Carla Martin

in Europe or in British colonial North America, it wasn't until about the mid-1800s that with the increase of cocoa supply, and this was done through, for example, the transatlantic slave trade and large-scale production of things like sugar production, cocoa, tea, coffee, and other what we call drug crops that were driving a lot of this expansion, accompanied by industrial manufacturing and the ability to scale up production

that chocolate became something that could make its way into more people's homes.

In fact, for most of us here in the United States consuming chocolate, we can only look back about 120 years, so maybe four or five generations within our families, and see that chocolate was something that was familiar to us.

This is a really interesting possibility to contemplate.

It is certainly the case.

That throughout debates in the Catholic Church and other religious areas, there has long been a debate about the morality of chocolate consumption, especially because we know that it was associated with an exotic, distant place.

It was consumed, especially for many years, primarily by women.

They were seen by the clergy, for example, to be distracted by chocolate, drinking it and gossiping instead of paying attention to mass.

So there's that long history there.

But even in the present, we see people continue to debate about these things.

Candy in the United States has been sometimes demonized and sometimes celebrated.

There are examples from the early 1900s of nutritionists and dieticians promoting candy

candy as something to be consumed for good health among even children.

Those of us who grew up in the 1980s, 1990s, we know that that story entirely changed by the time that we were children because candy had actually been vilified as something to be avoided due to high sugar content.

And so as a result of all of this, chocolate is wrapped up with many different emotions that link in many ways to our own morality or a sense of guilt.

It's also linked with ideas about women and their sexuality and consumption.

And one just needs to do a quick search on Google Images to look for women eating chocolate to see the way in which there is a stereotype of the idea of a woman eating chocolate, having this kind of aphrodisiac experience, and it replacing for her, perhaps, the need for a man.

It's such a pleasure to be here.

Thank you, Dana.