Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - Physics of Chocolate

Episode Date: March 14, 2024

Daniel and Jorge talk about the deep but tenuous connection between physics and chocolate.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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and the Ad Council. Hey, Daniel, we all know you like chocolate. But is that a personal or a professional interest? You know, I don't think I know where to draw the line anymore. You mean between your personal and professional interests? Sometimes it's all just a big mush. Well, you're paid to do physics, but are you paid to eat chocolate? No, I still have to pay for my own chocolate.

It's not yet stocked in the department office supply. I mean, I've checked. So chocolate is personal then? It's not necessary to eat it to do physics. You know, this is an excellent question, and I'm going to raise that with my department chair, because I think it is essential. You're going to get a chocolate chair for your office? I want my chair dipped in chocolate. There you go. That's going to be great on your pants.

Who wears pants in their office? Hey, that's a personal choice, man. Not a professional. Unless there ain't a certain profession. See, the line can be fuzzy. Hi, I'm Jorge, I'm a cartoonist and author of Oliver's Great Big Universe. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor at UC Irvine, and I definitely consume chocolate to do physics. Really? Before you sit down to do any math or work out any physics scenarios, or experiments, you have to eat a bar chocolate.

No, it's not as tightly correlated as like drinking coffee to think hard. But, you know, I consume a fair amount of chocolate every week and I do a fair amount of physics every week. And so there's definitely some in-out relationship there. I see. There's a correlation, but who knows what the causation is. Ooh, it could be the physics leads to chocolate instead of chocolate leads to physics. Well, it sounds like the physics is financing your chocolate addiction.

That's definitely true. Yes. That in this podcast. But anyways, welcome to our podcast. as Daniel and Jorge explained the universe, a production of iHeartRadio. In which we invite you along on an exploration of everything in the universe. The black holes, the quantum particles, the mysterious chocolate habits of physics professors, everything out there is up for understanding and therefore grist for explanation.

That's right, because it is a delicious, silky, smooth universe out there full of mysteries, flavors, and nuances that are still up for debate and still up for exploration and asking questions. And some of the most amazing and mysterious experiences in our lives do come down to the microscopic science. The physics or even gasp, the chemistry of your food determines what it feels like and what it tastes like in your mouth. That's right. Science is all around us in the physics of our presence here on the planet. There's chemistry in the foods we eat and there's psychology in things like chocolate addiction. Chocolate addiction? What? I could stop any time. Sure, you can, Daniel. Sure. That's what they all say.

I mean, I'm not going to prove it, but I know I could. You're not going to like it, but you could, you're saying. Like, you're going to go into withdrawal and get the shakes, but you can still do it. Exactly. And regular listeners of the podcast might have picked up on the fact that we're often making jokes about chocolate. Connecting chocolate with physics, connecting physics with chocolate. But I'm a believer that there's more than just a few jokes to be had here, that there is a deep connection between physics and chocolate. Isn't there a graph you can find online of like number of noble prizes per country versus amount of chocolate consumed?

Yes, indeed. There is an amazing correlation between the Nobel Prizes per capita and the pounds of dark chocolate consumed per capita. It's really pretty tight. Switzerland is definitely the upper edge of both of those categories. But of course, that could just be a coincidence, right? Because the Swiss love their chocolate and the Swiss are the ones that issue the Nobel Prize. No, those are the Swedes, man. The Swedes.

Oh, the Swedes. Oh, boy. Whoops. But close, I guess, kind of they're both European. Yeah, there you go. Central Europe. I think the Swedes are also up there. So maybe it's a Swedish Swiss cabal that's behind all of it.

Well, the question then is, is it a correlation or a causation? And in which direction is the causation? Right, yeah. Or maybe this another confounding factor that fuels them both. Who knows? One of the deep mysteries of. of the universe. Sounds like you're just throwing your hands up in the air, Daniel here.

I'm embracing the mystery. Shouldn't you apply for a grant to study this or something? I think I'm going to go have some chocolate and think deeply about it. Yeah, there you go. But how are you going to pay for that chocolate? Okay, I'm applying for a grant, yeah. Yeah, there you go. Applied to the National Snack Foundation, the NSF.

But yeah, like you said, there is chemistry everywhere and physics within chemistry all around us, even in the foods we eat. So to the end of the podcast, we'll be tackling the physics of chocolate. There's definitely a physics of chocolate in the experience of eating it. But chocolate also plays other outsized roles in physics. We use chocolate for analogies all the time. Physicists definitely eat a lot of chocolate. You can actually even use chocolate to do physics experiments.

Now, hold on. I feel like you just made a statement there, which is that all physicists eat a lot of chocolate, Is that just based on your experiment of one with yourself? Or is there really like a culture of chocolate within the physics world? You know, I anticipated you challenging me on this. And so I did a bit of research. I was able to dig up how much Americans eat in terms of chocolate per week. On average, Americans eat three chocolate bars per week,

spending $120 billion a year on this stuff. But I wasn't able to find any data on how much. much chocolate physicists consume. I mean, I have my own observations. I know that physicists are lovers of coffee and coffee and chocolate are often connected and people are often having little squares of chocolate when they sip their coffee. But yes, I will admit at this point, it's basically anecdotal. I see. So when you said I did some research, you mean you actually didn't do any research. I mean, I ate some chocolate and I thought about it. That's research. Yeah, that's what I mean. It's a research with an N of one, like one data point. I watched people in my department.

eating chocolate, that's end of like five or ten? Well, you would have to do a controlled experiment. Like, go to the math department, go to the chemistry department, go to the sociology department, and then measure the chocolate consumption per professor. Yeah, you just outlined my proposal to the National Snack Foundation. Yeah, there you go. Do I get to be a co-author and thus a recipient of the money? Yeah, sure.

