Hooray for Vitamin C-olate

The genetic code my dad passed onto me includes chocolate as a diet staple. He was basically a conservative guy—went to church, didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, didn’t swear,  and endured a  ballroom dancing lesson sometime in the mid-1960s only because my mom answered the phone to a caller who announced a contest and asked her, “When did Columbus discover America?”  Without thinking, she said, “1492.” To which the caller said, “Congratulations! You are today’s winner of a night of free ballroom dance lessons at our Tacoma studio!”  Neither of my parents grew up with dancing in their value system, but somehow my mother convinced my dad to give it a try. I think he obliged her the lesson and that was the end of that.

Otherwise, Dad was content to just come home and put up his feet after a long day in a mill that produced corrugated cardboard boxes.  As a “technical director” in charge of quality control, he walked and walked all day in that stinky environment.  At one point, his flat feet got so painful that he invested in “corrugated” shoes.  That’s right, soles like the edge of a large-tooth saw.

But I digress from one of his best known traits, and that was an affection for chocolate.  If I tied an apron on my skinny little teenage body and broke out the mixing bowl to make him chocolate chip cookies, I could have asked him for the moon.  A significant part of the “results” would be missing before I washed up.  Another notable fact of Dad’s chocolate-love was his not-so-secret stash of chocolate chips.  We had the regular “bag” in the cupboard with flour and sugar.  But he hid another—to make sure there was always available snacking stock—in a reach-around corner of the cupboard that held pots and pans.  We knew it was there, but also that it was verboten to his offspring.  Sometime during the evening, maybe during a television commercial, if Dad got up from his red tapestry rocker with its telltale squeaks, and headed for the kitchen, we knew he was after his Vitamin Chocolate.  Just a little handful kept him going.

 Thus the other day, when cleaning off my desk, I came across a “glory be!” article whose headline proclaimed, “Chocolate is brain food. Who knew?”  Published originally last March in The Washington Post, it cited a long-range study of cognitive abilities of 1,000 people in New York State.  Goal of the study: the relationship between blood pressure and brain performance.  Among the variables they traced as possible risk factors were participants’ eating habits.  This research stretched over forty years as the participants aged.  Behold, the study found “significant positive associations” between chocolate intake and cognitive performance.  This translated to better  abilities for everyday tasks, like remembering a phone number or shopping list, or doing two things at once (like talking while driving).

The researchers were quick to add that their results aren’t conclusive.  They also failed to include variables such as how much chocolate and how often.

But it was enough for me to honor my dad and carry on the tradition.  And I hereby reveal my weakness: a modest bowl of chocolate chips with those little round oats we feed children (unsweetened, by the way). I figure the “O’s” cancel out the negatives of the brown nugget. 

Don’t tell my son and wife, but I’ve been known to sneak a bit of the family “concoction” into a snack bowl for my grandboys when they come to play.  Heavy on the "oats," of course.

Fun aside, I'm reminded of the best thing to crave: knowing God. Psalm 34:8 has long been a favorite: "Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him."