Marcelo Leite: Chocolate and Easter, happy marriage – 08/04/2023 – Marcelo Leite

Easter eggs have many more layers than chocolate sticking to a mold. Whoever eats the sweet, on this Sunday of resurrected joy, can’t imagine how much history and how much chemistry fits inside this ancestral sign of fertility gourmetized for the contemporary palate.

Easter eggs already existed in Europe long before chocolate arrived there. Chicken eggs were given as a gift to end the Lenten fast, or painted with the color of Christ’s blood to remember his passion (suffering).

As receptacles of new life, eggs symbolize resurrection. Or else, once drained of contents and decorated, the empty tomb of the reborn Messiah. The symbology is lavish, renewed with each generation that celebrates the family party.

The incorporation of cocoa is still a hallmark of what was perhaps the greatest meeting of civilizations in history, between the Old and New Worlds. (Yes, it was also, and mainly, a clash of civilizations, with genocidal proportions under the colonial heel, but today is not a day for bitter truths.)

Bitter, in any case, was the taste of the drink prepared with the powder of the dragees of the tree theobroma cacao by native peoples of Mexico and other parts of America. In Europe, it ended up mixed with sugar and milk, an alchemy that transmuted it into the delight of chocolate, as a drink or solid.

The first scientific name of the plant, which in Latin means something like food of the gods or divine delicacy, could suggest some link with the Christian religion and Easter, but not. It’s just a celebration of its heavenly flavor.

Of the same genus is the cupuaçu (Theobroma grandiflorum). Both delicacies fit well into the class of aptonyms, as the colleague Claudio Angelo would say, in which the name of the thing or person matches perfectly with its most salient trait — like Marília Marreco, secretary of the Environment and Animal Protection of the Federal District.

The main alkaloid of cocoa, theobromine, was baptized from the happy name. It is a xanthine, a stimulant similar to caffeine. Although with a less pronounced effect on the brain than coffee, the legend persists that chocolate can also boost cognition.

Already among the native peoples of America, cocoa was attributed to various health benefits, even aphrodisiacs (another association with fertility and reproduction, but which does not go well with Easter in the family). What is certain is that chocolate lowers blood pressure and speeds up the heartbeat.

More dubious is the belief that chocolate is addictive, or at least that what’s responsible for making people chocoholics is theobromine, caffeine’s cousin. The typical cocoa alkaloid has more difficulty than coffee’s in crossing the blood-brain barrier and reaching the brain, suggesting that the blame lies more with the sugar and fat in the addictive bars.

Although without outstanding psychoactive properties, cocoa —bitter, prepared only with water, occasionally with spices—is ingested as a sacrament in ceremonies of indigenous peoples in Mexico, for example. It is considered a sacred plant, like the potent tobacco (nicotine) and peyote (cactus with the psychedelic mescaline).

Better stop here, as the conversation that started with Easter eggs is already on the way to sound sinful to Christian ears. Celebrate it with your family and with chocolate, or any other food. Divine, truly, is being able to sit at the table and share the gifts of nature.

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