Okay, I'll bite -- DOES chocolate improve memory?

"The analysis showed that scores for most aspects of cognitive function rose with the level of chocolate intake, regardless of other dietary habits."

-- from a Health After 50 post (see below)

by Ken

Okay, we're supposed to be finishing up with what Joan Didion saw, on her Gulf Coast road trip in summer 1970 (as seen in the notes she assembled on that trip, now published in the book South and West), that seemed counterintuitive at the time but now casts dark shadows over our body politic, including such unexpected developments as the ABC sitcom The Real O'Neals.

On Friday we got as far, traveling with Nathaniel Rich (in his March 9 New York Review of Books journey through the new Didion book), as this, regarding the "kind of thinking" Didion encountered in the Deep South in 1970, which he says "seemed retrograde in the Seventies." And:

From the vantage of New York, California, even New Orleans, it still seems so today. But this southern frame of mind has annexed territory in the last four decades, expanding across the Mason-Dixon Line into the rest of rural America. It has taken root among people -- or at least registered voters -- nostalgic for a more orderly past.

Maybe Wednesday we can get to the finish of this. For now, once again the crush of breaking news forces our attention elsewhere.

Does Chocolate Improve Memory?

by HealthAfter50

It's well-established that eating chocolate and cocoa is linked to cardiovascular benefits. Now, a study in the May 2016 issue of Appetite suggests that eating chocolate regularly is associated with positive cognitive performance as well.

Study participants, including 968 individuals from 23 to 98 years of age, completed a dietary questionnaire to indicate how often they ate a variety of foods (including chocolate, of course): never, seldom, once a week, two to four times a week, five to six times a week, or once or more each day.

Using a battery of standardized tests, investigators then assessed various aspects of participants’ cognitive function, including visual-spatial memory and organization, abstract verbal reasoning, and overall cognitive functioning.

The analysis showed that scores for most aspects of cognitive function rose with the level of chocolate intake, regardless of other dietary habits. Even after investigators adjusted these findings for demographic and other factors, most of these positive associations remained.

But if you reach for that chocolate bar, keep in mind that though this study did not ascertain what types of chocolate participants ate, earlier research indicates that flavanols -- naturally occurring compounds found in high concentrations in dark varieties of chocolate -- likely account for this food’s beneficial effects.

NOW, THE WAY I REMEMBER THOSE
"CHOCOLATE MAY BE GOOD FOR YOU" STORIES --

The way I remember it, the purported health benefits from eating dark chocolate depend on eating a quantity of the stuff that any health professional would be drummed out of the association for recommending. Then again, it could just be my memory playing tricks on me on account of I haven't, you know, eaten enough chocolate lately. I may have to go out and round up a Hershey Bar. The Special Dark variety, of course. Just to be sure I remember what I'm after, I may need to score some chocolate en route.

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Forget the elections, and SOPA, and all that trivial stuff -- we're talking HOT CHOCOLATE!

You can watch Anthony Sasso, the chef at Mario Batali's Bar Jamón in Manhattan's Gramercy Park neighborhood, make his signature spiced (and spicy) hot chocolate here. The recipe is below. From DNAinfo.com's "How to Make the City's Best Hot Chocolate."

by Ken

It's not just Anthony Sasso's hot chocolate at Bar Jamón that's highlighted in Andrea Swalec's DNAinfo.com article. She also offers information from:

* Manhattan's Otto Enoteca Pizzeria in Greenwich Village, which offers "gianduja calda," or "hot hazelnut chocolate," according to pastry chef Meredith Kurtzman, who combines melted Italian hazelnut chocolate with milk that's had hazelnuts soaked in it.

* master chocolatier Jacques Torres (of Jacques Torres Chocolate, now at five locations in Manhattan plus Harrah's in Atlantic City -- not counting the Ice Cream Shop in Brooklyn, currently closed for the season), who stresses the importance of the highest-quality ingredients, explaining, "I wanted [the hot chocolate] to be like when you go to a little salon du thé in Paris and get a little drink and a croissant."

* Max Brenner ("First Food, Then Chocolate"), off Union Square in Manhattan (with locations in Boston, Philadelphia, and Las Vegas, plus Australia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Israel). The New York location, at least, serves "eight styles of hot chocolate drinks," made with dark, milk, or white chocolate -- including " 'choco-pops' hot chocolate with crispy chocolate wafer balls, Italian thick hot chocolate with vanilla cream, and Swiss hot chocolate that's whipped."

Still, the only actual recipe we get is Anthony Sasso's spiced version.

