Day 10

7. Avoid food products containing ingredients that a third-grader cannot pronounce.

"Soy lecithin" is not something a third-grader can pronounce.

This is a problem because "soy lecithin (an emulsifier)" is listed as an ingredient in every form of chocolate I've encountered thus far.

This perplexes me. I mean, it's chocolate, right? How can it ALL be processed? Didn't, like, the Mayans eat chocolate?

I have to be missing something.

On one hand, maybe soy lecithin just sounds scary and is actually something totally normal and food-like. After all, yesterday I thought that sodium bicarbonate was a terrible preservative until my friend pointed out to me that it's actually baking soda. (I was thinking of sodium benzoate.)

On the other hand, even if you had a really precocious third-grader who could nail "lecithin" in a spelling bee, it still breaks several other rules. I wouldn't keep it in my pantry (Rule 3) and I really don't think my great-grandmother would recognize it as food (Rule 2).

Or... maybe she would? My grandma apparently would do both.

"Yeah," said my mom, after I expressed my chocolate-based concerns. "Lecithin is natural. I think your grandma uses it for toffee."

Promising, but I was still skeptical. My grandma cooks a lot; she could just be an anomaly. It was time for the ultimate dispute-settler: Wikipedia.

Wikipedia says:

Lecithin is a generic term to designate any group of yellow-brownish fatty substances occurring in animal and plant tissues...

Lecithin was first isolated in 1846 by the French chemist and pharmacist Theodore Gobley; in 1850 he

Oooo-kay. We can stop there.

"Why?" my mom said. "'Animal and plant tissues.' All natural!"

"Yeah, but corn is all natural too, before they turn it into high fructose corn syrup and all kinds of other processed stuff we don't need to eat. Plus, I don't know which rule this falls under, but I'm pretty sure I'm NOT supposed to eat anything that was discovered by a chemist and needs to be isolated."

And, actually, now that I think about it, didn't I see some documentary on the Food Network about how Hershey developed a way to preserve chocolate in a solid candy form that brought chocolate to the masses? And it was, like, this impressive scientific achievement?* Yeah, that sounds right. Oh no. This looks bad for chocolate.

Oh, farewell beloved chocolate. I will miss you these six weeks. But worry not! After this is over, it is ON. Unlike ketchup, or crackers, chocolate is not something I can live without.

We all have our limits. Chocolate is mine.

*So apparently yes, Hershey did create a process that preserves milk chocolate, probably by partially lypolizing the milk, which sounds pretty bad. At least, so sayeth Wikipedia. Although apparently Swiss confectionist Daniel Peter figured out how to make chocolate solid before Hershey, through a process about which the only thing I can discover is that it involves cocoa powder, cocoa liquor and condensed milk, which sounds pretty normal. I don't know... maybe some chocolate is okay? I'm so confused.

This is the point where I want to embrace my inner investigative journalist and get to the bottom of this, but I have a job and a life. I don't have time to research the complete history of foods I want to eat. And, honestly, I don't think I should have to. So, I guess to be safe, chocolate is just out.