Chocolate Busters: The Easy Way to Kick It!. Jason Vale

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ EVEN BETTER TO TEXT!

      The biggest threat to this ‘get them when they’re young’ policy has been the unprecedented increase in children using mobile phones. Teenagers now spend a whopping £100,000 a day on text messages and, because they only have a certain amount of pocket money, ‘top-up cards’ are often gaining preference over chocolate bars. However, the sinister world of chocolate is not about to let that get in its way and is now joining in the text revolution as a means of helping recruit new customers. Cadbury launched a Text ‘n’ Win campaign, in which children who bought Crunchie, Caramel, Dairy Milk or Fuse bars were invited to text in order to win prizes of up to £5,000. The mobile marketing company Flytxt, who carried out the campaign for Cadbury, were happy to boast: ‘The products became the talk of the playground’ and they were happy to announce that it produced ‘five million participations’.

      The chief executive of Cadbury Schweppes, John Sunderland said, ‘It gave sales a big lift at a time when the UK confectionery market was pretty flat.’ In fact, the campaign was so successful that Cadbury followed up with another texting campaign during the Commonwealth games (and there’s me thinking gambling for children was illegal!)

      CHOCOLATES R US

      Chocolate placement aimed at children couldn’t be more obvious than at ‘Toys R Us’. Now I thought ‘Toys R Us’ were simply a toy store. My wild – stab in the dark – suspicions were due to the fact the stores called Toys R Us. However, the first thing children see when they enter the warehouse of fun is – chocolate! Not just little bars, no – huge bucket loads of the stuff. Just like a KFC family meal, you can now have your chocolate by the bucket load. The first bucket I saw was for Smarties which had the strap line, ‘A Riot Full of Fun’ down its side. How on earth can a load of sugar, fat and powder in an artificially coloured case be a ‘riot of fun’? Riot, yes – after all, get a load of kids ‘sugared up’ and that’s precisely what you have on your hands – but fun, no. I then saw mini-buckets of virtually all the most common chocolates, once again conveniently placed at ‘child height’.

      ADVERTISING DOESN’T EFFECT ME

      You may feel that all the advertising, brainwashing, conditioning, trips around Chocolate World and text campaigns have got nothing to do with why you eat chocolate. You may simply believe that the only reason you eat it is because it’s sooooooo blooming lovely. You may also feel that it is fair game for Cadbury and the rest of the chocolate gang to aim their adverts at children. You may strongly think: ‘We’re not talking cigarettes here Jason, it’s only a bit of chocolate’. If that’s the case, I shouldn’t think you’re on your own there; after all, it takes a very open mind to be alive to the possibility that we could have been manipulated on a mental and physical level to this extent, to the possibility that mass-market chocolate could in any way be as harmful for us as cigarettes. However, for you to truly break free you must at least be open to the possibility that conditioning has played a massive part in your apparent decision to buy chocolate. After all, you don’t see the average badger yelping for a Yorkie, no matter what time of the month it is, nor what mood it’s in!

      There is, of course, more to it than just mental conditioning, and one thing I cannot argue with is that like most people reading this book you will firmly believe that you love the taste of the stuff and that life without feeling a cold piece of chocolate melting on your tongue simply would ‘not be worth living’. However, please expand your mind as we well and truly strip away this layer by …

       4 Licking The Taste!

      

I mentioned at the start that in order to break free from chocolate you will need an extremely open mind. Well, if you can I need you to open your mind even wider for this next revelation – CHOCOLATE TASTES DISGUSTING! Now hang on, before you throw the book in the bin, thinking I’m a few Cadbury’s Buttons short of a full jacket, please hear me out. I’m not saying for one second that you don’t like the taste of your favourite brand of chocolate, because clearly you do, but what I am saying is that chocolate, in its unsweetened state is about as appealing on the taste front as a clip around the ear with a wet kipper. Actually, it’s much worse than that. I don’t know if you’ve ever had the misfortune to taste unsweetened cocoa, but trust me it’s just not worth it! While researching for this book I made the somewhat catastrophic mistake of getting Cadbury to send me some unsweetened cocoa beans. I decided to conduct my own taste survey amongst my friends – well, when I say friends, after my little experiment they may be ex-friends! I managed to convince 20 people, many of whom describe themselves as ‘chocolate lovers’, to try these not-so-tasty treats. The results were pretty conclusive – 95% of the people surveyed spat out the bean and were nearly physically sick. There was only one person who managed to eat and swallow it, but even then she thought it tasted like crap.

      If you’re in any doubt at all and think I may be exaggerating for effect, please pop along to Cadbury World and ask them if you can taste one of their ‘unsweetened’ cocoa beans (oh, and don’t forget your bucket!). Or if you can’t make it there, go on the hunt for some high percentage cocoa chocolate. Now when I say high percentage, I’m not talking 70% dark chocolate bars – these have still been heavily sweetened with sugar – no, I’m talking 95–99% chocolate solids (once again make sure there’s a toilet near by). This is because, as I will continue to say, chocolate in its unsweetened state is revolting. Actually, revolting is being rather nice! As I write this chapter I’ve just had another unsweetened cocoa bean to fully associate with what I’m trying to get across – and what I have just tasted is almost indescribable and in my mind I’ve only ever tasted one other thing which is worse. Have you ever woken up from a party and felt so thirsty that you reached for the nearest can of whatever to quench your thirst, only to discover (too late) it contained cigarette ash? Well, that’s what we’re talking about here!

      The main ingredient which causes the foul taste is a naturally occurring powerful heart stimulant called theobromine. Theobromine is incredibly bitter and the darker the chocolate, the more ‘real chocolate’ it contains and the worse it tastes. Our taste buds are designed to warn us of poisons – if something tastes bitter it usually means that nature never intended us to eat it. Chocolate has always tasted as bitter as a winter’s night in Scotland and has always been sweetened to make it palatable. When the Aztec civilizations of Central America first started using chocolate a couple of thousand years ago (depending on what you read!) it was nothing like the chocolate we get today. Firstly, they only drank it, the chocolate ‘bar’ only came in around 1847 when Joseph Fry (as in Fry’s Chocolate) discovered that by adding chocolate liquor and sugar to cocoa butter he could produce a solid chocolate. And the drinking chocolate they had then was certainly a few chemicals and spoonfuls of sugar short of the hot cocoa your parents used to tuck you up in bed with, that’s for sure. Back then the drink was extremely bitter and spicy, thickened with maize and flavoured with vanilla, ginger and even chilli and turmeric (yum, yum!). But the Aztecs didn’t go to all this trouble because they thought drinking it helped with the stresses and strains of life or because they thought it was something they could ‘have in-between meals without ruining their appetite’ or because they thought it tasted good! No, they only started drinking it because they thought they were honouring their principle God, Quetzalcoatl-Tlahuizcalpanticutli (the God of light), in much the same way some Christians take bread and wine at communion, the Aztecs honestly thought the pods were gifts from God, hence their naming the cocoa the food of the Gods’. The name of the tree from which the beans come from is Theobroma cacao, which literally translates as ‘god food’.

      MONEY TO BURN

СКАЧАТЬ