Its not about chocolate

I was in the store a while ago and came across something chocolate related. I say “related” because it could have been for anything, but it just happen to be related to chocolate. It was a can of hot chocolate that heats itself. Hillside Hot Cocoa comes in a can that you “activate” to heat it up.

Here’s how you do it.

Flip the can over and there’s a pop-top on the bottom.

Remove the pop-top to reveal a plastic “button”.

Its not really a button-button, more like a knob. Anyway, press down on that and the green liquid you see inside flows out - into someplace.

Then you sit and wait about 3-4 minutes. On the side is a little pink dot that tells you if its warm or not. If you are like me, you don’t like to wait for pink dots. You get out your digital thermometer and check it out. I’m not sure if you can read that but its about 132° F. Alternatively, you can feel the hot container and know that it is hot.

I think this is cool technology (there are nine patents listed on the can). It uses quicklime, and mixes it with water to heat up the can. As you know, quicklime is calcium oxide, which reacts with water in an exothermic reaction (makes heat) producing calcium hydroxide:

CaO + H₂O –> Ca(OH)₂

I suspect they called it “quicklime” on the label since that sounds less like a chemical and will be less likely to freak people out. But be serious. Its a can of hot chocolate that heats itself. Did people really think it wouldn’t involve chemistry?

The lid has this plastic lip you are supposed to turn to allow you open the top. The lid on mine was almost impossible to move, which sucked. Also, the drink tastes like crap. I mean just plain bad. Maybe they had to add stuff to it so it would taste good coming out of a can (e.g. cargeenan), but it is not good to drink. Cool trick though. I’d like to see it with instant soup. This is distributed by Ontech. If you want a full animated video that tells you exactly how it works, go here.

I also bought the new Hershey’s Whole Bean chocolate. “Made with the goodness of the whole cocoa bean”. I’m not sure what they meant by that. As if they threw in the shells and stuff or something like that.

The package brags of 40% less sugar and 7 grams of fiber per serving.

Here’s a big chocolate warning. Any time you see “X% less sugar” in candy, it means only one thing: artificial sweeteners. And that is exactly what is in Hershey’s Whole Bean. They may have included the goodness of the whole bean, but they also included the goodness from the laboratory. Sucralose, i.e. total poison.

Now some people like this crap, but I do not. Do you know what sucralose is? This is the stuff they pedal as Splenda. But do you know what it is? Its mutated sugar. Mutated like David Banner. Here is sugar (sucrose):

Your body breaks this apart into glucose which it can metabolize for energy. Its chemistry and stuff, but know that your body is designed to do this and does it very well. And by the way, the ONLY thing your brain can use for energy is glucose. But do you see all those OH (hydroxyl) groups on the structure? Watch them closely now…here is sucralose:

Did you see what happened? Some of the OH groups have been replaced with Cl (chlorine). Yes, sucralose is chlorinated sucrose. Your body does not recognize it as sucrose and can’t process it (does not leave the GI tract in notable quantities either). It still has a “sweet” taste because the chemical structure is similar to sucrose, and so it reacts similarly at the taste receptors on your tongue. Since your saliva can’t break it down, the “sweet” taste lasts longer than sugar, which breaks down in your mouth into glucose which tastes differently. This is one reason you’ll find artificial sweeteners in general now in almost every chewing gum on the market. Aspartame and sucralose both retain their “sweetness” as long as they are in your mouth because they are indigestible (although aspartame breaks down in acid into other compounds which your body cannot process for energy).

By the way, most chlorinated hydrocarbons are toxic to your body. They dissolve in the fat and hang there forever. Like PCB’s. But sucralose avoids that since it is not fat soluble. Clever chemistry that.

Hershey also adds inulin fiber, calcium carbonate, and (ofcourse) vanillin to this product (doesn’t seem appropriate to call it chocolate). A little asterisk in the ingredients list marks inulin, calcium carbonate, and sucralose as “ingredients not typically found in chocolate”. The calcium carbonate is added so they can say one serving has 25% of the USRDA of calcium.

So how does the Hershey’s Whole Bean with Sucralose taste? Like Satan puked in your mouth. Horrid, sticky, thick, gritty, bitter, dreadful. I had one of the pieces and that was enough for me. I don’t know how they got away with adding sucralose and calling it chocolate. Its poison. I will be throwing the rest away. Hershey’s needs to stop with this crap and get to making real chocolate. This was a GIANT step backwards for Hershey’s.

Last item. My Mom gave me some dark chocolate covered blueberries from Krause’s.

They are a local shop and a HUGE favorite for people in this area. The chocolate covered blueberries were very unique. Blueberries generally are not good for adding to foods when dried. They are mostly skin and seeds. These had the consistency of a small raisin, but the blueberry flavor was very easily detected. Certainly worth a try.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 11th, 2007 at 6:51 am and is filed under Chocolate Friday. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.