There’s no chocolate in heaven
But there is heaven to be had in chocolate.
The ever erudite Jonathan Erdman mentioned my Guide To Biblical Kissing in his post More on kissing. In another post, What’s better? Chocolate v. Kissing, Jonathan mentions this “surprising” study coming out of Britain:
LONDON, April 16, 2007 (UPI) — A British study suggests that allowing chocolate to melt on a subject’s tongue is a more stimulating experience than kissing a sweetie.
The researchers found that when allowing chocolate to melt on their tongues, subjects experienced longer-lasting spikes in heart rate and significantly more intense boosts in brain activity for all regions of the mind than when kissing a lover, the BBC reported Monday.
“There is no doubt that chocolate beats kissing hands down when it comes to providing a long-lasting body and brain buzz,” said David Lewis, who led the study.
“A buzz that, in many cases, lasted four times as long as the most passionate kiss.”
Lewis said the findings were consistent for both sexes.
“These results really surprised and intrigued us,” he said.
[Story from the United Press]
I happen to be something of an expert on the subjects of chocolate and kissing so allow me to shed some light on these “surprising and intriguing” results. The first thing to note about this study is that it was done in England. There are two problems with that:
1. The English are famously bad kissers.
While I have never engaged in passionate smooching with someone from Jolly Old England there is plentiful evidence that it is an unpleasant experience. First, there is the issue of nationalized dental care. While traveling abroad, bad teeth are a British national symbol almost as recognizable as their pale skin and goofy hats. Second, there is their diet that consists primarily of a pale yellow slab of fried fish accompanied by pale slabs of fried potato, washed down by a pale warm liquid known as “ale.” Who would want to press their lips to a mouth that had consumed such stuff?
2. English chocolate is an oxymoron.
In fact, the European Union refused to allow it to be sold as “chocolate.” Call it “family chocolate” they said. Everything essentially chocolate has been expunged from English chocolate. What remains is a pale brown waxy sugary glump. In fact, my English grandmother once had some little soaps displayed in her bathroom shaped like chocolates. When the plumber was called in to fix a leak he snitched one of the “chocolates.” No doubt he ate the soap never suspecting that it wasn’t English chocolate.
Having dispensed with this dubious study, I now turn to the subject of my own stupendous kissing. When I kiss my wife I have to be careful she isn’t holding any fragile objects lest she drop them. The effect of a single kiss is enough to make my wife’s heart rate soar, her brain activity triple and a look of the most rapturous delight play lightly over her face. My wife is also a connoisseur of fine chocolate. As a good husband I go to extraordinary lengths to make sure that she has a continual supply. Belgian hand-dipped chocolate. See’s Candies’ Dark Bordeaux, even an occasional slab of 90% Cacoa. As delightful as these chocolates are, anecdotal evidence suggests that they do not approach the “long-lasting body and brain buzz” occasioned by one of my kisses.
I will leave you with a final secret tip on kissing and chocolate. For the ultimate experience, kiss while eating chocolate.
Note: The purpose of this post is purely entertainment. Your results may vary. Entertainment and a bit of harmless taunting of my English friends, that is…
You think you have any English friends after this?
Probably not. By the way, how’s your tooth?
No chocolate in heaven? Surely not! Well, maybe none of what the EU wants to define as chocolate. But I’m sure there will be plenty of good English chocolate there. And it is that chocolate, not the Belgian stuff, which was judged better than kissing.
Note that Eddie’s dentist hurt his wallet as well as his jaw, so this doesn’t sound like the National Health variety. I know my own partly nationalised teeth are not wonderful, but that goes down well where I used to work, where most people’s teeth are much worse still.
As for goofy headwear, nothing in England can compare with the selection here. And there seems to be plenty of pale skin here.
Touché!
This reminds me of C. S. Lewis’ analogy to chocolate when trying to explain that although there would not be sex in heaven, there would be BETTER things:
“The letter and spirit of Scripture, and of all Christianity, forbid us to suppose that life in the New Creation will be a sexual life; and this reduces our imagination to the withering alternative either of bodies which are hardly recognizable as human bodies at all or else of a perpetual fast. As regards the fast, I think our present outlook might be like that of a small boy who, on being told that the sexual act was the highest bodily pleasure, should immediately ask whether you ate chocolates at the same time. On receiving the answer no, he might regard absence of chocolates as the chief characteristic of sexuality. In vain would you tell him that the reason why lovers in their carnal raptures don’t bother about chocolates is that they have something better to think of. The boy knows chocolate: he does not know the positive thing that excludes it. We are in the same position. We know the sexual life; we do not know, except in glimpses, the other thing which, in Heaven, will leave no room for it.”
I beg to differ, dear son, but as a born and bred English woman, I have been consuming large quantities of English chocolate since childhood. There is nothing quite like a real English Cadbury milk chocolate bar melting in the mouth – the American version just doesn’t measure up – and your sister goes ga-ga over Quality Street chocolates. As to the kissing…. well, it has been too long to be able to comment!
As a native of Albion’s fair shores, I’d say you are right – about English chocolate at least! The Cadburys may have been good Quakers, they were better at business than chocolate though, replacing the active ingredients with fat and sugar!
Thank you for insight and personal observations….These new developments definitely call for rigorous and extensive experimentation – in the name of science, of course…..
Rick, when did CS Lewis write this? He probably had limited experience of kissing until his marriage late in life. If he had realised what researchers have now discovered, that eating English chocolate is in fact the highest bodily pleasure, then he might have turned his analogy round.
So, Peter, there’s no need to look for a bride when you can just eat a Cadbury Flake.
This brings up a philosphical question that I’ve never resolved:
In heaven, will chocolate be good for you or will broccoli taste good?
Oh, I’m sure chocolate will be good for you and nothing else will be needed to eat. The Greeks thought ambrosia was the food of heaven, but I never did go for rice pudding (that’s probably a UK only joke), chocolate is much more likely!
From the BBC, another good reason to eat chocolate. I mentioned this to two friends who are both recovering from chronic fatigue syndrome or ME, and they thought this was the best news they had heard for years! I think I need to self-diagnose my chronic fatigue as being CFS and use this as an excuse to start eating more chocolate. I note it has to be the really dark stuff with a high cocoa content, so maybe I will have to swallow my prejudices first and avoid the English type.
One excuse is as good as any other when it comes to chocolate.
I find the idea of C. S. Lewis actually making out with his wife late in life just a tad bit revolting. Thanks.
According to a bigraphy of Lewis which I’ve just been reading – The Narnian, by Alan someone (Davies? Davis?) CS Lewis was in a de facto relationship with a woman for fifteen or twenty years, starting before he was converted and interestingly enough, continuing afterwards. She was the mother of one of his friends who died in the First World War. I’ve forgotten her name. But don’t be thinking of Lewis as some kind of monk.