The chef at Gramercy Park's Bar Jamón begins his signature hot [chocolate] by grinding together bittersweet chocolate, cayenne pepper, chili flakes, cinnamon and nutmeg.

Anthony Sasso then melts the spicy chocolate mixture, combines it with steamed milk and serves it up alongside Spanish-style churros at the cozy Mario Batali-owned tapas and wine bar at 15 E. 17th St.

"Spaniards drink really strong coffee, and it's the same with their chocolate," he said. "When they want it, they want it with a nice kick."

[You can click to enlarge the recipe card.]

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In the world of TV cooking competition shows, REALLY wanting to win REALLY isn't a substitute for self-knowledge and REAL focus

Wolfgang Puck, offering us his version of Sachertorte, believes we can make "one of the world's greatest chocolate desserts" -- see below.

by Ken

Whew! With episode four of Top Chef's All Stars season scheduled for tonight, I'm almost caught up on the earlier ones, as part of an intensive pull to polish off the finale of Fox's Hell's Kitchen season (which featured a poor talent pool even by HK standards, didn't it?) and the first three episodes of The Learning Channel's new Cake Boss: Next Great Baker with Buddy "Cake Boss" Valastro. The experience has reinforced a couple of observations I'd been thinking about for a future post, from watching, these shows as well as Food Network competitions like Chopped and Ultimate Recipe Throwdown:

* It's amazing how unknowing most of the contestants are about both their own skills, which they tend to overrate, often wildly, and those of their competitors, which they correspondingly baselessly downplay. Now part of the learning process is precisely this matter of coming to understand strengths and weaknesses, both our own and other people's. It just strikes me that an astounding number of these people are way far back on the learning curve.

It comes out in all sorts of ways, not least in weirdly whacked-out responses to criticisms from the judges. Now there's a measure of subjectivity in judges' opinions, but these are generally highly competent professionals, and when a panel like this tells you unanimously that your dish has little or no (or poor) flavor, or that it's ruinously oversalted or seriously undercooked, etc., etc., it's kind of a delusional reaction to declare, sometimes to the judges' face, that "I stand by my dish" or "X just doesn't like me" or "they just don't get my originality" or "they've got it in for me."

On Cake Boss: Next Great Baker one of the bakers was assigned to produce carrot-cake cupcakes, and turned in something that looked to have the texture of dry little meatloaves, in which, as Buddy and his brother-in-law Joey (the oven guy at Carlo's Bakery) and even we could see there was no more than a smattering of carrot shreds in the batter. I can't imagine it tasted like much either, and as the guy muttered about how much his customers love his carrot cake, I was giving him the benefit of the doubt, figuring that under the pressure of the competition and the cameras he'd just blown it. But no, when Buddy ranked his crappy cupcakes in the bottom two for the challenge, he turned belligerent and ranted about how much carrot cake he sells and he's never had any complaints until Buddy's. Whoo! I guess you have to give the guy credit for finding that many customers who like crap carrot cake.

And then, from people at a significantly higher level of the profession, there were the consecutive flaming departures from Top Chef All Stars of Elia and Jen. We know from their previous seasons that they're both extraordinarily talented cooks, and the judges made clear that they know that too. But that wasn't what they were judging; they were judging the food in front of them, which not only wasn't up to the standards to be expected in this highly competitive company but apparently just wasn't very good at all.

When Elia was eliminated so embarrassingly early in the competition, it was understandable that she was highly wrought, and I suppose we could accept, maybe even respect, her standing by her food and insisting that judges or no judges she's not going to change it. But there was a really nasty spitefulness to it, and no recognition at all of the possibility that her dish simply wasn't very good. (It was an extremely clever challenge, by the way: Each contestant had to remake the very dish for which he or she had been eliminated in his/her original season.)

But Elia went quietly compared with Jen -- yes, lovely and talented Jen, whom I had been looking forward to seeing give us a consistent demonstration of the culinarily adroit, poised form she showed through the first half of her season -- who underwent a meltdown after being told by the judges that her braised pork belly, although well-seasoned, was textural moosh and the hard-boiled egg crumbled on top of it had no taste. I didn't taste it, of course, but there was no disagreement among the judges on either point, so it was bizarre to have her insisting quite belligerently that it was "a great dish." (By the way, in a candid-interview insert, competitor Casey -- a teammate of Jen's on that challenge, wasn't she? -- says she sampled Jen's dish and it tasted like "wet bacon." Think about that a moment: wet bacon. A great dish?)

