Why We Save The Best Chocolate Piece For Last
Ed O’Brien, a researcher in social psychology at the University of Michigan, came up with the paper. He claims that our choices depend on the moment and also personal taste. Also, an essential circumstance here is knowing the end of an experience.
Based on O’Brien’s concept, endings and last chances have a different allure. He said: “I think in everyday life we do have this expectation that we save the best for last.”
“When people are given awareness that something is about to end, they’re kind of motivated to make the most of that experience,” he added.
Does it even have something to do with little stuff like savoring the last piece of chocolate? To verify the idea, O’Brien together with other researchers called for 52 students on the University of Michigan campus and requested them to be involved in a taste test.
Such students tried out different kinds of Hershey’s Kisses from caramel to almond to dark chocolate. Following the taste test, these students were required to rate their most favorite.
“So we had a big bag of candy that was covered from the outside and you couldn’t see what was in it or how many [chocolates were there],” he said.
Some of the students did not have any clue that the fifth chocolate was going to be their last one. In such case, the participants claimed that the last piece of chocolate they were able to taste was their favorite about 22% of the time.
On the other hand, another group of student was clued in that the fifth piece was going to be their “last.” And O’Brien suggests that such awareness about how the entire experience was ending somehow forced them to savor the chocolate even better.
He said: “The majority of people [64 percent] chose it as their favorite even though we’d randomly distributed the flavors,” .
Many studies have shown that the last things are actually more powerful. Why, you may ask. They usually are the freshest in our thoughts, that’s why. And O’Brien believes that the last-is-best thinking might be applied to romance and relationships.
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The Science of Chocolate
Chocolate may be bittersweet, literally and figuratively. Although chocolate comes with many benefits to your health and pleasure center, there are a lot of facts about it that make it even more interesting.
Sit back, relax, and watch this video.
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Why Chocolate Is Downright Alluring
You can be a self-proclaimed chocoholic and love everything chocolate. You eat chocolate, you eat foo with chocolate, you use things with labels screaming chocolate, and all that jazz. Chocolate is so loved by people that the word ‘chocoholic’ made its way into Merriam-Webster. Almost all the important celebrations call for chocolate, be it the up-and-coming Valentine’s Day, Easter, Halloween, and Christmas!
What is it, really, that people are rooting for in chocolate? Its versatility, perhaps. You see, any delectable treat can be made out of chocolate and it’s bound to end up lip-smacking good, namely cakes, ice cream, cookies, and drinks, among so many other mouth-watering sweets. It can be soft, hard, white, dark, a filling, topping, or flow out of a fountain, name it!
Or maybe, it’s the feel-good reaction we get from chocolate. Some previous studies have found out that chocolate stimulates a part of the brain which has an influence on the mood. Thus, it gives out a rather comforting feeling after consumption, a feeling which is, by some means, addicting.
It can also be the pure novelty of chocolate that makes it such a pleasure. Chocolate has long been known as a powerful gift for quite a while now and it has always been used to show affection. For centuries now, chocolate has been famous as a gift in the European royalty. No arguments about why many are lured in by such treat. Suffice it to say, chocolate is the perfect gift for any age, gender, or occasion.
Chocolate is everywhere yet it still feels extremely out of the ordinary. It draws out different pleasurable emotions. The experience you get from its elegance, richness, and variety makes it all the more enticing.
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Chocolate And Kissing
Passionate kisses always give a different level of excitement to the body, but so does eating chocolate. As a matter of fact, studies have shown that the feeling of having chocolate melt in your mouth is even better than those long intimate kisses.
In a recent experiment conducted, young lovers who were all in their 20s had their hearts and brain monitored. Then they had dark chocolates melt on their tongue without chewing, and kissed their partners the way they normally would.
The outcome was quite intriguing and surprising according to the researcher. They were aware of the fact that chocolate is a stimulant because of the stimulating substances it contains, but what they didn’t expect was the length of duration of the effects it had on the mind.
The researchers also compared the resting heart rates of the participants with their heart rates when they had the chocolate and kissing tests. Turns out, even the most intimate and passionate kiss didn’t compare to the buzz that chocolate can give. At the point where chocolate was melting on the tongue, the entire regions of the brain were stimulated more intensely and the effects lasted even longer than what they got from kissing. The chocolate chunks also supposedly made the heart rate go higher.
And even though women are known to have more liking towards chocolate and also more romantic in nature, both sexes yielded the same results. The chocolate was able to provide a long-lasting body and brain buzz which lasted four times as long as kissing.
Like I said, chocolate contains several highly-stimulating substances that give a natural buzz, such as theobromine, caffeine, and phenylethylamine which is elicited when we are in love.
