bar. And actually, throughout history, you know, chocolate has been tied to power, wealth, status. And so I guess, you know, one thing that's difficult to square is that what you don't want to do is make chocolate the preserve of the wealthy again, and only they are allowed to have it. And so at least commoditizing chocolate allowed uh people from all walks of life to experience the delight of chocolate. Do you s how do you sort of square the fact that craft chocolate is that bit more expensive?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:36 So um it's a very good point. So I think there's sort of three elements to that. So the first thing is I'm not telling people not to eat, you know, their favorite snack. If people like this sort of stuff, you know, that we're programmed to like it, if you, you know, have it. I think all I'm sort of saying is that there's also an opportunity to have craft chocolate, and it's a different sort of experience. I think the next thing I thought I would say is that mass-produced chocolate has other costs, as just as junk food has other costs. So you're not really comparing apples with carrots, if you like. That yes, the price in the supermarket is a pound, but the price in terms of planetary destruction, you know, chocolate is an incredible food for desertification and also for environmental degradation. So those costs you've also got to think slightly about. And candidly, the other thing we've got to think about is the obesity epidemic and what the other costs are, which you push onto the health service and everything else like that. So, you know, I think that in general, this argument that food should be as cheap as possible actually ignores the fact that there are other costs behind it, such as the health costs, such as the environmental costs, such as the cost to the farmer. Putting that all aside, though, I think what's interesting is that you can have the very, very best chocolate in the world for between five and ten pounds. That, you know, if you think about that with coffee, where people are paying like 500 pounds for a cup of coffee now in bits of Saudi and bits of Dubai. Um, or if you think about just the price of wine, for example, you know, you are getting the equivalent of Very, very best wines for less than five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten pounds. So I don't think it's that much. The other thing I would say is that you savour it slightly more. So, you know, this is designed to be hoovered in one go. This should last you, you know, a couple of you for four or five days. So you're not really comparing apples and oranges. But yes, it is expensive. I wouldn't want it to be much cheaper because if it is cheaper, it basically suggests that the farmers are not being paid enough to live on. I mean, you know, the the the the unattractive side to cocoa is that the average cocoa farmer in West Africa needs $2.50 to live on. If they're male, they're lucky if they get paid 80 cents. If they're female, they're lucky if they get paid 30 cents. So, you know, it just it it you know, I think there is a reason why you have to pay a little bit more, because otherwise we may not have it. The farmers may just give up, you know, there's not enough for them to make. So it it is a you know, it is a bit of a challenge there. But yeah, no, it it's you know I don't pretend that we can compete. But also, you know, sugar is incredibly cheap, and the primary ingredient in most mass-produced snacks is sugar.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:01 If chocolate bars were invented today from scratch, do you think we would design it the way that we currently consume it? Or do you think we would maybe try to focus on a better way? It's kind of a hypothetical.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:16 No, it's a great question. It's a really great question. I mean, you know, the reason why we have the bar format, as we discussed earlier on, is because it you know it came out of the cakes and because you can put them in vending machines. And we always ask our makers two questions when we onboard them. One of which is, what time of day do you think people eat your chocolate bars? And then why do you make bars? And the the first question, after a bit of head scratching, they sort of say, well, generally in the evening after a meal or after a meal in the afternoon or something like that. Whereas, you know, if you think about confectionery, the way most people eat confectionery is they have it as a treat on its own, on their own, from a vending machine or from a corner shop when they need a pickup mid-afternoon or mid-morning. And it's you know, it's a little sort of treat, which is great. And I think they can get that. But why do you make bars is because that's what we've always done. But you know, actually, format-wise, it may not be the most sensible. I'm not sure what the most sensible is, but there are some sort of analogies which work quite well. You know, arguably one of the most successful innovations in chocolate in the last 30 or 40 years was the creation of salted caramels. But the real genius, I think, with salted caramels is not just that they hit the bliss point, sensory-specific satiety, and just about everything else under the planet. It's that they fit very, very well into a consumer need, which is that if you go to a dinner party, you can take some flowers, you can