Let's face it: if you take a glace at the rapidly expanding chocolate section of almost any store, there is bound to be at least one product that needs a second (and much closer) look just to figure out the label. In this case, I'm not referring to products with unusual flavor combinations, but to those marked with a cacao percentage.

Consumers and manufacturers alike have gone crazy over chocolates labeled with their cacao percentage in the last year or so, and even though the numbers themselves are clear, not everyone understands what those numbers mean. Often, the percentages are equated with the quality of the chocolate, leading to the idea that the darker the chocolate, the better it will be in spite of the fact that the darkest chocolate - usually unsweetened, 99% cacao- is actually quite unpalatable.

The cacao percentage indicates how much of a given product, by weight, is made up of cocoa solids from the cocoa bean (cacao), like cocoa butter and cocoa powder. The rest of the bar is made up of sugar, vanilla and/or other ingredients, including milk and the occasional emulsifier. This basically means that a bar of chocolate with a higher cacao percentage will usually have more chocolate in it and a stronger cocoa flavor (i.e. it will be more bitter) than one with a lower percentage, but that doesn't necessarily mean that bars of equally high percentages will taste alike.

It looks like you can have your chocolate molecule and wear it, too. This t-shirt has the representation of the molecular structure of theobromine, the ingredient in chocolate that acts as a mood elevator and stimulant and helps to make chocolate so popular. Unlike the chocolate molecule we looked at before, this particular form of chocolate has no calories and is a more technical and more accurate representation of a chocolate molecule than the elegantly artistic truffle version.

Theobromine, by the way, is found in cacao, so dark chocolate has more of it than milk chocolate. Although it is a stimulant, its mood-elevating effects have been shown to be mild and long-lasting, unlike the rush that is usually associated with caffeine, a stimulant with which theobromine is often confused.

So because this tee is packed with theobromine, although it lacks cacao, you might just get a mood boost from wearing it - especially if you get the occasional rush from being just a little bit geeky (Not that there's anything wrong with that!).

When President Ronald Regan declared July to be National Ice Cream Month back in 1984, he also said that the third Thursday Sunday of the month (today - July 16th) would be National Ice Cream Day. In honor of this, how about some ice cream facts?

• The top five most popular ice cream flavors are: vanilla, chocolate, neapolitan, strawberry and cookies n' cream, in that order, with vanilla comprising about 1/4 of all sales!
• The US produces more than 1 billion gallons of ice cream every year.
• It takes 50 licks to finish a single scoop of ice cream.
• By federal law, regular ice cream sold in stores must have at least 10% milkfat. "Reduced fat" ice creams have 25% less fat than regular ice creams, "light" has 50% less fat, "low fat" has a maximum of 3g fat per serving and "nonfat" ice creams must have less than .5g fat per serving.
• There are ice cream options both for conservatives and for liberals.
• The biggest ice cream sundae in the world was made in Alberta, Canada and weighed nearly 55,000 pounds.
• The world's largest ice cream sandwich weighed in at just about 2,500 pounds.
• Carvel made the world's largest ice cream cake, which weighed 12,096 pounds. It took 54 people to assemble it.
• The world's largest ice cream cone is in Peoria, Illinois.

More ice cream stuff at Slashfood:

• The history of... ice cream cones
• eCreamery lets you make your own ice cream flavor
• Ice cream that will make you break out in a Cold Sweat
• Ice creams for Tastykake Fans
• Slashfood Ate (8): Decadent Ice Cream Sundaes

