chocolate
oracknows | May 28, 2015I've been at this skeptical blogging thing for over a decade now. I realize that I periodically remind you, my readers, of this and that perhaps I do it too often, but my reminders generally serve a purpose. Specifically, they serve to put an exclamation point on my surprise when I discover a new purveyor of pseudoscience and/or quackery that I had never heard of before but who is apparently fairly well known in the quackosphere. Such is what happened this week, when I learned of a man who appears to be challenging Deepak Chopra and Bruce Lipton for the title of most annoying mystical quack…
dr. dolittle | November 26, 2014I came across this interesting literature on what foods you should avoid feeding a dog from the ASPCA Animal Poison Control:
pgleick | July 16, 2013
The evidence from real-world observations, sophisticated computer models, and research in hundreds of different fields continues to pile up: human-caused climate change is already occurring and will continue to get worse and worse as greenhouse-gas concentrations continue to rise.
Because the climate is connected to every major geophysical, chemical, and biological system on the planet, it should not be surprising that we are learning more and more about the potential implications of these changes for a remarkably wide range of things. And while it is certainly possible – even likely – that…
bioephemera | February 8, 2010Well, not quite. I got an intriguing abstract in my inbox earlier today, to this new paper from BMC Neuroscience:
Here using a new conditioned suppression paradigm, we investigated whether the ability of a foot-shockpaired conditioned stimulus to suppress chocolate-seeking behavior was antagonized by previous exposure to a chronic stressful experience, thus modeling aberrant chocolate seeking in sated mice. Our findings demonstrate that while Control (non-food deprived) animals showed a profound conditioned suppression of chocolate seeking during presentation of conditioned stimulus,…
grrlscientist | January 21, 2010tags: How it's Made: Chocolate, chocolate, food science, technology, streaming video
After watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as a kid, I thought chocolate was made by oompa loompas who were employed by a fuzzy-haired man wearing a delightful purple velvet suit. I guess I was wrong.
grrlscientist | October 12, 2009tags: chocolate-covered licorice, Seurasaari, Helsinki, Finland, image of the day
Photographed in Helsinki, Finland, after walking to Seurasaari and back.
Image: GrrlScientist, 4 July 2009 [larger view]. (raw image)
I finished writing a book review on deadline that I am proud of for Nature and now I am relaxing whilst I think about a warm sunny day not too long ago, when the man whom I would later marry, fed me this delectable bar of chocolate-covered licorice for dinner. How can a grrl resist?
bioephemera | March 19, 2009
After reading my pitiable lament about the demise of several domestic artisan chocolate factories, my friend wunx sent me two bars of Amano chocolate! Yum! I don't know why it seems so odd to me that good dark chocolate is being made just outside Salt Lake City, but Amano's product is delicious. I highly recommend both the Madagascar and the Ocumare; the Madagascar is sharp with a tangy citrus note, while the Ocumare is smoother. I can tell you that both go wonderfully with a nice pinot noir.
Amano also has a rather nice chocolate blog - check out their historical look at a chocolate factory…
sciencepunk | March 1, 2009Last month, the UK Government came up with an ingenious new idea to stem the rising tide of obesity that is already spilling over low-slung jeans everywhere: eat less. Health Minister Alan Johnson met with a coalition of confectionery giants including Mars, Coca-Cola and Nestle, urging them to reduce the sizes of their delicious, calorie-laden snacks.
Shrinking portions is not a new idea. Last year, Food Standards Agency formed a panel to explore the role of food portion in our diets after announcing that reducing portions would be one of four key proposals for encouraging healthier…
awild | February 8, 2009
In the comments, blogger Huckleberry Days asks:
Speaking of tasty, what about chocolate covered ants: which ants are used?
Having never made chocolate-covered ants, I am not the best person to be opining about formicine confections.  I do, however, have many years' worth of mostly accidental ant ingestion experience, enough to offer the following advice for choosing a species to coat in chocolate. Here's what to look for:
Medium-large species at least 6-10 mm in length. Smaller ants won't give your candy any noticeable crunch.
Species with a strongly acidic chemistry will yield an…
grrlscientist | September 14, 2007tags: chocolate, online quiz
You are Dark Chocolate
You live your life with intensity, always going full force.
You push yourself (and others) to the limit... you want more than you can handle.
An extreme person, you challenge and inspire the world!
What Kind of Chocolate Are You?
Hey, that's my favorite kind of chocolate, how did they guess? (By the way, if you are interested to read a little more about chocolate and alcoholism, I recently wrote a story that you might enjoy).
grrlscientist | September 12, 2007tags: chocolate, addiction, alcoholism, craving
Orphaned image.
Weirdly, I just learned that recovering alcoholics, especially those who are early in the recovery process, are recommended to eat chocolate to curb their craving for alcohol. According to my sources, this recommendation is included in the book, Alcoholics Anonymous, which is also known as "The Big Book" to those who are in recovery. Why is this?
Some people hypothesize that chocolate is helpful because it contains a variety of alkaloids that are linked to alcoholism, so by eating chocolate, the alcoholic can get these same…