'Britain has been a nation of chocoholics since the 19th century', writes Jay Rayner in the
Observer. But what does that reveal about the average Briton, he wonders?
To start with, Britain's indisputable national sweet tooth isn't addicted to chocolate as such. Many of the British chocolate classics consist of less than
25% cocoa solids, which is the absolute minimum if you're going to
label your product 'milk chocolate' within the EU.
Then, although Rayner assumes that the Swiss - the biggest spenders on chocolate per capita in Europe - must simply buy the posh, pricey stuff, whereas the not quite so fastidious Brits must 'eat more by weight',
it turns out that of the total of '
2.5 million tons of chocolate products' consumed by the EU 27 in 2007, 'which account for around
half of the global consumption world-wide', it is neither the Brits nor the Swiss who
eat the most: the average Irish gobbled
11.85 kg of chocolate in 2007, whereas the average Swiss was content with about a kg less (
10.83 kg per capita), and the average Brit came third, having munched a mere
10.10 kg. Poland, on the other hand, must be a chocoholic's idea of the Sahara, as per capita consumption was no more than
1.04 kg.
While serotonin, a 'feel-good' chemical in which chocolate is rich, has often been cited as the actual object of chocolate cravings, according to other research, the lust for chocolate may all be in the mind: chocoholics, suggested a
BBC article, may be chocoholics because 'their favourite food [is] often deemed
"naughty but nice".' Precisely that principle is epitomised by Durex's
Chocolate Passion Condoms, which come in (what else?) chocolate flavour:
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