Friday, June 16, 2006

Chocolate Is the Opposite of Vanilla


Salutations! Friday is Opposite Day here at Very Little Known Facts, the day where Jon Black and Britt Bergman pick two polar opposites and square off to debate their relative merits. Today's contest: chocolate vs. vanilla.



Britt Bergman Says: I Need To Go To Rehab! I Am a CHOCOHOLIC!!!

Jon Black may be content with his vanilla tastes, but I prefer the bold robust taste of chocolate any day! Chocolate has quite an interesting history that actually shares some lineage with vanilla. Just like vanilla, chocolate is also derived from the coffee tree. But instead of using the fatty part of the bean, they use the curd in order to produce luscious chocolate. Strangely enough, scientists have found over three thousand chemicals in chocolate, 99% of which are shared with tobacco! Coffee please, hold the smokes! Chocolate makers have a lot of fancy terms to differentiate between the three different kinds available. There is dark chocolate, semi-sweet chocolate, and milk chocolate. I see the score board just changed: Vanilla: 1 Chocolate: 3! If this isn’t enough to convince you that chocolate is superior, just check out this other fact expert’s site all about the stuff: http://www.chocolatesandfudge.co.uk/chocolatefacts.htm.
It’s a great site with lots of information and some to die for graphics-and oh yeah, they are chocoholics too!


Jon Black Says: VANILLA Is the Best! It Couldn't Be Plainer!


Perhaps in the modern, hectic, complicated world that we all live in every single day we have lost our taste for simple pleasures. Unlike my "urbane" friend Britt Bergman, I for one still find the palate-cleansing pleasure of old-fashioned vanilla quite adequate. This elegantly uninteresting flavor was invented by eighteenth-century French botanist Gregor Mendel. Famous for discovering DNA, Mendel also experimented with "grafting" which the dictionary defines as "sticking parts of trees on other trees." By combining a butter bush with a coffee tree, Mendel gave birth to a vanilla plant, the first legume. Vanilla remained an exotic spice for centuries until World War I when Nazi scientists, entranced by vanilla's natural whiteness, learned to chemically replicate it. Nowadays vanilla is the most included ice cream variety in the world. So you can have your fancy, gourmet flavors Britt--vanilla is good enough for the likes of me.

6 comments:

Cultural Engineer said...

It's all about umami, boys.

Advanced Genius Theory said...

it's like jomami.

Anonymous said...

Is that kitten talk?

Jon Black and Britt Bergman said...

Thanks for your comment, tasha. No that is not kitten talk, although it certainly could be mistaken for it! Those guys are actually talking in Chinese using the Arabic characters that comprise our American alphabet! If you would like to learn more about foreign languages, i would suggest e-mailing robes22@yahoo.com to consult with the leading Chinese language teacher in the southeast. Mr. Harrison Pate Esq.
Thanks again!

Anonymous said...

I prefer chocolate.

Jon Black and Britt Bergman said...

Thanks for your comment, anonymous! It is disingenuous to say you "prefer" chocolate since this would be hard-coded into your genetic makeup much like hair color, body mass, or physical fitness. Human beings either respond positively to chocolate or vanilla, but never both since they are polar opposites. (Mixing the two will merely reduce the pleasure you would naturally receive by ingesting your "favorite.") Thanks for your comment!