Article - How To Taste Chocolate

Today is the Valentine's Day. Many of you surely get chocolate from the beloved one. Since those chocolates are given to you from some one special, what if you enjoy them in a special way? I found an interesting article about how to taste the chocolate. Let's try!

Tasting chocolate is much like tasting fine wine -- there are subtleties of flavor and tones that you can train yourself to appreciate. Also like wine, professional chocolate tasters have developed a procedure for judging the qualities of a piece of chocolate. So find the best dark chocolate you can, reap the health benefits of good chocolate and enjoy.

Room Temperature

For best tasting, chocolate should be at room temperature. This allows the chocolate to begin to melt the moment it hits your mouth. Cold chocolate doesn't release its flavors and aromas as quickly, altering the tasting experience.

Be Still

You can't appreciate good chocolate if the phone is ringing or you are checking your e-mail. Chocolate comes from all over the world to end up in your house, so turn off the TV and give the chocolate some respect. It will reward you for it.

Clear Your Palate

You don't want other tastes interfering with your experience of the chocolate. Make sure no flavors are lingering in your mouth before you begin tasting your chocolate. A piece of apple, a bit of bread or (believe or not) a bite of a pickle are all said to erase flavors in your mouth.

Look at the Chocolate

Chocolate experts use the appearance of the chocolate as one of many criteria to judge its quality. Good chocolate should have a shiny, even gloss on its surface. If chocolate is too old, it will develop a hazy finish called 'bloom.' The color of the chocolate depends on the origin of the beans and the roasting process. The color should be uniform for the entire bar. Also examine the detail and care that has been put into creating the chocolate bar. Are the edges clean? Is the molding clear? Has extra effort been put into making an even, uniform bar?

Break Off a Piece

Break your piece of chocolate in half and listen to the sound. High quality chocolate produces a sharp, crisp sound and a clean edge. This is called the chocolate's "snap." The higher the cocoa quantity and the better the tempering, the louder the "snap" of the chocolate. Professional chocolate tasters can tell a great deal about the quality of chocolate just by this sound.

Rub It

Take your finger and rub just a bit of the chocolate. The chocolate should feel smooth and even. The warmth of your body will cause the chocolate to melt and release odors. These odors will enhance the intensity of your tasting.

Smell the Chocolate

Much like wine experts, chocolate experts can find an incredible array of scents and aromas. Some chocolate flavors include:
burnt bread
nutty
spicy
fruity

The list could continue forever. When you begin tasting chocolate, these aromas probably won't be clear to you. That's okay. Spend more time just smelling the chocolate. Warm it up more with your finger, close your eyes, and let your smell-imagination run wild. Eventually different chocolates will recall different odors. You will start to know which regions of the world produce chocolate with which aromas.

Feel the Chocolate in Your Mouth

Good chocolate should literally "melt in your mouth." Chocolate melts at about 97 degrees. While melting the chocolate should feel rich and luscious in your mouth. You should not need to chew good chocolate at all, just let the flavors release on their own. Examine the texture of the chocolate -- it can vary from smooth to grainy. Good chocolate has a rich, velvety texture. Poor quality chocolate feels waxy or greasy.

Taste It

Finally, you should taste the chocolate. You can chew if you want, but just a couple of times. Like with smelling the chocolate, pay attention to the flavors that just pop into your head. These could be the same as what you smelled, or completely different. Spend time being aware of how the flavors change over time as the chocolate continues to melt and coat more of your mouth.

The Finish

As the last of the chocolate leaves your mouth, the lingering flavor is known as the 'finish' of the chocolate. Good chocolate should have a complex, interesting finish that is not bitter or unpleasant. The finish is an important part of the tasting, as many of the early flavors may be masked by other ingredients in the chocolate.

Tips:

• When tasting many kinds of chocolate at one sitting, always taste from lowest percentage of cocoa to highest.
• Store your chocolate in a dry, dark and cool place to avoid 'blooming' and other signs of aging.
• Remember to balance the calories in chocolate by eating less of something else.
• If you are having trouble sleeping at night, do not eat chocolate close to bedtime.

*glekh*
Let's go find some chocolate!


Source: longevity.about.com

Article - Benefits of Chocolate

Yuuummmm... I love chocolate!! Who doesn't?
When I was a kid, I learned that eating chocolate would damage my tooth.
When I was a teenager, I learned that eating chocolate would make me fat.
But, now I finally found an interesting article about the benefits of chocolate. Yay!
Thanks to longevity.about.com for this great article!

Why is Dark Chocolate Healthy?:

Chocolate is made from plants, which means it contains many of the health benefits of dark vegetables. These benefits are from flavonoids, which act as antioxidants. Antioxidants protect the body from aging caused by free radicals, which can cause damage that leads to heart disease. Dark chocolate contains a large number of antioxidants (nearly 8 times the number found in strawberries). Flavonoids also help relax blood pressure through the production of nitric oxide, and balance certain hormones in the body.

Heart Health Benefits of Dark Chocolate:

Dark chocolate is good for your heart. A small bar of it everyday can help keep your heart and cardiovascular system running well. Two heart health benefits of dark chocolate are:

Lower Blood Pressure: Studies have shown that consuming a small bar of dark chocolate everyday can reduce blood pressure in individuals with high blood pressure.
Lower Cholesterol: Dark chocolate has also been shown to reduce LDL cholesterol (the bad cholesterol) by up to 10 percent.

