Well, it’s that time of year again when we feel the nudge to take stock of our lives and make some New Year Resolutions.  I think I can save some time this year in that I just need to dust off last year’s list, or was it the previous year’s too?  The list usually starts with abandoning sugar for the rest of my life or rising every day at 4:30 a.m.  

Finding myself in this dilemma of having the same list for years (OK, decades) I have spent this week searching for an answer.  One author I read suggested that I should only make resolutions that I could execute successfully from a coma.  I thought about that for a while and came up with several things that would work well under that specification.  Those things sounded tempting, but being of strong German stock and a hard-working Pennsylvania Dutch constitution, I just could not bring myself, even in secret to resolve such things. 

Further reading produced more answers to the resolution problem.    Things like “I promise to air out the sheets on my bed by leaving it unmade whenever I am running late in the morning.”    And “I resolve to reduce my intake of sugar and fat whenever I am not currently eating sugar or fat.” 

Somehow those suggestions did not sit right with me either.

Then the light bulb went on.  The Perfect New Year Resolution.  Something that was attainable through determined consistency, something that would demonstrate my faithfulness to an action, something that linked into my personal history and heritage, and something that was healthy for body, mind, and soul.  So you are wondering what it is?  Are you ready?  Now, here is a resolution that is worth its salt (or sugar).

My 2008 Resolution:  I resolve to eat chocolate every day.

Now before you say something negative or roll your eyes, please allow me to articulate a defense of chocolate.  Chocolate is the perfect gift to give to anyone, spare those health food guys who turn up their noses at just about everything or suggest carob as a substitute.  Having been raised in Chocolate Town, USA, I can personally attest to the fact that carob is not even remotely chocolate in any way, unless you have had your taste buds surgically removed along with your sense of smell. 

Chocolate is beautifully packaged into all kinds of foil wrapped shapes.  In fact, it brings much holiday cheer to entire nations of people who purchase boxes and bags of it wrapped in the colors and shapes of the seasons.  I would also like to add that chocolate is easily found, thereby saving on transportation expenses which is helpful to the family budget. 

Chocolate is the perfect snack food, whether in the afternoon or at midnight or in the middle of a Texas-size wind and sand storm when the roof of your house is coming off.  I can attest to this.  I had a chocolate bar while our roof ripped off this past spring and it was quite helpful in lowering blood pressure,  More about this later.

Chocolate is the perfect breakfast food.  Just ask my older daughters, who frequently consumed bags of chocolate chips for breakfast when I was pregnant and too sick to roll out of bed in the morning.  They have also found that chocolate chips are a helpful ingredient in pancakes for the first meal of the day.  My three year old has snuck some into scrambled eggs, mimicking large pepper flakes.

Chocolate is the perfect Band-Aid.  It takes care of all kinds of bumps, bruises, and cuts that have victimized children.  Somehow it has a secret quality of erasing the sobbing of little children who can not be consoled in other ways. 

For those of you who will not be convinced with my defense to this point, please pay attention to the following information of which you may not be aware. 

Chocolate is the perfect medicinal remedy.  This is because it has something called theobromine in it.  (No, my husband says that is not a branch of theology.) The alkaloid theobromine treats edema, syphilitic angina attacks, and degenerative angina.  It has been used as a treatment for circulatory problems including arteriosclerosis, certain vascular diseases, angina pectoris, and hypertension.  Did you read that hypertension part?  No wonder I made it through a roof-raising wind storm.  I researched current medical information to get the correct dosage. Here it is: 100 grams of dark chocolate per day.  I can definitely commit to that. 

More theobromine research reveals that chocolate may be effective at preventing persistent coughing. Theobromine was found to be almost one third more effective than codeine, the leading cough medicine. The chocolate also appears to soothe and moisten the throat.  This gives us a much brighter outlook in the winter months with the coughs associated with the flu and cold.

For those concerned with cholesterol, the flavonoid polyphenols in chocolate inhibit the oxidation of LDL (bad cholesterol), helping to prevent arteriosclerosis.  Chocolate has been used in recent years as a vasodilator to widen blood vessels, an aid in urination, and a heart stimulant.  South American and European cultures have used chocolate to treat diarrhea for centuries.  Chocolate is so important that is has been patented by researchers who plan to use it for cancer prevention.  What a deal!

Chocolate also contains the alkaloid phenethylamine, which has been attributed to love.  It has also been linked to serotonin levels in the brain. Serotin is also found in mushrooms but I would like to suggest that chocolate is far more pleasing to eat than fungi. Serotin aids in the regulation of anger, aggression, body temperature, mood, sleep,  and appetite.

Part of the pleasure of eating chocolate is due to the fact that its melting point is slightly below human body temperature: it melts in the mouth. A study reported by the BBC indicated that melting chocolate in one’s mouth produced an increase in brain activity and heart rate and it lasted four times as long after the activity had ended.  This means that it could potentially cure academic learning problems and work place productivity if we figured out how to use it correctly.

Getting back to the serotonin stuff, it is also a peripheral signal mediator. For instance, serotonin is found extensively in the human gastrointestinal tract (about 90%), and the major storage place is platelets in the blood stream.  Think of how chocolate can aid the entire body.

And if that is not enough, researchers at Harvard, the University of California, and European universities, say that cocoa-based prescription drugs could potentially help treat diabetes, dementia and other diseases.  I think we are looking at a real winner here.

For those of you who are still skeptical about chocolate due to caffeine, might I just mention here that it would be necessary to eat more than a dozen chocolate bars to get the same amount of caffeine as one cup of coffee.  And to those who have bought into the popular belief that the consumption of chocolate can cause acne, think again. Pure chocolate contains anti-oxidants which aid better skin complexion. 

Now, I will admit that chocolate is toxic to animals such as horses, dogs, parrots, small rodents, and cats (kittens especially) because they are unable to metabolise the theobromine.  But this only makes my case better.  We humans can keep it for ourselves.  So I won’t be feeding it to my boxer, my barncat, nor our increasing flock of birds.  (Yes, we bought a baby parakeet the day after Christmas.)  I may become a local hero if I figure out a way to leave a bowl of it out for the mountain lion that has been terrorizing our area.  That is, if the animal rights activists don’t eat it first. 

Do not forget that chocolate has the perfect legacy.  Historically it goes back to 1500 BC when Central Americans drank it.  To give you some perspective, this was around the time when Moses received the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai.

As to my own personal history with the sweet products of the cocoa bean, I was raised in Hershey, Pennsylvania where the huge chocolate plant still pumps out one thousand chocolate bars a minute and 80 million kisses a day.  (For a factory picture, go to Hersheys.com and see the opening photo).  The Hershey Company is the largest North American manufacturer of quality chocolate products with revenues of nearly $5 billion.  I can attest to Hershey’s greatness.  (Boo Nestle.)  The red-brown cocoa bean shells were used as mulch in the landscaping at our house, making any humid or rainy day an aroma of heavenly chocolate.  One of my favorite memories as a child was Daddy taking out a hammer to break up a 20 pound Hershey bar. Or watching the kiss-shaped street lights installed along the main street of town, appropriately named Chocolate Avenue, the day that my little sister was born.  Or going to the chocolate factory – which is now closed to the public – and watching the huge vats of thick, hot chocolate being mixed in a stiflying 100 plus degree room. (http://www.hersheys.com/discover/tour_video.asp  Step 4: mixing the ingredients)

Well, it did not take much to convince me.  I thereby resolve for the year 2008 to eat chocolate every day.  Feel free to keep me accountable. 

Now, where is that Hershey bar.