Twinkie, filled with ham, covered in chocolate... brought to us from the good people who do the "Soup" on E!, because we all like making fun of people.

I like eating fine foods (whatever the definition), and I also like eating chicken hot dogs and balony. Eat what you like and enjoy it as much as you can, but if you pop wood or gtive me that 360 degree eye roll of extacy, I am going to punch you in the head. Even if only in my mind.

Big D

I think it's a wonderful thing that people are finally coming around, and appreciating chocolate as good food, not junk food. It's a miracle non-junk food chocolate is being made at all! One can only hope this trend will continue with other foods. It's about time Americans stop regarding food as just calories, or something to wash down with a diet soda while watching a movie.

On the down side, some people go too far in the opposite direction, and are snobby about it. That's a small price to pay,for such progress. I, for one, never want to go back to "melts in your mouth, not in your hand."

I've tried white tea few times - I've actually got two different types of it in my kitchen - and I think it tastes quite unpleasant. Mild, but unpleasant, rather like how I'd imagine a dirty sock would taste, if you filtered boiling water through it. If this stuff has more antioxidants, I'll just drink more of the regular tea to make up for it.

Choco-snobs have their big heads so far up their behinds that they forgot what really tastes good.

I've had plenty of that godawful Vosges aux Chocolate curry-and-black pepper chocolate debacles and they taste like a concoction that your older sister dared you to drink.

Give me a Snickers and a Hershey's w/ Peanuts any day!

While it may seem odd that the author (and folks who claim snobbery about wine as well) cares enough to write an entire page about the intensity with which people speak about chocolate, I think I understand. In my opinion it comes back to that common saying about being threatened by what you don't understand. I believe that the true snobs (the ones that scoff at those who enjoy simple pleasures like Snickers or Two Buck Chuck) are more rare than those who spend their time bitching about snobbery itself. I think that while the rest of us may by choice pick a chocolate with higher levels of cacao, that certainly doesn't mean that we don't have the capacity to enjoy "candy," as quoted in the article.

Let's stop worrying about why people are enoying what they enjoy - stop drawing lines in the sand - you have to figure that millions of wine lovers and chocolate lovers are probably on to something if they speak with such intensity. I believe that we call it pleasure. As someone who has worked with wine most of my adult life, I can recognize these critics a mile away -- we call them the non-snob snobs. They end up being the thing which they claim to despise.

Oh, and terroir isn't just the "place"; it also encompasses climate, soil type, orientation to the sun and such. But then, only a snob would know that.

Like another reader, I can't eat dairy, either. Nor can I have anything with wheat.

You try doing without both for a week or two, and then tell me that chocolate is not, indeed, a lifesavor for someone denied nearly all comfort foods: bread, cheese, cream, butter, etc. I've been having to live this way for too many years now. It's much easier to shop now than even a few years ago, but there are somethings for which there is simply no substitute, since soy gives me a stomache-ache.

So, whenever the food snobs, or diet-faddists, etc. have an impact on mainstream culture, it often benefits me (as long as I figure out what to ignore, e.g., the benefits of low-fat). Now, instead of having to search high and low for a non-dairy chocolate, I can find something really good in a number of places. Not, I'll grant you, like in Europe where chocolate is deservedly its own food group with its own aisles in the supermarket. But, I'll take what I can get.

A few years back, the Atkins diet made it possible for me to order a meal without a big to-do just because I wanted a burger without a bun.

And now the ubiquity of chocolate bars with 70% cocoa make it possible for me to keep my mood elevated, and to start off the day with something other than coffee.

I will agree, though, that if you get something that is much higher (e.g. 85%) in cocoa, it can have a disagreeable texture. Very similar to crayons.

In fact, I'm really hoping for a lot more food snobbery that becomes democratized (i.e., affordable for folks like me). Perhaps the reason we keep seeing new sources of such snobberies is because once a snobbery becomes more accessible to the rest of us, it loses its cachet and must be replaced by something else. So, bring it on... I'm braced.

Please.

Are you really that fucking gullible?

Sure choco-philes can be as pretentious as any other foodie, but the thing the writer overlooks here is that most of us high-cocoa/dark chocolate lovers are in this camp because of the TASTE. My palate, like my other preferences in life, have evolved over the years, and one of the things I've moved away from is the excessive sugary-ness of most American sweets. Especially milk chocolate. Once I had my first taste of a hand-made, dark, semi-sweet chocolate truffle (from the exquisite Kee's Chocolate in Soho, NYC), I knew I would be reluctant to go back (notice I didn't say never) to the cloyingingly bland sweetness of run-of-the-mill milk chocolate. It's not snobbery. It just tastes better.

I thought it was a rather well-written and interesting article. My impression is that the author was not criticizing people who LIKE fine chocolate. Rather, his irritation was with the faux-connoisseur and associated jargon (mouthfeel?) - which I find understandable. And, the article makes a good point about over-intellectualizing the experience, perhaps at the expense of shear hedonistic sensuality. It's like tasting the chocolate "in your head" instead of with your senses.

People who take themselves and their tastes too seriously rather deserve to be made fun of and have always been the butt of jokes - that's why we laugh at Hyacinth Bucket.