There is a new breed of aficionado spreading out across our fair land that I have dubbed the Chocosnob. While Chocosnobs would be an excellent name for a store-brand knock-off of Count Chocula or Cocoa Pebbles, today I shall use the term to describe those who fancy themselves to be chocolate connoisseurs. They obsess over single-origin chocolates, cacao percentages, and other nonsense. Why they awoke one day to find themselves discontent with Hershey and Dove bars, I do not know. The simple, guilty pleasure of chowing down on massive amounts of cheap, tasty chocolate in the form of bars, smores, peanut butter cups, bunnies, Santas, and other confectionary delights has been ruined for these people. I am no chocoholic, but it does strike me as being a tad ridiculous that these chocolate fanciers are trying to lump candy into the same unenviable category as wine, cigars, single-malt whiskey, and other overrated luxuries.
By this point, I’m sure some of you are quite upset that I’ve labeled one of your favored vices as overrated. Clearly anyone can enjoy some booze or cigars if they so choose, but it does not necessarily mean that such products serve any real purpose beyond pure enjoyment (and even then, not everyone enjoys them!). In certain quantities, such consumables can even pose serious health risks to those who partake of them. Yes, wine does have antioxidants (so does chocolate), though there are other ways to get one’s daily dose of antioxidants without swilling booze and eating candy. I’m sure the wine snobs out there would bristle at the mere notion of their favored beverage being mere “booze”, but when you strip away the wine culture and look at the end product itself, you’ll find very little difference between fine wine and Mad Dog 20/20. Don’t get me started on whiskey and cigars.
But now, in addition to the tobacco and liquor fiends, we have Chocosnobs. It’s bad enough that gullible socialites pay good money to learn how to enjoy “the finer things in life”. Chocolate has never been so foul that anyone ever needed training to enjoy it, at least not until now. When you have enough people with more money than common sense in search of irrelevant ways to set themselves apart from the “common man”, the Chocosnob is not far behind.
While lampooning the Chocosnob is certainly permissible, it should be noted that those with disposable income are entitled to do with it as they wish. Taxing worthless luxury items to discourage their consumption is easily as obnoxious as the luxury items themselves. It would be nice if our nation’s moderately-wealthy could find more original, interesting things to do with their money. One friend of mine once remarked that, were he to become wealthy, he would arrange a race between an M1A1 tank and a Toyota T100 pickup truck through an Olympic-sized swimming pool filled with motor oil and ball bearings. I can’t exactly remember why he wanted to stage such a race, but the competition would certainly be more interesting than sitting around sipping liquor, smoking cigars, and eating dark chocolate harvested solely from an obscure plantation in Madagascar.
Tacky, lower-class “redneck” and “ghetto” cultures are often no better, but the current trend of wealthy upper-middle classmen (and women) seeking to enhance their sense of cultural self-superiority through superficial behavioral refinements is getting to be a bit much. What comestible will be the next victim of the culture gurus? Spam? Chewing gum? Breath mints? Necco candy? It’s hard to say what will be chosen next. Life would be much improved for all of us if those with large sums of disposable income could find better, and perhaps nobler, causes to fund than their own descent into overwrought vice.
Blog Archive
Links of interest
2 comments:
Speaking as a European: I was disgusted, sickened and astonished at the inferior quality of American confectionary when I lived in the US. And the chocolate: it was beyond the pale. The sad fact is that, given the size of the market, coast to coast, the US food industry has a huge incentive to make food that can be shipped and shelved and which will last forever (so coat the chocolate in paraffin wax) and made more cheaply. The process has continued for so long that most Americans have simply never tasted real chocolate. Your beer is also beneath contempt.
American food has classically been about quantity and, as you stated, shelf-life vs. quality. It's representative of the fact that our relatively short American history has largely focused on the "common man" while Europe's long and storied history has royalty and entrenched aristocracy in its past. Or, more to the point, American confectionery has its roots in pleasing the commoner's palate while fitting a commoner's budget, while European confectionery has its roots in royal/aristocratic patronage. The result: cheap chocolate with a long shelf life in the US vs. expensive chocolate fit for lords and ladies in Europe.
Personally I see the American model to be superior in that I, as an uncouth American, can enjoy a simple $.33 bar of Hershey's chocolate without fear of appearing to be an uncultured plebe (I am one, so who cares?). Americans hell-bent on seeking refinement wind up paying more to achieve the same effect. Why bother?
Unfortunately, the disadvantage of the unrefined American palette is that we tend to over-indulge in the cheap junk we consume on a regular basis which is less of an option when you're paying 5-10x as much to consume an equivalent amount of "high-quality" product overseas.
Post a Comment