BBC Learning English

London Life
London Chocolate Week

Yvonne: Hello, I'm Yvonne Archer and this is London Life from
bbclearningenglish.com!
Now don't get me wrong, chocolate's great but I seem to be one of the few
people who can live without it. Here are some of the reactions I got about the
news of London Chocolate Week. It seems that chocolate may be magical – so
try to catch the special chocolate term that one person uses to describe herself
and her family!

INSERT
Oh I think that's a great idea to have a chocolate week – ooh that's very nice! I mean I like
chocolate, I don't absolutely adore it but I do, I have to say I'm very fond of it.
I do like chocolate, I could say I love chocolate.
Oh I love chocolate, especially very, very dark chocolate – very expensive chocolate – I love
it. I come from a family of chocoholics.

Yvonne: Cath's from a family of 'chocoholics' – a whole family of people who are
addicted to chocolate! So they must have it – and they really can’t do without it.
Cath enjoys very, very dark chocolate – so chocolate that's made with lots of
cocoa and that reminded me how much I enjoy the odd bit of white
chocolate… chocolate with just a little bit of cocoa. So what's Nuala's reaction
to that?

Nuala
Ooh no, oooh - I hate white chocolate. Ooh, it just gives me the creeps. No, I have to lick my
teeth just to get the taste away.

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Yvonne: No white chocolate for Nuala's birthday then! She hates it so much that it gives
her 'the creeps' – it gives her a very unpleasant feeling when it's in her mouth.
Nuala says she has to ‘lick her teeth’ after eating white chocolate – rub her
tongue over her teeth to take the taste away as quickly as possible. Oh well,
more for me then!

Mark du Market, a chocolatier – a chocolate maker – explains what he thinks

are the best chocolates. Listen out for how they're made and for a very special
ingredient that can't be grown or bought…

INSERT - Mark du Market

I would say it's the hand-made chocolate using the best beans and ask your chocolatiers,
where do you source your chocolates from? You don't just want to look at the percentage; you
want to see that the beans are of good quality and that there's passion behind it.

Yvonne: Mark thinks that the best chocolates are made by hand rather than by a machine.
He says we should ask our chocolatiers where the cocoa beans come from – as
he put, where they 'source' the beans – as well as how much is used in the
chocolate. So, is there a high percentage of cocoa in the chocolate? But did you
also notice that Mark says there should be 'passion' behind making chocolates?
So the best chocolates are made by people who love making them.

The ancient Aztecs from South America discovered chocolate and thought of
the cocoa tree as a source of wealth and strength. They used the beans like
money but also crushed them and mixed them with spices to make a type of
bitter- tasting hot chocolate drink. So it was very different to the sweet hot
chocolate that we enjoy today.

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 But that's history and London Chocolate Week is all about what's new in the
world of chocolate. So have our friends made any recent discoveries? Try to
catch the different types of chocolate they mention:

INSERT
My favourites I think are orange dark chocolate and I also really like butterscotch chocolate.
Pepper and chocolate – wonderful combination – delicious. Cadmium tastes really nice,
lavender tastes very good, rosemary, thyme, oregano…
I think organic chocolate is something that's quite new and that seems to be very delicious.

Yvonne: Well, as delicious as organic, fruity or even herb flavoured chocolates are,
people still feel as though they shouldn't eat it? Try to catch the three main
reasons why…

INSERT:
Chocolate is not very good to me. Not only does it make me put on weight and is bad for my
teeth but it also, and believe it or not and I'm a man in my 50s - but I still get spots when I eat
chocolate.
Well I suppose because it's fattening and I suppose people do say it's quite good for you. They
say it's good for the heart and good for the blood but I suppose I do still have in the back of
my mind that it's a bit too indulgent and I shouldn't really be doing it.

Yvonne: Do you also find chocolate 'too indulgent' – it's so enjoyable that you
sometimes you eat more of it than is good for you? And did you catch the three
main reasons why Kaz and Cath try not to eat too much chocolate? We heard
how it makes them 'put on weight' - 'it's fattening'. We also heard how it's bad
for our teeth – because chocolate is made with lots of sugar. And poor Kaz says
that chocolate still gives him spots – something that mainly young people get!
But somehow, I doubt that Kaz or Cath will ever stop eating their beloved
chocolate.

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 So here's some good news: there are scientific reports which say that eating
chocolate is good for the heart and that the husk of the beans – that’s the shell
that covers each bean - might be good for cleaning our teeth!

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