On Monday, May 30th we took a class visit to Choco Story-a chocolate museum. This was the most exciting visit for me because I love chocolate enough to be able to survive on only chocolate for the rest of my life!
The visit started with all of us participating in a chocolate workshop. We went down to the basement and saw amazing chocolate sculpture artworks outside the workshop. The huge Eiffel tower sculpture gave me a kick start for the workshop. We began by learning how to cover various foods in melted chocolate including candied orange strips, marshmallows, and chocolate fudge. We could either dip the in dark chocolate, milk chocolate, or white chocolate. I learned that if the chocolate isn’t churned well enough and melted at the right temperature, it will solidify very easily and turn into a huge chunk of chocolate rock. I had always tried chocolates that included orange peels but had not tried fresh orange peels in fresh dark chocolate and it was the best thing ever! I even got the market the chef got the peels from and got some more from there later.
After learning how to coat them with chocolate, we made our own chocolate bars. This was the most fun part of the visit because it was a great way to learn from the chef how we can incorporate beautiful designs into chocolate. The chef made musical notes on the chocolate bar and it was a moment of “Wow!” (Picture below). Then we took a tour of the museum at our own pace to end the visit.
Chocolate, as I learned from Socci et al.’s literary review, has been known to already enhance cognitive abilities and cocoa flavonoids- present in all cocoa products produce a neuroprotective effect. The main sub-class of flavanoids that are known to reduce the rate of age-related cognitive decline are flavanols. These flavanols and to an extent all cocoa-driven products are known to sustain cognitive abilities such as executive functions, attention, and memory. Ongoing studies are also showing the ability of dose-dependent cocoa products to provide for better working memory and fluid intelligence. Further, recent studies and their conclusions are describing chocolate and cocoa products to be neutraceutical. A neutraceutical is a substance present in a food or group of foods generally that has health and cognitive benefits that could include treatment or prevention of disease.
With this information regarding the chocolate and its nootropic effects on my cognitive abilities, I am glad I did not stop eating chocolate at a young age after my mom told me to because “it would rot my teeth”. Overall making my own chocolate goods and bars and eating them as dessert every day has been the highlight of my experience so far!
References:
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2017.00019/full
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/nutraceutical#:~:text=A%20nutraceutical%20is%20defined%20as,Nutritional%20Aspects%20of%20Buckwheat%2C%202016