Before she headed off, screaming and cursing, she insisted on camera back in the stew room that head judge Tom Colicchio must be punishing her for arguing with him. I guess she had no way of knowing that Tom in fact admired her spunk in sticking up for her food. The problem was that the food doesn't seem to have been very good. Again it probably wasn't a factor in the judges' decision but still didn't reflect well on her that when Tom criticized the decision to have her team's numerous dishes all served on one plate, where it all blended together, she snapped back that she assumed the judges were smart enough to ask for additional plates if they wanted them. Talk about Missing the Point 101!

Well, it was certainly crackling television!

Less dramatic but still pretty loopy has been Fabio's near-threateningly voiced indignation at judge Tony Bourdain, insisting repeatedly that he understands criticism of his food but won't allow himself to be made fun of. Now Fabio under control is one of the most amazingly charming individuals you will ever see (and also an outstandingly talented and skilled cook), but this nutjob version of Fabio was, again, simply out of touch with reality. As we all know, Tony Bourdain can be tart, and there's no question that he really, really hated the dish that Fabio had served, and made no effort to conceal it. But I heard nothing he said that could be in any way misunderstood as a personal comment about the cook -- it was all about the food, which it was generally agreed was terrible. And that, after all, is what Bourdain was there to judge.

(We might also mention the astonishment that many of these contestants have when judges say anything negative about their food. It seems to come as a rude shock that anyone might ever be less than enthralled by their offerings -- again, a serious gap in their knowledge of themselves, and also of their place in the big world around them.)

* My other observation, which is more mundane but possibly weirder, is how many of these contestants have gotten the idea that really, really wanting to win constitutes a qualification for winning. This has become standard among the contenders on Chopped and Hell's Kitchen. On the latter, for example, when Gordon Ramsay asks each week's candidates for elimination why they should stay in Hell's Kitchen, almost all of them now tell him how badly they want to win. For many of them it's the only reason they offer Chef Ramsay as to why they should be allowed to remain -- because they wanna.

Now I think I have some idea where this comes from. Occasionally on one of these shows you'll see one of the judges challenging a contestant as to "whether you really want to win." And the meaning is clear enough, I would have thought. They're questioning whether the contestant is really committed to the competition, whether he or she is really engaging all his/her talent and skills and determination to the challenges. And that certainly is a legitimate question.

But to many of these folks it clearly hasn't occurred that "wanting to win" matters only if it involves (a) having the necessary talent and skills and (b) applying them with the maxim focus and determination they're capable of. I got an especially sad example of this watching a rerun of a second-season Ultimate Recipe Throwdown show I'd seen before, in which near-miss contestants from the first season were invited back and given a second chance. There was a sweet, earnest young woman, who clearly cares about cooking and has accomplished much given her limited training and experience. She had been devastated when she lost the first time, as if her life was over, because she was counting on the cash prize to enable her to attend culinary school.

Which would have been nice, I'm sure, but there are other ways to acquire training besides winning prize money on a TV game show. There are cheaper schools, including community colleges, there are wage-slave jobs at the apprentice level. I'm not saying it's easy, but the notion that your entire future as a would-be chef depends on winning Ultimate Recipe Throwdown is, even allowing for her youthful innocence, crackers. Now she was back for her second chance, and she was even more desperate, having had her dreams delayed a whole year, she explained, by her failure to win the first time. As badly as she wanted to win the first time, this time she really, really, really wanted to win.

In this case, though, really, really wanting to win would have started with choosing recipes that might impress the judges but that she could execute in the necessary time under TV-camera pressure (which, after all, she'd already experienced once!) and then preparing and gathering and focusing herself mentally and physically to really execute those recipes. Instead, she floundered amidst her too-ambitious (and in some respects culinarily arguable) dishes and made a steady stream of mistakes. In tears again after her second loss, now sure that her life was ruined because she still hadn't won the money for cooking school, she sobbed in despair that she'd given it everything she had.

Again, of course, emotions are raw and explosive under such tension. I'd like to think that that sweet young this had the courage to watch the aired show, and saw that no, contrary to what she thought at the time, she hadn't given it anything like her all. Even apart from the likelihood that one or more of her competitors was actually a better cook at their respective stages in their lives, meaning that quite likely even if she had given it her best effort, she might well not have been good enough to win that day, the fact remains that she screwed up at every step of the way, from conception through execution.

Really, now! Say, aren't these supposed to be "reality" shows?


A SECOND SEASON FOR WORST COOKS IN AMERICA:
COULD IT MAYBE BE WORSE THAN THE FIRST?

