Be brave, friend, because you are not alone. Estimates are that every red-blooded American man, woman, and child consumes upwards of 11 pounds of chocolate each year. Friends who disdain it are treated with the same wordless reserve as are vegetarians at a weenie roast. Expensive, difficult to attain, and grown in high, hot, wet places that wilt even the most dashing khaki ensemble, cocoa beans have long been revered as pod-encased gold. The Aztecs discovered it, the decadent French courts of yore had to devise circular felt-pimple covers to disguise its dermatological effects, the Dutch powdered it, and the British felt the need to shape it into very correct little bars.
Regular chocolate packs a bit of a wide-awake wallop.
And yes, chocolate does contain that naturally induced little number phenylethylamine, an endorphin that tricks your brain into those giddy first feelings of love. But, as researchers have pointed out, so do cheese and salami. No wonder so many people fall in love on picnics. Medical science has let us down. There are no high-falutin' reasons why the creaky, cranky turn of the menstrual cycle sends so many women into a high bloat that is most nicely fixed with a coy dark wafer of bittersweet wonder.