Chocolate is a range of foods derived from cocoa, mixed with fat and finely powdered sugar to produce a solid confectionery. There are several types of chocolate, classified according to the proportion of cocoa used in a particular formulation; the use of particular name designations is sometimes subject to international governmental regulation. Some governments assign chocolate ranges of chocolate differently; the cocoa bean products from which chocolate is made are known under different names in different parts of the world. In the American chocolate industry: chocolate liquor is the ground or melted state of the nib of the cacao bean, containing equal parts cocoa butter and solids. Cocoa butter is the fatty component of the bean. Dry cocoa solids are the remaining nonfat part of the cocoa bean. Different forms and flavours of chocolate are produced by varying the quantities of the different ingredients. Other flavours can be obtained by varying the temperature when roasting the beans. Milk chocolate is solid chocolate made with milk added in the form of powdered milk, liquid milk, or condensed milk.
In 1875 a Swiss confectioner, Daniel Peter, developed the first solid milk-chocolate using condensed milk, invented by Henri Nestlé, Peter's neighbour in Vevey. European Union regulations specify a minimum of 25% cocoa solids. However, an agreement was reached in 2000 that allowed an exception from these regulations in the UK, Malta, where "milk chocolate" can contain only 20% cocoa solids; such chocolate is labelled as "family milk chocolate" elsewhere in the European Union. "Cadbury" is the leading brand of milk chocolate in the United Kingdom. The United States government requires a 10% concentration of chocolate liquor; the Hershey Company is the largest producer in the US. The actual Hershey process is a trade secret, but experts speculate that the milk is lipolyzed, producing butyric acid, the milk is pasteurized, stabilizing it for use; this process gives the product a particular taste, to which the US public has developed an affinity, to the extent that some rival manufacturers now add butyric acid to their milk chocolates.
Dark chocolate known as "plain chocolate", is produced using a higher percentage of cocoa with all fat content coming from cocoa butter instead of milk, but there are "dark milk" chocolates and many degrees of hybrids. Dark chocolate can be eaten as is, or used in cooking, for which thicker baking bars with high cocoa percentages ranging from 70% to 100%, are sold. Baking chocolate containing no added sugar may be labeled "unsweetened chocolate". Semisweet and bittersweet are terms for dark chocolate traditionally used in the United States to indicate the amount of added sugar. Bittersweet chocolate has less sugar than semisweet chocolate, but the two are interchangeable when baking. Both must contain a minimum of 35% cocoa solids. Couverture chocolate is a high-quality class of chocolate, containing a high percentage of cocoa solids that includes a higher percentage of cocoa butter than other chocolate, tempered. Couverture chocolate is used by professionals for dipping, coating and garnishing.
Popular brands of couverture chocolate used by pastry chefs include: Valrhona, Lindt & Sprüngli, Scharffen Berger and Guittard. White chocolate is made of sugar and cocoa butter, without the cocoa solids, it is pale ivory colour, lacks many of the compounds found in milk and dark chocolates. It remains solid at room temperature as, below the melting point of cocoa butter. Ruby chocolate is a type of chocolate created by Barry Callebaut; the variety was in development from 2004, was released to the public in 2017. The chocolate type is made from the Ruby cocoa bean, resulting in a distinct red colour and a different flavour, described as "sweet yet sour". Raw chocolate is chocolate that has not been heated, or mixed with other ingredients, it is sold in chocolate-growing countries, to a much lesser extent in other countries promoted as healthy. Compound chocolate is the name for a confection combining cocoa with other vegetable fat tropical fats or hydrogenated fats, as a replacement for cocoa butter.
It is used for candy bar coatings. In many countries it may not be called "chocolate". Modeling chocolate is a chocolate paste made by melting chocolate and combining it with corn syrup, glucose syrup, or golden syrup, it is used by cakemakers and pâtisseries to add decoration to cakes and pastries. Cocoa powder is the pulverized cocoa solids left after extracting all the cocoa butter, it is used to add chocolate flavour in baking, for making chocolate drinks. There are two types of unsweetened cocoa powder: natural cocoa produced by the Broma process, with no additives, Dutch process cocoa, additionally processed with alkali to neutralize its natural acidity. Natural cocoa is light in colour and somewhat acidic, is used in recipes that use baking soda. Dutch cocoa is milder in taste, with a darker colour, it is used for chocolate drinks such as hot chocolate due to its ease in blending with liquids. However, Dutch processing destroys most of the flavonoids present in cocoa. Flavours such as mint, coffee, orange, or strawberry are sometimes added to chocolate in a creamy form or in small pieces.
