Chocolate Is A Vegetable!

• If you are not feeling well, if you have not slept, chocolate will revive you. But you have no chocolate! I think of that again and again! My dear, how will you ever manage? ~Marquise de Sévigné

• Always serve too much hot fudge sauce on hot fudge sundaes. It makes people overjoyed, and puts them in your debt. ~Judith Olney

• 'Twill make old women young and fresh,
  Create new motions of the flesh,
  And cause them long for you know what,
  If they but taste of chocolate. ~James Wadworth

• If any man has drunk a little too deeply from the cup of physical pleasure; if he has spent too much time at his desk that should have been spent asleep; if his fine spirits have become temporarily dulled; if he finds the air too damp, the minutes too slow, and the atmosphere too heavy to withstand; if he is obsessed by a fixed idea which bars him from any freedom of thought: if he is any of these poor creatures, we say, let him be given a good pint of amber-flavored chocolate ... and marvels will be performed. ~Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

• My favorite thing in the world is a box of fine European chocolates which is, for sure, better than sex. ~Alicia Silverstone

• Chocolate causes certain endocrine glands to secrete hormones that affect your feelings and behavior by making you happy. Therefore, it counteracts depression, in turn reducing the stress of depression. Your stress-free life helps you maintain a youthful disposition, both physically and mentally. So, eat lots of chocolate! Elaine Sherman, Book of Divine Indulgences

• I never met a chocolate I didn't like. -Deanna Troi in Star Trek: The Next Generation
• Chocolate is a serious thing! - Counselor Deanna Troi, Start Trek: The Next Generation

• Chemically speaking, chocolate really is the world's perfect food. - Michael Levine, nutrition researcher, as quoted in The Emperors of Chocolate: Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars

• ... The taste of chocolate is a sensual pleasure in itself, existing in the same world as sex. ... For myself, I can enjoy the wicked pleasure of chocolate ... entirely by myself. Furtiveness makes it better. - Dr. Ruth Westheimer

• It's strengthening, restorative, and apt to repair decayed strength and make people strong. - Louis Lemery, 1702

• The divine drink which builds up resistance and fights fatigue. A cup of this precious drink permits a man to walk for a whole day without food. - Hernando Cortés, 1519

• Fruit of all the kinds that the country produced were laid before him; he ate very little, but from time to time a liquor prepared from cocoa, and of an aphrodisiac nature, as we were told, was presented to him in golden cups. ... I observed a number of jars, above fifty, brought in, filled with foaming chocolate of which he took some. ... - Bernal Diaz del Castillo, member of Cortés' force, describing a meal of emperor Montezuma, 1519

• Chocolate is a perfect food, as wholesome as it is delicious, a beneficent restorer of exhausted power. It is the best friend of those engaged in literary pursuits. - Baron Justus von Liebig (1803-1873), German chemist

• The superiority of chocolate, both for health and nourishment, will soon give it the same preference over tea and coffee in America which it has in Spain. - Thomas Jefferson

• Chocolate is a Vegetable: chocolate is derived from cocoa beans. Bean = vegetable. Sugar is derived from either sugar cane or sugar beets. Both are plants, which places them in the vegetable category. Thus, chocolate is a vegetable. To go one step further, chocolate candy bars also contain milk, which is dairy. So candy bars are a health food. - Unknown
  

• I do recommend a piece of good-quality dark chocolate as a healthy snack. ... It is a source of polyphenols, the same type of antioxidants found in red wine, and the fat it contains is stearic acid, which doesn't affect cholesterol levels. The latest good news for chocolate lovers comes from a study indicating that flavanoids in chocolate are good for your heart. These compounds reduce the stickiness of platelets, cells that play an important role in blood clotting. By eating a 1.5-ounce milk chocolate bar, you get the same amount of these protective compounds as in a 5-ounce glass of Cabernet Sauvignon. - Andrew Weil, M.D.

• Nitric oxide plays such an important role in the maintenance of healthy blood pressure and, in turn, cardiovascular health. If our research results continue to support a link between consumption of flavanol-rich cocoa and nitric oxide synthesis, there could be significant implications for public health. - Norman Hollenberg, M.D., Ph.D., Harvard Medical School

• Chocolate contains large amounts of the same beneficial plant chemicals that now have burnished the reputation of tea. In fact, just one ounce of chocolate has about as much of these plant chemicals as a cup of brewed black tea. One large, ongoing study of the benefits of exercise found that men who eat chocolate in moderation live longer than those who eat none. - University of California-Berkeley Wellness Letter

• We already know that increased consumption of fruits and vegetables results in an increase of antioxidants in our blood. We believe chocolate consumption may have the same effect. We forget that chocolate is derived from cocoa beans - the fruit of the cacao tree - a fruit that is a rich source of these potentially beneficial substances. - Penny Kris-Etherton, Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University

• Chocolate just stands out [for antioxidant content]. It's much higher than anything else. - Joe Vinson, Ph.D., University of Scranton

• What you see before you, my friend, is the result of a lifetime of chocolate. A pound a day often. - Katharine Hepburn

And above all... Think Chocolate! 'Betty Crocker'

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