Did you know that -

• three new interspecific hybrid grape varieties were launched this week - Noiret and Corot Noir, which are red, and Valvin Muscat, which is a white variety. [details] 
• Mackerel is a common North Atlantic and Mediterranean fish with brilliant 'metallic' green, blue and black colourings. This brazen display accounts for its name being used in the past to describe a dandy gentleman in England, and in French its name 'maquereau' also means a pimp. (from the BBC)
• that the Iberico pig (used for Spanish pata negra ham) puts away 11kg of acorns every day they are in season
• apparently eating a few rounds of Marmite and toast makes your skin emite an odour that acts as an effect mosquito repellant. (Don't actually think this one has been scientifically proved)
• the earlist recorded recipe for a cheese tart (for-runner of cheesecake) appeared in 1390 in the first English cookery book 'Forme of Cury'
• Cury being the Old English word for cooking, derived from the French cuire meaning to cook, boil or grill

Grenadine is the most popular fruit syrup used by bartenders. Unfortunately, the most popular and easy-to-find brand of grenadine, Rose's, has no acutal fruit in it at all. It's high fructose corn syrup with red food coloring in it.

Yum.

Grenadine is actually supposed to be a sweet syrup made from pomegranate juice, which lends it a distinctive color and flavor, though the corn syrup version has become so prevalent, that a straw poll I did revealed that many people believed grenadine was cherry flavored. It can be difficult to find a bottle of the real thing, but the Sonoma's Syrup Co sells an all natural, pomegranate grenadine that I was able to pick up at Williams-Sonoma, despite the fact that it is not listed on their website. The taste is worlds away from the corn syrup stuff and you can feel good about eliminating one more source of high fructose corn syrup in your diet.

I love most kinds of coffee and I love espresso. There is one misconception about it - whether you like the taste or not - that bugs me. It has to do with the caffeine content and I know otherwise sane adults who shudder at the very thought of having an espresso-based drink while happily downing cups of regular brew. They think that the strong flavor of espresso directly correlates with an exponentially high caffeine content.

Espresso has plenty of caffeine in it and, ounce for ounce, it has more caffeine in it than drip coffee. Here's the thing: one serving of espresso is 1-2 ounces, while a serving of drip coffee ranges from 6-12 ounces. To approximate, as the exact brewing method and quantity of beans used can affect caffeine content, one serving of drip coffee will have 100-200mg of caffeine (17mg/oz). A serving of espresso, which we'll say is 1.5 ounces here, has approximately 50 mg of caffeine (30mg/oz). So, if you only drink one ounce of coffee, you would get less caffeine than with one ounce of espresso. Otherwise, it is likely that you are drinking both more coffee and more caffeine with a regular drip than with a drink that uses one or two shots of espresso, like a latte.

The moral of this story? If you're that concerned with caffeine, order the smallest available size of a drink or ask for decaf. Otherwise, you can relax and enjoy your latte without having to worry that you'll be kept up for the next week.

[Photo by Nicole Weston]

Did you know -

• that olive oil tasters taste the oil when it is at a temperature of 28 degrees
• that the colour is not that important so they often use blue glasses
• a cloudy olive oil is not a guarentee of quality it just means the oil has not been filtered too much
• olives are picked while green in September/October or when black at full maturity from December to March
• there are five main varieties of French olive - La Picholine (rustic with a bitter taste), La Grossane (flavoursome), La Tanche, La Salonenque and L'Aglandau (very fruity)
• that there is an international olive oil council [website]
• two million metric tonnes of olive oil is used by the worlds population (I assume this is yearly) [from]
• the Olivastra olive, is one of the original wild varieties and unique to the Italian village of Seggiano. [details]

Tangelo is the name for a hybrid fruit, made from combining a grapefruit with a tangerine. Just as there are many varieties of tangerines and grapefruits, there are many different varieties of tangelos, all with slightly different taste profiles. They originated in Southeast Asia as many as 3500 years ago, but are grown widely wherever other citrus crops are now. The first intentional crosses in the United States were done in the 19th century. The most distinguishing feature of the tangelo is its “neck”, a pronounced bump on the top of the fruit. The neck may look slightly unusual, but it is extremely useful, since tangelos have deep orange, loose fitting peels when ripe and breaking off the neck makes them exceptionally easy to peel.