Transcript:

SK: Hi, welcome to another episode of "A Little Something About Everything." Today, I have a special guest, Alak Vasa. Alak, by training, is an investment banker. And by passion, she's a chocolatier. So welcome, Alak, to "A Little Something About Everything."

Alak: Thank you. Thank you for having me here.

SK: And happy birthday.

Alak: Yay, thank you. I love celebrating me and my birthday.

SK: Yeah, that's very nice. So on "A Little Something About Everything," we keep it to like less than two minutes. But today, being your birthday, I'll give you four minutes. How about that?

Alak: Oh!

SK: So, if you could tell us a little something about chocolate, that'd be awesome.

Alak: Sure. So there is so much to talk about chocolate, right? But one thing that I can really kind of, you know, going back to my relationship with chocolate—and anytime I needed a pick-me-up in life, I would always gravitate towards a bar of chocolate. Or anytime I have this sense of happiness and joy that I experience in life, it resonates with a bar of chocolate. And what made me wonder is, you know, why aren't we allowed to eat chocolate? Or why parents don't want their kids to eat chocolate? When chocolate gives so much joy, so much pleasure.

And as I started learning about chocolate, the first thing I noticed, which I think most of us don't pay attention to, is the ingredient label. And did you know in the ingredient label, the first ingredient is—the ingredients are listed based on the percentage of that ingredient in the bar? So for example, if the first ingredient is sugar, that means the maximum content in this bar of chocolate is actually sugar. And so I want all of you to next time before you go buy a bar of chocolate, look at what the first ingredient is. And most of the times you're not buying—you're paying for the chocolate, you're actually paying for the refined sugar. And that's why chocolate gets a bad rep for being not good for you. It creates sugar rush; it creates cravings.

Whereas when we look back at the history of cacao, cacao is considered the food of gods, because it truly has so many benefits. You know, it is rich in magnesium, it has 20 times more antioxidants than blueberries.

SK: Wow.

Alak: And it has like, it has so many benefits, like the actual reason why I felt happy when I had a bar of chocolate—because chocolate has that, you know, it has that mood-boosting, chemical mood-boosting serotonin and dopamine in it. So that's the first thing I want to tell everyone is that when you next time go buy a bar of chocolate, buy something that has cacao as the first ingredient, and that can also be told by when the bar talks about the percentage of cacao in a chocolate. So anything 70% or dark means that it has at least 70% of cacao, which means it is a chocolate bar of cacao that you're paying money for.

And second thing that I would like you to look into is where the cacao is sourced from. Because historically, there has been a lot of child labor involved in the cacao plantations and farmers, and it's very important that we don't continue to support that. So, if you can pay attention to where it's sourced from, and if it's usually sourced ethically, people are proudly sharing about where it's sourced from. So these are kind of two little secrets about cacao that probably you didn't know about.

SK: Yes, yes, yes. And I'm sure there's much more about chocolate. So we'll keep getting you back on "A Little Something About Everything," and we'll keep talking about chocolate. So that's it for today, people. I hope you enjoyed this episode; leave us comments and if you have any questions for Alak, any more questions about chocolate? Yeah, leave it there. I'll make sure it gets answered because I know someone who knows something about chocolate. See you in the next episode. Thanks Alak, happy birthday.

Alak: Thank you.

SK: Bye.