Milk Chocolate and Vanilla Sweet Chocolate, for eating purposes, are sweetened before being molded, and in the case of Lowney’s Milk Chocolate, has the richest cream from our own blooded Jersey cows added to it. The Vanilla Sweet Chocolate is sweetened and flavored with vanilla beans of the best quality, which we buy and grind ourselves.
The growth of the consumption of cocoa in its powdered form of recent years has been remarkable. It is superseding the old method of boiling for hours the cracked cocoa nibs at a great cost of fuel and with far less satisfactory results both as to flavor and as to the nutritive qualities of the cocoa.
Cocoa and chocolate differ from tea and coffee because they hold in solution one of the most nutritious foods known to man; whereas tea and coffee are simply infusions, that is to say, hot water plus the flavor, and have no nutritive value whatever except so far as they are mixed with sugar and cream.
Moreover, besides being a food, cocoa and chocolate differ from tea and coffee in giving the least possible stimulus, if any, to the nerves, and consequently are followed by the slightest, if any, reaction. Theobromin, the alkaloid which forms the essential flavor of cocoa and chocolate, although very similar chemically to the alkaloids, thein and caffeine, which are the natural flavoring elements of tea and coffee, differs from them in not being an excitant to the nerves.
You should remember in using cocoa and chocolate as beverages that they are strong foods and consequently just so much less other food should be taken when cocoa is used rather than other beverages. Otherwise, a case of overeating may ensue without your knowing what the matter is.
Many persons use hot beverages for two chief purposes: first, to wash their food down and save themselves the trouble of thorough mastication; and second, to get something hot into the stomach and revive the nerves. Such persons should remember that cocoa and chocolate are like soups in their nutritive value and not to be used like water, tea, or coffee.
Cocoa or chocolate with bread would be a sufficiently nutritive diet to prolong life indefinitely. In fact one woman in Martinique lived on chocolate exclusively for many years. This was possible because it contains all of the elements necessary to sustain human life. Under these circumstances, we urge that cocoa and chocolate shall be considered and treated as foods, as well as most delicious drinks.
For those who care for a scientific analysis of the cocoa bean, we will add the approximate figures of one chemist: