How Sweet It Is

Reproduced with permission from American Metal Market.
Copyright 2001.

Cahners Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

February 8 -- While my fellow filmgoers downtown at the Angelika were salivating at the array of confections displayed at Chocolaterie Maya, Juliette Binoche's magical shop in a remote French village in the delightful film "Chocolat,", my eyes were locked on technique as she chopped, melted, tempered, shaped and, Voila! plated her remarkable delicacies. You see, beneath this mild, mannered columnist's persona is the soul of a choclatier. That, dear readers, is what I want to be when I grow up.

I bake a lot, too, but my passion is truffles and fudge. And I'm pretty good at it. I have references. I need venture capital.

But where in my wildest dreams would I ever have believed that my wage-earning métier could benefit the avocation of my heart?

The world works in strange ways.

A tip of the hat to the Copper Development Association, which tells us that chocolate, the bane to the weight-conscious, is rich in dietary copper! Who needs fiber with this revelation?

I, of course, am thrilled. Looking at the balance sheets of some of the world's red metal producers, there has to be a little cap-ex in there for me. Talk about a counter-cyclical venture. Not to mention the return on investment.

In 1998, the latest data available from the Chocolate Manufacturers Association in McLean, Va. — a neighborhood that should know, right? — U.S. consumers spent $8.6 billion consuming 3.3 billion pounds of chocolate. Estimated retail sales totaled $13 billion. Non-chocolate sales, by comparison, came in at $7.5 billion.

I think we have a winner here.

The average person in this country eats 11.7 pounds of chocolate per year. That's a little more than five batches of my celebrated maple walnut fudge. But I stray. The bean from the cacao tree is naturally abundant in copper, and much of the copper is retained when the bean is processed into cocoa or chocolate, according to Carl Keen, professor of nutrition and internal medicine at the University of California at Davis.

The greatest copper content can be found in dark — we aficionados know it as bittersweet — chocolate, richer and more pleasing to the taste than the milk chocolate or semi-sweet chocolate we've all come to love, at least in my humble opinion. How much better? A 3-ounce bar of dark chocolate can contain 0.75 milligrams of copper, more than 100 percent of the U.S. recommended daily allowance for children and over 80 percent of the RDA for teens and adults.

And, in a study published in Nutrition Research, an academic journal, dark chocolate candy and other chocolate products are the highest contributors of daily copper intake in the American diet, accounting for about 10 percent of dietary copper. A study in the Journal of Nutrition reported some people get over 50 percent of their daily copper from chocolate foods!

That's why Slim-Fast bars are chocolate coated!

How does copper help us? It facilitates cardiovascular and neurological health, builds connective tissue and promotes bone development, maintains red blood cells and, listen up, baby boomers, its antioxidant properties protect cells against free radical damage! Copper also is needed for enzymes involved in energy metabolism.

I see a market opportunity here. You know where to find me.

Story by Roberta C. Yafie Roberta C. Yafie is Copper Editor based in American Metal Market's New York office. E-mail: ryafie@cahners.com.

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