A taste of cockroach.

** Warning: do not read this post if you are eating or have just eaten! Unless you like to eat cockroaches. If you like to eat cockroaches, please GET OUT OF MY BLOG!**

**One more warning: if you don’t have sense of humour, don’t read this post! **

Chocolate. The delight made of cocoa. The gift offered to the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, god of knowledge and wisdom. Actually, the gift offered to Quetzalcoatl (the guy in costume below) was a bitter drink made of cocoa seeds, water and pepper.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/39/Quetzalcoatl.svg/200px-Quetzalcoatl.svg.png

The chocolate as we know it is an European invention! A mix of cocoa butter (by the way, did you know that, in Brazil, the cocoa butter is also a lip balm?), cocoa mass, sugar, milk, nuts, etc. and cockroaches! What? You think I wrote something wrong? No, actually. You know the crispness of some chocolate bars? Crushed cockroaches! Hey, don’t look at me this way, it’s just a little bit of protein! (I would love to see your face right now, dear reader! As we use to laugh on internet here in Brazil: huahuahuahuahua!!!!) According to a news I read a few minutes ago, there are cockroach parts in chocolate bars from the United States! This is not a relief to me, because the food industry is something you can’t trust also in Brazil! You can find the news, here. It’s a news from March 2012, but I read the Brazilian version of it, today, on Yahoo. These paragraphs are especially creepy:

According to ABC News, the average chocolate bar contains eight insect parts. Anything less than 60 insect pieces per 100 grams of chocolate (two chocolate bars' worth) is deemed safe for consumption by the Food and Drug Administration.

Allergists say most foods contain natural contaminants. Aside from chocolate, cockroach parts also make their way into peanut butter, macaroni, fruit, cheese, popcorn and wheat. The roach bits can affect people with asthma, as well causing migraines, cramps, itching or hives in people who are allergic to them.

Isn’t it amazing? Is there a cockroach in your chocolate or a chocolate in your cockroach, dear reader? Believe me: it doesn’t happen only in the US! As I told you before, the food industry is something creepy! The truth is that almost everybody doesn’t know where do the food comes from! If people had this knowledge, they probably would think twice before to buy some foods. I confess I’m a little paranoid about food. My apetite is close to zero and I’m a vegetarian, so, I think it helps me to be away from industrialized food. But I fear almost everything! I’m not fond of sweets (I’m serious!), but I have some weakness for chocolate. I don’t eat chocolate often, but can’t imagine my life without it, for now. So, of course I feel terrible to know that maybe there’s a cockroach in my chocolate! I remember that a girl from my country found a dead rat (I said A RAT!) inside of a Ruffles pack! I don’t eat junk food, but can imagine the situation … nobody deserves it!

The funny (or terrible) thing about the news is that “allergists say most food contain natural contaminants”. What does it mean? Should we accept cockroach parts in our chocolate? Is it natural to find a dead rat inside of a Ruffles pack? Shall we act normally if we find an alien finger in our piece of cake? I love the explanations of the specialists! Are there limits to “natural contaminants” in our food? I hope so!

The fact is that the food industry doesn’t give a damn about you or me! They want money. They don’t give a damn if the food they sell, full of chemical products, genetically modified organisms and cockroaches is generating nations of obese and sick people! Recently I watched a Brazilian documentary called Muito Além do Peso (Way Beyond Weight), about the obesity epidemic in KIDS! Due to the terrible industrialized food, the fast food restaurants (there is one McDonald’s in each corner of the main streets of São Paulo! There is more than one McDonald’s only in Avenida Paulista!) and the aggressive propaganda, there are kids who have the weight of an adult! I heard about a 10 year-old girl who has 3 kg less than me and I’m a 32 year-old woman! So … it’s not surprising to find insects in food. The food industry doesn’t care about you! That’s why I think we all should know how to cook. At least, we can have some control about what feeds us!

Anyone knows how to make chocolate at home??

Stay tuned! I’ll be back in my Carnival outfit.

Luna