I really, really hated the first season of Food Network's Worst Cooks in America, in which Anne Burrell and Beau MacMillan supposedly took on the task of teaching two teams of certified-zero-skilled cooks some basics but instead proceeded -- unless what happened off-screen was radically different from what happened on -- to teach them, basically, nothing while treating them, basically, with sneering derision and insouciant unconcern. It was such a disgraceful exhibition, showing disrespect not just for the human beings entrusted to them but for food and cooking in general, that I'm amazed either of them has had the courage to show her/his face in public.

But no, Worst Cooks in America is back for a second season, debuting Sunday, January 2, with only a half-change of cast: Beau is gone, replaced by earthy Englishman Robert Irvine, who has been performing all those feats of real-deadline mass-catering derring-do on Dinner Impossible. It will be interesting to see how Robert handles the assignment, given all the no-nonsense real-world on-the-job training we've seen him give to countless cooking zeroes assigned to him as mission "helpers" over his seasons of Dinner Impossible.

Meanwhile, Anne is back for season two. Since she clearly does know her way around the kitchen, I'm hoping she approached this season as a mission of redemption for last season's shocking exhibition. The likelier reality is that she and the producers think what she did last season was okay, maybe even a triumph. Is there no shame?


WITH WOLFGANG PUCK'S RECIPE, I REALLY THINK WE
COULD MAKE A VERSION OF HIS SACHERTORTE

I'm not planning to try to make one -- for one thing I would probably wind up consuming the whole damned thing in less time than it took to make -- but today's e-recipe from ArcaMax Publishing featured regular ArcaMax contributor Wolfgang Puck's version of Sachertorte, "a rich, beautiful Austrian layer cake that's one of the world's greatest chocolate desserts."

Wolfgang explains that one reason he calls his version "Wolfgang's Sachertorte" is that he uses bittersweet chocolate rather than the traditional cocoa powder, believing that the cocoa butter in the chocolate "yields moister results and even more intense chocolate flavor." "To tell you the truth," he writes, "I've found some of the slices of Sachertorte I've eaten in Austria (I won't say where) to be a little dry for my taste." The recipe even includes toothpick-method instructions for cutting the single layer in which the cake itself is baked, in a nine-inch springform pan, into two layers.

One thing I've found with Wolfgang's Tribune Media Services-syndicated recipes is that they aren't for show. They're meant to be used, and the Sachertorte, while involving a fair amount of time and labor, looks to be within reach of even the average-skilled baker.

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The threat to the chocolate supply seems real enough without making believe it's a climate-change problem

Increasingly precious cocoa pods and beans: Are ordinary chocaholics in danger of being priced out of the chocolate market?

"'In 20 years chocolate will be like caviar. It will become so rare and so expensive that the average Joe just won't be able to afford it,' says one researcher."

-- from Stephen Messenger's TreeHugger post,

"Global Warming Could Lead to Vast Chocolate Shortage"

by Ken

I'm just catching up on this story via the indispensable AlterNet. But talk about scary.

I'm a little unsure about the post head, though. Messenger writes that "some experts are predicting that in a matter of decades a drop in production due to changing weather and agriculture incentives may make chocolate 'as expensive as gold.'" But it turns out that he has almost nothing to say about the role of climate change. This had me puzzled, since I associate the growing of cacao beans with tropical climates, and one thing I don't think anyone's predicting we're going to have any shortage of as the planet's climates change is tropical climates.

However, Messenger has a good deal to say about the economic disincentives to maintaining a robust affordable supply of the precious pods, and it's disturbing.

According to a report from The Independent, much of the world's cocoa is grown by farmers in West Africa -- and the world's collective sweet tooth may not be enough to make producing the crop worthwhile for them. One of the reasons has to do with just how labor-intensive cocoa production actually is. Cultivation of cocoa takes several years, as trees are slow to mature, not to mention they deplete the soil of nutrients in the process. Meanwhile, there's better money to be made elsewhere.

Tony Lass, chairman of the Cocoa Research Association, explains:

These smallholders earn just 80 cents a day. So there is no incentive to replant trees when they die off, and to wait up to five years for a new crop, and no younger generation around to do the replanting. The children of these African cocoa farmers, whose life expectancy is only 56, are heading for the cities rather than undertake backbreaking work for such a small reward.

Cocoa production also faces competition from other crops which farmers may find more financially appealing, like for palm-oil, driven by an increasing demand for biofuels, and rubber. Changes in weather patterns, too, have crippled production in places like Indonesia that might normally be there to pick up the slack.

