Is Chocolate Good for the Skin?

Image: Vidyanand Kamat

Do you ever get tired of eating chocolate?
I still like chocolate. I like to eat it too everyday. Of course, I do for festivals like Christmas. It is not that I eat only Lindt chocolate. Sometimes I eat chocolate from Russia or China or Italy just to know what the others are doing and see if they have a new feeling which is interesting.

What is the most crucial element of making chocolate?
The cocoa bean. If you don’t have a good bean, you cannot make a good chocolate. You can add the best sugar but it doesn’t work. It is the place that it comes from — Africa or South America or Asia, they all have different tastes.

Is there a correlation between your personality and the type of chocolate you enjoy?
Yes, otherwise everybody would eat the same chocolate. You know I work at the airport in Dubai also, and people from Switzerland, Germany, Austria… from anywhere… they come, and say I want milk, I want dark, I want white. Sometimes, out of curiosity I offer them something else and they don’t want it, they cannot change their mind. I think there is a good chance of correlation but not many people have asked me that question.

What is the most favourite form of chocolate in the world?
Milk chocolate.

Is there a limit to how much chocolate you can eat a day?
I can tell you that people from Switzerland eat practically one kilo of chocolate a month. And this is the highest in the world. Nobody can eat that much chocolate except the Swiss and I don’t know why but that’s the way it is.
 
What’s the best time to have chocolate in the day?
Anytime!

Is it true that you shouldn’t indulge in chocolate after you’ve downed a few drinks?
Depends on how many drinks. When I used to work in hotels in Singapore I had the opportunity to witness a customer eating a chocolate after he was drunk. His whole meal came on the floor. And then they had a lot of questions and I said my chocolate is okay!
 
What are your favourite combinations of food and chocolate?
You can have chocolate with wine. But, remember that not every wine goes with chocolate. For example, milk chocolate goes only with lighter wines. And then white chocolate goes more with sherry wine.

Ice cream is food. And chocolate and ice cream is beautiful.

Chicken with chocolate will not match, but if you take out the sugar you can have chicken with cocoa sauce. That means the cocoa has no sugar (unless you are Thai; they have a lot of sugar in their meals).

Chocolate also goes with cheese. This is my opinion, but it is debatable.

Is chocolate good for the skin?
Yeah! Chocolate baths. But not everybody can afford it.

(Co-ordinated by Ashish K. Mishra)

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