>From Bean to Bar… Chocolate chemistry

Join us for the unusual opportunity to taste, smell and examine the different steps in chocolate making and understand why people eat the treated fruit of the cacao plant.

Anyone who likes chocolate is welcome.

Good quality dark chocolate is a very complex food, containing more than 400 different molecules. Many of these are derived from the football-sized cacao pods that are fermented, dried, roasted, pressed, re-mixed, tempered and moulded to make chocolate blocks.

As chemists, we¹re interested in some of these molecules because of the way they effect people ­ some of the outcomes are pretty obvious (too much fatty chocolate makes people put on weight) but chocolate also contains stimulants (including caffeine) that increase the heart rate and influence our emotions. There are also important antioxidants in chocolate ­ antioxidants generally can reduce blood pressure and can decrease stroke and cancer risks.

Sunday August 15 Queen Victoria Market, near the corner of Queen and Victoria Streets, Melbourne 10am-2pm.

>From Bean to Bar is part of ³Living Science at the Queen Victoria Market² and more information is available at www.re-science.org.au/science-event/living-science-queen-victoria-market-266 3