The said experiment used a 60% cocoa dark chocolate. A spokeswoman for the chocolate makers said: “You’d think people would be shy about kissing in a laboratory, but that wasn’t the case at all. We’re not talking about a quick peck here.”
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Chocolates And Violent Video Games – How They Are Related
This particular research was done in Italy, and it involved 170 teenagers showing their skills in a violent video game, like Grand Theft Auto III, or a non-violent game like MiniGolf 3D, in a span of 45 minutes. A bowl of chocolate was beside the gaming console while they were playing. They knew they could eat the candies, albeit they were told that it was unhealthy to devour so much chocolates in a short period of time.
Those who played violent video games ate three times as much chocolates as those who played non-violent ones. After playing, the participants went through a 10-item logic test where they got one ticket for a prize raffle for every question they answered correctly. After learning the number of answers they got right, they were told to get the corresponding number of tickets from an envelope while not being watched.
The research team could definitely know if a certain participant took more than appropriate. Those who played violent games helped themselves to extras about eight times more often than did those who played a nonviolent game.
The aggressive tendencies of the participants have gone through testing when they played a game with an unseen fictional “partner” to get rights to blast the losing party with a loud noise via headphones. It showed that violent game players decided to blast their fictitious partners with louder noises that lasted much longer as compared to the non-violent gamers.
There could be teens that stay unfazed by these video games that suggested violence, but this particular research aids us in addressing the question of who is most likely to be affected. According to the study, the effects were most noticeable in teen participants who scored pretty high in moral disengagement. (Moral disengagement is defined as one’s ability to convince himself that ethics do not apply in all situations.)
Both genders were affected. Girls ate even more chocolate, and were more likely to cheat, and to act aggressively when they were playing Grand Theft Auto as opposed to the mini golf or pinball game.
I was never the gamer girl. The video games I have played in my life, if there were any, have been few and far between. And for the most part, it’s just my way to give in to the hype. When I download a game on my mobile phone, I play it for like 3 days, a week tops, and then I move on with my life. So I can’t really have a say.
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Chocolate and Chemistry
Chocolate is out-and-out delectable and nearly every one of us aren’t precisely aware of the cause why we just can’t defy its appeal. But not the ones who create them, they practically are acquainted with why we find chocolate tempting and it all boils down to chemistry.
Chocolate may be sweet and all that but the main reason behind its unexplainable allure is the fat, according to Professor Dolores O’Riordan of University College Dublin who is based in the Institute of Food and Health. In a speech during the Science week named Smart Chemistry – Tasty Food!, she said “The melting of the fat is very important,”
According to Professor O’Riordan, cocoa butter is the most important fat in chocolate, something the chocolatier has to do some chemistry on. In the said presentation, the audience was comprised of students. Much to their delight, they were given some samples of chocolate and chanced upon some taste test
The size of “fat crystal” shaped during construction was of the essence. Every chocolate has diverse melting points, but what these chocolate makers are usually looking for is one that melts in the mouth. A large fat crystal which melts in the mouth at 33.8 degrees is the best bet.
“Essentially the food we eat is made of chemicals. We process the chemicals within the food to make them safe, to give them texture, to make them look and taste nice,” Prof O’Riordan told her audience.
Chemistry is useful in changing the aroma, color, texture, “and that all affects the food choices we make”, she added. And according to her, contrary to popular belief, additives, preservatives and artificial colors aren’t so bad. She claims that they were basically safe. Interesting enough, the love of chocolate can be passed down to your offspring as Prof O’Riordan said “Genes can also influence our preferences for food,”
There certainly is a selection of food that people are adoring, and chocolate is almost always in our list. Blame it on Chemistry.
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Chocolate Genome To Yield Chocolates That Taste Better
When I’m not at my best, I look for something to pick me up. Picker-uppers always do the trick for me. It goes without saying that chocolate is my favorite, for that matter.
It’s good to know Genome Biology has got my back covered. They have launched a fully sequenced genome for the cacao plant which is said to yield even better tasting chocolates.
Juan C Motamayor from Mars Incorporated has worked alongside his colleagues in the field of chocolate breeding. Sounds fantastic until you realize you need to study a whole lot of genetics stuff and you’re not in it for the chocolate eating. Yup, what a bummer! Their goal is to sequence the genome of the most famous variety of Theobroma cacao L., namely the green podded Costa Rican Matina.
They claim that through highlighting the gene that has something to do with color variation, they could produce a way cross-modify the Matina, which has a very high yield, with another variety, one that tastes better but that has a lower yield.
Conventional cross breeding had gone through several experiments over the years. In Ecuador, a high yielding plant with red pods was mixed with a better tasting plant with green pods. However, this only lessened the overall quality of the chocolate.
Experimentation is the act of getting things wrong a couple of times, as a matter of fact. The genetic markers may be used to screen young seedlings and choose the best plants even before they reach a mature stage.
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