Other Benefits of Dark Chocolate:

Chocolate also holds benefits apart from protecting your heart:

• it tastes good
• it stimulates endorphin production, which gives a feeling of pleasure
• it contains serotonin, which acts as an anti-depressant
• it contains theobromine, caffeine and other substances which are stimulants

Doesn't Chocolate Have a lot of Fat?:

Here is some more good news -- some of the fats in chocolate do not impact your cholesterol. The fats in chocolate are 1/3 oleic acid, 1/3 stearic acid and 1/3 palmitic acid:

• Oleic Acid is a healthy monounsaturated fat that is also found in olive oil.
• Stearic Acid is a saturated fat but one which research is shows has a neutral effect on cholesterol.
• Palmitic Acid is also a saturated fat, one which raises cholesterol and heart disease risk.

That means only 1/3 of the fat in dark chocolate is bad for you.

Chocolate Tip 1 - Balance the Calories:

This information doesn't mean that you should eat a pound of chocolate a day. Chocolate is still a high-calorie, high-fat food. Most of the studies done used no more than 100 grams, or about 3.5 ounces, of dark chocolate a day to get the benefits.

One bar of dark chocolate has around 400 calories. If you eat half a bar of chocolate a day, you must balance those 200 calories by eating less of something else. Cut out other sweets or snacks and replace them with chocolate to keep your total calories the same.

Chocolate Tip 2 - Taste the Chocolate:

Chocolate is a complex food with over 300 compounds and chemicals in each bite. To really enjoy and appreciate chocolate, take the time to taste it. Professional chocolate tasters have developed a system for tasting chocolate that include assessing the appearance, smell, feel and taste of each piece.

Chocolate Tip 3 - Go for Dark Chocolate:

Dark chocolate has far more antioxidants than milk or white chocolate. These other two chocolates cannot make any health claims. Dark chocolate has 65 percent or higher cocoa content.

Chocolate Tip 4 - Skip the Nougat:

You should look for pure dark chocolate or dark chocolate with nuts, orange peel or other flavorings. Avoid anything with caramel, nougat or other fillings. These fillings are just adding sugar and fat which erase many of the benefits you get from eating the chocolate.

Chocolate Tip 5 - Avoid Milk:

It may taste good but some research shows that washing your chocolate down with a glass of milk could prevent the antioxidants being absorbed or used by your body.

Article - Benefits of Coffee

My dad and I really love coffee, we often enjoy our coffee together. In our family, only me and my dad who can enjoy coffee, and differ which coffee is delicious and which one is not.
One of my dad's friend once told me that it's not good for my heart if I consume coffee. But now I know that he was wrong after reading these articles.

The first one comes from longevity.about.com:

Coffee – An Overlooked Health and Anti Aging Food

In the past, coffee (like wine) has been overlooked as a healthy food. There has always been some level of suspicion around coffee and its long-term impact on health. For some reason, coffee has this association of being unhealthy. Well, (thank goodness) it looks like that link between coffee and unhealthiness is wrong. In fact, there is a good bit of evidence that coffee is good for you and it may even be good for you. This is important, considering more than half of the people in the U.S. drink coffee every day.

Why Coffee Is A Superfood?

It looks like coffee has two main ways of improving the health of your body: antioxidants and caffeine. Both these substances have health and anti aging benefits. Antioxidants, for example, help your body repair damage to cells caused by free radicals (which are produced as a byproduct of cells just doing their daily thing). Caffeine has been shown to help improve a range of symptoms and may even be important in fighting of Parkinson’s Disease and other age-related brain problems. Coffee is loaded with both antioxidants and caffeine, and each has different potential benefits for improving health and reducing the risk of chronic illnesses.

Health Benefits of Coffee

I scoured the internet to find reliable sources of the health benefits of coffee. Type "coffee" into pubmed (the database of medical research) and your get almost 7,000 results back. Below are some of the major findings about health, life expectancy and coffee.

• Heart Disease (up to 25% reduction in mortality risk (for women))
• Diabetes (up to 60% reduced risk)
• Dementia (up to 65% reduced risk)
• Colon Cancer (up to 25% reduced risk)
• Cirrhosis (up to 80% reduced risk)
• Gallstones (almost 50% reduced risk)
• Parkinson’s Disease (up to 80% reduced risk – probably because of caffeine)
• Headache Relief (because of the caffeine)
• Asthma Relief (caffeine again)
• Cavity Protection (because of anti-bacterial and anti-adhesive properties of compounds within coffee)

See? Coffee doesn't cause heart disease. It even reduce the risk!

There is one more interesting articles about Coffee Health Benefits, from health.harvard.edu:

It’s surprising when something that was once considered questionable for your health turns out to have health benefits, usually with the proviso to use it “in moderation.” That happened with chocolate and alcohol, and now it is coffee’s turn, reports the February issue of the Harvard Health Letter. Here’s some of the mostly good news about coffee:

• Blood pressure. Results from long-term studies are showing that coffee may not increase the risk for high blood pressure over time, as previously thought. Study findings for other cardiovascular effects are a mixed bag.

• Cancer. Coffee might have anti-cancer properties. Last year, researchers found that coffee drinkers were 50% less likely to get liver cancer than nondrinkers. A few studies have found ties to lower rates of colon, breast, and rectal cancers.

• Cholesterol. Two substances in coffee — kahweol and cafestol — raise cholesterol levels. Paper filters capture these substances, but that doesn’t help the many people who now drink non-filtered coffee drinks, such as lattes. Researchers have also found a link between cholesterol increases and decaffeinated coffee, possibly because of the type of bean used to make certain decaffeinated coffees.

• Diabetes. Heavy coffee drinkers may be half as likely to get diabetes as light drinkers or nondrinkers. Coffee may contain chemicals that lower blood sugar. A coffee habit may also increase your resting metabolism rate, which could help keep diabetes at bay.

• Parkinson’s disease. Coffee seems to protect men, but not women, against Parkinson’s disease. One possible explanation for the sex difference may be that estrogen and caffeine need the same enzymes to be metabolized, and estrogen captures those enzymes.

Oh, I do love Coffee even more!