Chocolate

We tend to treat ourselves occasionally when we feel we deserve it.  Sometimes we take in a show, go to a sporting event, maybe buy a new article of clothing.  We celebrate in many ways for at various points in our lives, by toasting with champagne and other things that we might find pleasurable at the time. 

But I guess the most popular and least expensive way to give ourselves an instant and gratifying pleasure, is to get some chocolates.  The rich dark colour and the mysterious flavours that touch our senses as we bite into the luscious outer covering.  What a splendid feeling.  While we are tasting this magnificent confection, we are transported to places far away, building images in our mind of warm relaxing days, away from the hustle and bustle of our repetitive daily grind. 

Give me a break!  I should have been an advertising copy writer.  Could have made myself a fortune.
 However, let's stop and think for a moment just how much pleasure these chocolates can give.  I have, in the last paragraph, given you the over-reactive description of perhaps some wonderfully-expensive Belgian chocolates, eaten perhaps one or twice a year at birthday and Christmas. 

But think on: we can get as much pleasure from a chocolate bar while driving the car (with care of course), sitting in front of the television, munching on a small bag of chocolate-coated goodies.  In it own way, this is as equally as pleasurable as the more special delights mentioned above. 

What is it that attracts us to chocolates and its different varieties, milk, dark and white?  All delicious in their own way, we all have our preferences.  Why does chocolate seem to relax us where other types of confectionery merely seem to just taste sweet? 

There is genuine opinion that chocolates have a drug-like effect on certain people.  Does that mean its constituents should be declared illegal for fear of us being addicted and running riot in supermarkets in a frenzied attack on the chocolate aisle?  We can find all this amusing, yet how often in the afternoon after a long and hard day at the office, have you popped to the local vending machine and purchased a bar of chocolate for a "sugar hit" - and more importantly, how did you feel after you ate it?  I guarantee it made you feel better. 

Whether that be because you are now less hungry, or perhaps is it that whatever is in the chocolate has given you a soothing effect, calmed you and encouraged your pancreatic function to kick in and work properly? 

I don't know the answer to these questions, but one can speculate - no determine - that chocolates do have an immediate pleasurable effect on our systems.  I don't know what the medicos would have to say about my theorisation and I would bow to their superior knowledge of human welfare, but I will honestly say that most folk I have met, get a deal of pleasure from the most excellent intake of chocolates. 

May your taste buds savour this delight for many years to come!