[This last sentence is the only reference I find to the impact of climate change on the chocolate situation.]

"In the last few decades," Messenger writes, "these factors have already led to higher cocoa prices, but in the coming years they could put chocolate out of reach for the average consumer."

"Production will have decreased within 20 years to the point where we won't see any more cheap bars in vending machines," predicts Marc Demarquette, a British confectioner who a advised the BBC on a story about the coming chocolate crisis.

Actually, confectioner Demarquette had more to say in the underlying report by The Independent's Anthea Gertie.

"Production will have decreased within 20 years to the point where we won't see any more cheap bars in vending machines -- unless they are made with carob instead of chocolate," he says. "It's because the growers in West Africa only see 2p for every £1 bar. Even if you double that, it's no incentive for the next generation – which rightly expects decent working conditions. Those young people are heading for the cities. They won't stay around just so schoolchildren and commuters can continue to get their quick fix."

The good news for consumers is that cocoa, which can only be grown in latitudes within 10 degrees of the equator, is also being produced in South America, the Caribbean and Asia.

However Demarquette says it looks doubtful that those areas will be able to satisfy increased demand, "given the speed with which consumption is growing, with new markets like India and China coming along behind and following Western tastes".

There is already an upward trend in retail prices for quality chocolate, he notes: "With growers of premium cocoa beans already getting up to 45p per bar to look after their crops properly and fund their future, chocolate will go back to being what it used to be -- a rarefied treat."

Perhaps the world will be happy to live with that. Mintel figures released last month show that all the growth in the £3.6bn chocolate market is in the premium sector, which means chocoholics may well be prepared to dig ever deeper into their pockets for their fix.

"We are currently selling a 70g bar for £7 -- and the price will go up, as there is ever more demand for properly cultivated beans," says Demarquette.

"Of course," he adds, "there is all the difference in the world between decent chocolate and confectionery that is so full of sugar and palm oilthat it doesn't deserve to be called chocolate at all."

The Independent piece is worth checking out for the feeling in the upper end of the confection industry that up-market chocolate tastes will be the salvation of us, or at any rate of "foodies [willing to pay] whatever it takes for the good stuff." She quotes Sara Jayne Stanes, chair of the UK Academy of Chocolate:

"Over the past 10-15 years, growing curiosity and interest in the fine-chocolate end of the market has created an understanding of how it is different from chocolate confectionery," she says. Consumers must appreciate that "fine chocolate, like fine wine, will cost considerably more, as cocoa farmers stop leaving the land in search of better-paid jobs in the cities. The result will be more careful cultivation of the crops, and a greater supply of fine cocoas."

Ah, the market!

Messenger for his part reports, "Experts say that changes in agricultural practices may very well avoid a chocolate crisis." The only example he cites, the Fair Trade initiative, appears picked up from the Independent, where interestingly the "expert" in question is an unnamed spokesman from Cadbury's.

"Together with other manufacturers and the wider cocoa industry, we have been working on a number of agricultural initiatives to both increase and improve yields," he says. "Our move into Fair Trade was a separate step, to both pay a better price to farmers, and to encourage the next generation of cocoa farmers to stay within the industry."

The crisis may well be averted in Ghana, Cadbury's supply heartland and the world's second largest producer, according to Divine Chocolate, a Ghanaian manufacturer that is 45 per cent owned by a cooperative of 45,000 cocoa farmers. "The Fair Trade system helps ensure that the value of farming is delivered directly to the farmers and their communities," says its managing director Sophi Tranchell.

"The best route for sustainability is for farmers to organise themselves into larger units, to be able to manage their own farming improvements through improved remuneration, and to put them in a position where they have more influence in the cocoa supply chain. Why else should they continue?" She believes Divine Chocolate has found the right recipe: "Fairtrade – and particularly the Divine ownership model – delivers sustainability into the hands of the farmers, not the hands of the global buyers."

Unfortunately, fair trade doesn't exist in the Ivory Coast, "by far the world's largest source of cocoa." Nestlé has a tree-replanting project under way, but, says Abidjan-based reporter Ange Aboa,

these are only for the cooperatives with whom they work, and the replanting will make up for about a quarter of the trees which have been lost. Their goal is to buy only from the cooperatives in future, and not top up by buying from local exporters.

It is, all in all, a grim outlook for the world's future chocolate supply, even as demand keeps growing by leaps and bounds. A grim enough outlook that I wonder if this really needs to be tricked up as a climate-change story.

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