The Last Adult Taboo
This piece deals with adult themes. I don’t mean that it’s a bit racy, the kind of literature that you’d need to smuggle out of the shop where you’d purchased it in a brown paper bag. Neither is it the sort of issue that needs to be discussed in whispered, hushed tones, to prevent it from reaching the ears of passing infants. It’s certainly not a subject which is likely to get you into trouble for even daring to mention it in polite company. But it afflicts us all as we get older, and it’s deadly serious.
We need to talk about chocolate.
If T. S. Eliot’s Prufrock mapped out his life in coffee spoons, I have measured mine in confectionery. I remember the late 1990s when I probably averaged a Marble bar every day for about 3 months. There was the time around 2010 when a walk to the vending machine across the corridor from my office to buy a bag of Maltesers became an integral part of each morning, and as the addiction took hold the trips became earlier and earlier until it was the first thing I did after logging on. In my early teens, if I had a pound in my pocket there was only one thing it was going on — that was the exact price of 200g of Dairy Milk in the village Co-op. Share these sorts of stories with friends, and most will volunteer a mini-obsession of their own in return — a love of Kit Kats perhaps, or a lament for the ever decreasing size of a Snickers (Marathon if you’re over 40).
So why do we need to talk about chocolate, when it’s something everyone is familiar with? Ask anyone about their favourite bar, and they’ll likely spend several minutes enthusiastically dissecting the merits of a Twix vs a Mars. What possible taboo could be attached to such a universally loved product and source of happy memories?
As I write this, it’s a little over a week after Christmas. Like many people, I now have a cupboard full of goodies to see me through the bleak opening month of a New Year; fancy biscuits, posh crisps, cake, alcohol and most of all chocolate. Each of them is warmly received of course, and I’ll be stepping onto the scales with a wince in February when I’ve devoured the lot. But where the biscuits and the crisps and the cake and the alcohol come in limitless varieties when given as presents, the chocolate you get at Christmas will almost always be of the dark variety.
Dark chocolate is sexy right now. You don’t need to visit an artisanal shop to locate the ‘good stuff’ or have it explained to you. The marketeers have turned it into an edible version of wine — go to the aisles of any big supermarket and you’ll see racks of it, proudly advertising the cacao content, the source of the beans and probably some tasting notes outlining the underlying hints of flavour.
Well OK, each to their own. It doesn’t really hurt anyone. But what I don’t understand is the great unspoken assumption that as an adult, you’ll naturally gravitate towards this stuff. First of all you’ll remove the stabilisers from your bike to favour two wheels, a little later you’ll start to choose long trousers instead of shorts as your default legwear, and then at some undefined point a few years further on you’ll opt for some tastefully packaged 70% organic Booja Booja over a slab of Galaxy.
It’s nonsense though, or at least it’s not a given. I’m pretty sure no-one’s ever directly asked me which I prefer, and if they did it’s not a question I’d need to consider for very long. Dark chocolate is fine — add some butterscotch pieces like Green and Blacks, or some rum and raisin like Old Jamaica, and it can be very fine indeed — but it rarely rises above ‘pleasant’ in the sensation test. Milk chocolate though… it just tastes better. I could sit and think of some metaphors, but really that’s the only simple truth that needs expressing.
Try putting a chunk of expensive dark stuff on your tongue and appreciating the complex flavours as it melts. Now repeat with a piece of milk chocolate — any brand will do, even the questionably sourced ones you’ll find in your local corner shop. It’s sweeter. It’s softer. You’ll reach for another chunk more quickly, and be more disappointed when the last one is gone. Why do I even need to explain this?
“Milk chocolate isn’t as good for you”
Um, I’m eating chocolate. It’s an indulgence, not a salad.
“I tried Reeses and it was disgusting”
We can agree on that.
“Dark chocolate is more sophisticated”
It’s a question of taste buds, no more than that. Fine, I’m unsophisticated, now pass me the milk chocolate!
You love your kids don’t you? Sure, you ration their sweets intake because you want the best for them, but when Christmas rolls around again there’s probably going to be a selection box in their stocking, and we all know which type of chocolate is going to dominate the contents. They’d eat the lot in one sitting before lunch if you’d let them. And some of us enjoyed those boxes so much, that we never felt the need to switch our loyalties when we got bigger. Dark chocolate’s OK, and I’m always grateful when someone’s thought about what I might like but honestly, just grab the biggest lump of Dairy Milk your budget will allow and I’ll be happiest of all.