The raw, tasty truth about natural chocolate

There seems to be a palette evolution with chocolate consumption and I’m proud to announce that I’ve graduated to the next step. First there was drugstore-quality milk chocolate in all of its Trick or Treat incarnations: individual kisses, snuggled against peanut butter, pressed against caramel and nougat or sprinkled with peanuts or almonds. Then there was introductory dark chocolate — heavy on the sugar and cocoa butter, light on actual cocoa content. After that I moved onto what I thought was the chocolate big leagues — dark chocolate made with 70 percent or more cocoa content. At this point chocolate was no longer a child’s distraction, it had developed into something serious — to be savored, appreciated and analyzed — not unlike a fine wine.

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Cocoa products that may contain melamine recalled

Three G&J cocoa products packaged for Christmas sale are being recalled because they may contain the industrial chemical melamine.

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Some Cocoa May Improve Brain Blood Flow

A nice cup of the right kind of cocoa could hold the promise of promoting brain function as people age.

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Heart attack survivors who eat chocolate two or more times per week cut their risk of dying from heart disease about threefold compared to those who never touch the stuff, scientists have reported.

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Kochi: Robust trend in bean prices triggered by a global shortage of cocoa has prompted some southern states to spread the cultivation to more area.

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Volunteers are wanted by researchers to see how compounds in dark chocolate might help fight heart disease. The scientists in Aberdeen aim to assess how flavonoids, found naturally in cocoa, could fend off disease.

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Chocolate and cocoa powders are derived from beans that contain significant amounts of natural antioxidants (cancer-fighting agents) called flavonoids.

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If the results from this animal study hold true for humans, chocolate may be an antidote for the blues.

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London cocoa futures have hit a 23-year-high as cocoa turned out to be the most lucrative commodity in 2008.

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Maybe gourmands are not jumping for joy. Probably they would have preferred bigger amounts to support their passion.

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One of the biggest revelations at WWDC was quietly unveiled in a session on Friday morning entitled "Building Native Look-and-Feel Web Applications Using SproutCore."

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Another fine RoughlyDrafted article bringing considerable insight into Apple's (and Google's) open standards-based strategic plans. Excerpt:

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Except for one application (Visual Studio 2005) those are all the current versions of currently-supported Microsoft software released in the last couple of years.

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A few various observations and comments regarding Adobe's announcement that Photoshop CS4 will be available in a 64-bit version for Windows, but will only be 32-bit for Mac OS X.

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By now you have heard the news: Photoshop CS4 will not be 64-bit on the Mac, but will be 64-bit on Windows.

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"By his own admission, he has been a collector of child pornography for 20 years," .... Investigators said Taylor bragged over the Internet about having sex with an infant.

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When most of us hear the word chocolate, we picture a bar, a box of bonbons, or a bunny.

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The bucolic Ul úa Valley in northern Honduras is famous as an excellent spot to grow Theobrama cacao, the tree whose pods are the source of chocolate (Theobrama means "food of the gods").

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Many people agree that chocolate is good for the soul, and researchers are finding that chocolate can be good for the body, too. But the environment? How could chocolate help with global climate change?

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Chemical and archaeological evidence has pushed back the earliest known use of cacao, the key ingredient of chocolate, by 500 years. The chemical compound, theobromine, which only occurs in the cacao plant, has been found on pottery vessels dating back to as early as 1000 BC.

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I know all about shivering. Every year as winter makes its uninvited presence in Utah, I get that same feeling that makes my entire body, specifically my jaw, shake uncontrollably. I also know all about the remedies for winter trembling.

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A few months back a friend asked me if I wanted to help work on a small application for OS X. He figured because I had a long history of Windows based programming I would have no trouble making the transition to writing apps for Mac.

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Our love of chocolate knows no bounds. We think about it, dream about it, and probably - just sometimes - eat a bit too much of it. Some people even go so far as to claim to be addicted to it. But what drives our cravings for chocolate?

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Chocolates taste like heaven to our tongues and we simply relish having some. But what happens if buying chocolates gets a little too expensive?

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Conflict Cocaine

"Cocaine Country." For most readers these two words, presented as the headline to a special feature in an international news magazine, would bring one very specific Latin American nation to mind. Reputations, after all, are hard to shake.

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In the midst of the excitement surrounding arguably one of Apple s very largest product roll-outs, the iPhone, we still are left to wonder if and when we will see third parties able to develop native Cocoa apps for the hot little device.

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British chocoholics may have unwittingly helped fund an African conflict, with an estimated $120m (£60m) from the cocoa trade being siphoned off into war chests in Ivory Coast, according to a report released today.

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Another unusual recipe, this time steak, encrusted with both coffee and cocoa. Get your grills ready!

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