Everybody wants a box of chocolates

[venta]

OK, I want opinions on chocolate.

Now, as previously discussed with some of you, I'm not an enormous fan of chocolate. Sure, I like it, but I don't really hold it in the kind of reverence that many do. It's a niceish, sweet tasting thing - sadly not the extreme sensual experience which some people seem to find it (and do they really, or are they just exaggerating ?)

So, what I want to know: how much chocolate is too much ? How many people actually don't think there is such a thing as too much ? People who are allergic/intolerant to chocolate (hello, half my family) are a different case. Would anyone seriously claim to be addicted to chocolate ?

For reference, I've eaten a Tw*x and two Cadbury's Roses in the last hour, and am now feeling distinctly queasy about the whole experience. Should have stopped after the Tw*x, really, but when someone hands anything edible round I eat some on reflex.

Update: is there any mileage in the idea that extreme dedication to the eating of chocolate is a female thing ? A quick mental survey of blokes of my acquaintance suggests "no", but some people seem to believe it quite firmly.

Comments

[smiorgan.livejournal.com]

It's generally too much chocolate if you either start to feel sick or feel guilty. Trouble is I have difficulty telling how much that is before it happens. Typically I will eat a lot if I'm feeling fed up or put upon by work - it's not so much as a comfort food thing (that usually requires hard liquor) but tending to feel that I've worked hard so I've earned the right to something that tastes nice.

I can take or leave chocolate as a thing, although I go through stages of liking sweet things like Tunnock's Tea Cakes. But I also go through stages of liking a great many savory things as well, from junk food to real food (houmous, olives, things with strong flavours). So I just really like to eat.

From our sample set, I read that triskellian and leathellin revere small amounts of fine dark chocolate whereas waistcoatmark will just gobble it if it's there, much like myself. bateleur may appear to be a connoseur of chocolate but will still eat generic, sweet milk chocolate like twix and maltesers with an appetite. On that basis the fixation on refined chocolate, eaten in moderation appears to be female; the stereotype of women binging on milk chocolate (and the guilt associated) seems just as likely to apply to men (maybe we feel less guilt).

triskellian and I were discussing the latest rash of Galaxy ads. She maintains that it's always been targeted at twenty-something single women who listen to Dido, get depressed and scoff a whole big bar of Galaxy in their pajamas as an alternative to a night out. I disagree - it used to be "why have cotton when you can have silk" and "minstrels melt in your mouth, not in your hand", quality and/or family oriented chocolate. I think the latest ads are deplorable, because they send the message that it's OK, a social norm even, to be depressed and binge on chocolate. Eat all the bloody chocolate you want, but if I hear Dido one more time I will drive a pickaxe through her skull.

[triskellian]

I'd forgotten about the Minstrels 'melt in your mouth' thing, but I still maintain that 'why have cotton when you can have silk' is just a different angle of attack at the very same (potentially, cos she wasn't around then) Dido-listening chicks. I agree with you about the evilness of the new ads, though. 'Specially the Dido.

[venta.livejournal.com]

"Melt in your mouth not in your hand" is M&M's, surely.

Though you get the same effect from minstrels.

[wimble.livejournal.com]

Dunno whether it's changed over time (you ought to know how out of touch I became of M&M's pop career), but it certainly used to be "Milk Chocolate minstrels: (the chocolate|sweet that) melts in your mouth not in your hand".

And see! I didn't even post anything of a dodgy nature...

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

Pretty sure that Minstrels used the slogan long before M&Ms ever did. (Google suggests that Minstrels were originally known as Chocolate Treets and used the slogan even then.)

My chocolate tolerance is "about one and a half standard 30p-40p confectionery bars", and the utility I derive from the second half of a first bar is definitely less than that from the first half. Fingers of Fudge (sic) are just enough to give an adult a treat as well as a kid, though.

Maryland Cookies are a definite weakness, though...