take uh a bottle of wine, but you can also take a box of salted caramels, you know, make sure it's a great one from someone like Chocolate Sol or Chocolada or something like that, and you'll be even more popular. But it's an acceptable gift. I think nobody really thinks about taking chocolate bars to the end of a dinner party other than me, the real bars of chocolate flats. So, you know, that's a sort of example. So I think that, you know, if you look at now when you go to the cinema, there are lots and lots and lots of chocolates on sale, but they're not chocolate bars. They're chocolate buttons, which will make you eat more because you can't do the portion control, and also because you don't have to break a bar in the middle of you know, James Bond shooting somebody else. Um so you know, I think that there are different formats and people haven't really necessarily thought them through. And I think you have to think through the occasion as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:15 Yeah, it's a very interesting point, actually, about the the sort of it being the acceptable or unacceptable gift alongside kind of like bringing a bottle of wine to a dinner party or something. Because actually uh here in Poland, I brought uh I went to a party last weekend and I brought uh a box of some lint chocolates, thinking, you know, oh great party. And they were like, Why have you brought a gift for a baby's first communion to a party? So I guess the cultural differences were well, I mean it's it's a little bit like the story.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:48 I don't know if you want to keep the same, but do you know the story about why we drink Australian wine in the UK? Uh no, no. One of the arguments is that we basically didn't drink wine in the UK until what you know, at least outside of Oxford colleges and the courts of law and everything, until the 1960s and the 1970s, because we drank beer. And we didn't drink this red and this white stuff until people basically could have suddenly, thanks to Thompson holidays, start going to Spain, France, Italy, and they found this, you know, rather sort of nice white and red and pink stuff. And then they came out to the UK and you know, they wanted to try a bit more of it. But the real genius of the Australians was twofold. The first genius of the Australians was to realize that where Brits drink is not the same as where Europeans drink. Europeans drink with their food. So, you know, you have wine with food, but Brits don't drink with their food. You know, beer you have, and then you go out for a curry and a vest, you know, etc. So the Australians basically redesigned their wines. So that the first thing the Australians did was they realized that they had to sell in pubs because that's where Brits were used to drinking. And then the next focus is even more genius, which is that he basically redesigns Australian wines. If you look at what Australian wine labels from the 1950s and 60s, it's sort of like Clara, it's all modelled on the French. And, you know, it's designed to be had in that way. But they basically redesign it so that it's um, as he put it, uh, it's designed to go very, very well with a bag of peanuts or a bag of crisps, and you can just quaff it on its own. And I actually think that, you know, where junk food has been brilliant is seizing all the opportunities taken by the fact that we've now got fridges, taken by the fact that we've now got two um working parents in any family. And so they basically made their lives easier. And then they've designed the food so that you just eat as much of it as you possibly can. What's difficult now is to how do we unwind that and get people to eat healthier food, which they want to savour and share. And it it's very difficult because you're creating new habits.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:40 Well, Spencer, it is always an absolute pleasure talking to you, a goalmine of information. And I've got to highly recommend Coco Runner's craft chocolate tasting sessions, which I did with my wife. So you receive a box of various different chocolates, you go through uh Spencer will take you through the history of chocolate. Um, so some of what we've touched on today, and then he guides you through the tasting process or the flavor process, and it is just a wonderful experience. I absolutely loved it. And as I mentioned before, if you want to read more about the history of chocolate, um, you've got that uh fantastic blog on your website too, and its name is the Chocopedia, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 1:13:18 Yeah, it's Chocopedia, and then you can get more on the Valentine's Day everything. But thank you. They're very insightful questions, which I, as you can sort of tell, I had to think quite hard. I'm not sure that I had all the answers to all of them, but um, yeah, and I love the theme of what you're doing. I think it's fantastic getting people to rethink because that's definitely what we want to get people to do.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:35 Well, thank you very much indeed. Thank you very much. A massive thank you to Spencer for joining us on this podcast. This is what we did before. I'm Matt.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:44 And I'm Ollie. Do subscribe if you enjoyed the episode, it helps us out massively. And we will see you next time. Bye bye.