On chocolate
12/12/2017: Chocolate is not just a well-tasting treat. The cocoa inside makes it much more than that. And I am owed a Nobel Prize.Generally speaking, chocolate is a simple non-necessity or luxury food item, right? It has high energy density, owing to a high amount of sugars added to the fat-heavy cacao beans and in some cases milk powder. Furthermore, it has been generally recognised that it has a positive effect on immediate mental health, which is evidenced by more than just the amount of happy fat people. But seriously, people have been consuming chocolate as more than just a confectionery. Everybody loves it and many have developed an addiction on it. People eat it in all forms, when they need an energy boost, after a big lunch to relax their throat muscles, after break-ups, as mocca latté when in need for more than just a coffee and while celebrating to compensate for the expected energy loss from cheering and drinking. I as a student eat it while writing, because it functions as a motivation when being provided one piece a paragraph of sopisthicated text, gives me a kick after nearly falling asleep while reading an economics article from 1910s translated from German, and helps me focus.
Lately, with the amount of deadlines I’ve been dealing with, I suddenly realized that I am eating a bit too much of the thing and that I almost seem to be running on chocolate, looking into my cupboard. It contained a stack of chocolate coins, two bars of chocolate and three onions. Chocolate therefore became a staple food to me and it probably won’t change with more deadlines coming up.
But back to the point, after reviewing my shopping receipts, which I conveniently throw into my backpack whenever the self-checkout or an Aldi employee presents me with one, I found out that over the last 10 days, I have eaten about 1 kilogram of the commodity, equivalent of 36.5 in a year.
Remembering the funny example of spurious correlation we have been shown in an Econometrics lecture, a relationship between per capita consumption of chocolate and number of Nobel Prize winners was claimed to exist. This pushed me into looking up the numbers for their first variable and I found out that
Switzerland, home to chocolate giants Nestlé and Lindt, retained its crown as the top chocolate consuming country with the average person consuming 9 kg a year. source
So, Stockholm, where is my invitation? Or are spurious correlation wrong? Well, I guess I’ll go back to writing, because blogging does not make me chocolate. I mean, it could, if I was indisciplined enough.