Chocolate bars contain added ingredients such as peanuts, fruit, c
Prevotella melaninogenica is a species of bacterium in the normal flora of the upper respiratory tract. It is an important human pathogen in various anaerobic infections mixed with other aerobic and anaerobic bacteria. B. melaninogenicus is an anaerobic, Gram-negative rod, named for its black colonies, black pigment. P. melaninogenica is associated with hypertension together with Campylobacter rectus and Veillonella parvula. P. melaninogenica are Gram-negative rod-shaped bacteria. They cannot survive in the presence of oxygen, they are not motile, do not form spores. P. melaninogenica grow well on blood agar, where they form circular dark-colored colonies that darken over one to two weeks. P. melaninogenica was described as Bacteroides melaninogenicus in 1921 by Wade Oliver and William Wherry at the University of Cincinnati as a new bacterium isolated from various sites of several different human patients. In 1982, Lillian Holdeman and John Johnson determined that some bacteria described as B. melaninogenicus were a distinct species, which they named Bacteroides loescheii.
In 1990, Haroun Shah and David Collins at the London Hospital Medical College reclassified several species of Bacteroides, including B. melanogenicus under a new genus called Prevotella. With this, B. melaninogenicus was renamed to Prevotella melaninogenica
Julia Galef is co-founder of the Center for Applied Rationality. She is a writer and public speaker on the topics of rationality, science and design, she hosts Rationally Speaking, the official podcast of New York City Skeptics, which she has done since its inception in 2010, sharing the show with co-host and philosopher Massimo Pigliucci until 2015. Galef was born in 1983 in Maryland into a Jewish family, she received a BA in statistics from Columbia University. In 2010 she joined the board of directors of the New York City Skeptics, she co-founded and became president of the nonprofit Center for Applied Rationality in 2012. The organization gives workshops to train people to internalize and use strategies based on the principles of rationality on a more regular basis to improve their reasoning and decision making skills and achieve goals, she was elected a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry in 2015. In 2009, Galef began co-hosting the Rationally Speaking Podcast with the philosopher of science Massimo Pigliucci.
Their first episode was released on February 1, 2010. The show has hosted conversations with public intellectuals such as Neil deGrasse Tyson, Lawrence Krauss, James Randi, Peter Singer. Galef speaks on rationality and moderates debates at skeptic conferences, she gives public lectures to organizations including the Center for Inquiry and the Secular Student Alliance. From 2010 to 2015, she was a speaker for the Northeast Conference on Skepticism. Galef began writing the blog Measure of Doubt in 2011 with her brother, as well as writing for Religion Dispatches and Scientific American. Since April 2015 she has been the sole host of the Rationally Speaking podcast. Galef's activities as a writer and president of the Center for Applied Rationality are mentioned by The Atlantic, The Verge, NPR. In 2014, she wrote several articles and recorded several short videos for Big Think, some of which are part of the Big Think Mentor's workshops. Subsequent to her exposure with Big Think as an expert on the topic of rationality, she was interviewed in 2014 by Forbes, Fast Company, The Wall Street Journal.
In particular her idea of keeping a "surprise journal" received attention, one of the techniques Galef uses to record incidents where her expectations were wrong, in order to recognize personal faulty assumptions that expose and counterweight the "bias blind spot". According to Galef, it can be easier to adjust internalized beliefs by framing the new evidence as a surprise. In February 2016, Galef delivered a TED talk on, "Why you think you're right — if you're wrong", encouraging critical self-skepticism and prioritizing coming to the correct viewpoint using "scout mindset" instead of working to ensure your current viewpoint is seen as correct with a "soldier mindset"; the talk was covered by National Public Radio's TED Radio Hour in November 2016. Julia Galef explains common confusions and popular misconceptions of rationality, she distinguishes between Richard Foley's concept of "epistemic rationality" from Max Weber's "instrumental rationality". She describes epistemic rationality as a way of reasoning according to logic and the principles of probability theory to form beliefs and conclusions.
In contrast, she describes instrumental rationality as a decision-making process in which people choose the action that maximizes their expected utility, whatever their goals are. Galef popularized the concept of Straw Vulcan coined by the website TV Tropes, to describe the incorrect perception about rationality as a way of thinking that denies emotions such as love and lacks appreciations for beauty, it refers to the fictional character Spock in Star Trek, seen as a poster child for this caricature of rationality. Galef argues that, given the gross irrationality Spock has seen in humans, his failure to adjust his expectations about humans' ability to make rational decisions is itself a case of irrationality. In 2011, Galef gave a talk on this subject at Skepticon. Official website Rationally Speaking Podcast