Absolutely. If I get money from the National Snack Foundation, we'll share it for this study. All right, but I don't have to use it by chocolate. with Dwight? Or what if I used it to buy white chocolate, thus cancelling out? Oh, God. You know, they have pretty strict controls on how you spend government money. So

as long as you can stand before Congress and defend that as a valid way to spend public funds, then hey, let's do it. Yeah, yeah. Well, I hear the National Snack Foundation gets into trouble all the time with that. But yeah, it's interesting to think about, you know,

everything that we eat and basically has chemistry and does physics in it, right? There's science and everything we do and everything we are and everything we put down our stomachs and everything that comes out the other head. That's right. The chocolate that goes in and the dark matter that comes out. Well, you mentioned that there's some experiments you can do with chocolate. What do you mean by that?

This is sort of famous at-home measurement of the speed of light that you can do using a bar of chocolate. You take a bar of chocolate and you put it in the microwave and you'll notice that certain spots on it melt faster than others. Those are because of the microwaves, which are actually just invisible light waves, are heating some parts of the chocolate more than others because of the wave-like nature of light. So you can use that to measure the wavelength of the light. And then knowing the frequency already, you can derive the speed of light.

So you can kind of measure the speed of light using chocolate and a microwave. Wait, what? Is this like a real experiment you can do? This is a real experiment you can do. You can Google it and find instructions online. You put the microwave in the chocolate and you'll notice some melty spots here and there. Measure the distance between them and you get basically the wavelength of the microwaves. You can convert that into the speed of light.

But do you have to disable the rotating table? Yeah, exactly. You can't let it rotate. And technically you don't need a chocolate for this. You can use butter or maybe wax, right? No, you need to do chocolate. No, you're absolutely right. You don't need chocolate.

It's just kind of fun. You just can do it with chocolate. Well, at the end of the chocolate version of experiment, you have a nice warm, melty bar of chocolate. At the end of the wax version, you don't have any snacks. But you only have a few warm pools of chocolate. Yeah, that's exactly right. You have a pattern of melted chocolate.

All right, well, what are we doing in this episode? We're talking about the physics of chocolate, the science behind chocolate? We're going to do both. We are going to talk to an ex-physicist who has done a deep dive on the process of chocolate, reading research papers and going from dirt to bar, growing his own chocolate pods and making his own chocolate bar in his lab. And also talk to experts in commercial production of chocolate. What are the tricky bits of the process?

What's hard about making an M&M taste the same all the world around? And why does Hershey's have that particular kind of flavor? Interesting. All right. Well, let's take a big dip into this fondue of chocolate physics. Starting with Daniel's interview with ex-physic. This is Seamus Blacklee. Seamus grew up in New Mexico, as I did, has a PhD in particle physics like I do, worked at Fermilab, just like I did, and there are stories diverge.

He went off into industry where he created the Xbox, and more recently he's been well known online for scraping the insides of ancient Egyptian vessels to cultivate yeast and bake ancient bread. Okay, so then it's my great pleasure to welcome the podcast. the infamous of the one and only, Seamus Blackley. Seamus, thanks very much for joining us. Thanks for having me, man. You know, I wanted to give an introduction so the listeners had an idea of who we were talking to here, but it was just such an overwhelming process

to try to sketch your background. It's really incredible. So can you give us like a brief summary of how you got to here today to a place where we're talking about nerding out about chocolate details? You know, people always say that now when they're talking to me or trying to introduce me at things. And it's confusing to me

because from my standpoint, you know, I'm bored all the time. And so none of this seems very interesting to me at all. But perhaps that's why I have had the good luck to do all sorts of different things because I guess I get bored very easily and I'm very interested in how everything works but the long and short of it and i think specifically from the standpoint of you know the most important thing we share in common which is physics is that i grew up in new mexico um i thought i was going to be a musician and at some point i realized that all of the jazz piano guys, which is what I was, who were really respected, who played the best, were like still living with their mothers when they were in their 40s. And that was cool. I mean, they were really

amazing people. And I don't mean to cast aspersions on them, but I realized that I couldn't do that. And so I had to figure out something else to do. And it turned out at that point, I was an undergraduate and I had burned through two years. And I had to find something else that I could study that might make me some money. And I guess the idea that physics would be a career that would make you money. I mean, yeah, sure, but probably more than jazz piano at the time. And the only majors available you could do in two years without some kind of maze of prerequisites that would be impossible were basically physics and math at the time.

And the physics department at Tafts where I went to school was filled with all of these really cool guys doing experimental high energy physics and phenomenologists and a couple theorists. And they were all like Vietnam draft doctors who went into physics to go to graduate school and not go to Vietnam. And they were, you know, like touching the face of God, to be frank. I mean, they were trying to understand the fundamental nature of the universe. And in my mind, the work felt the same as jazz. And I just kind of stepped through that door and was suddenly, you know, at Fermilab. It's fascinating to me that you grew up in northern New Mexico near two national labs, but didn't really discover your passion for physics until you left and went to Boston.

Well, yeah. And I had, interestingly, you know, in high school, is really focused on music and, you know, musical theater and all this stuff. So, yeah, and I think that the nature of New Mexico is being such an incredibly bizarre, fascinating, beautiful, creative, and technical place was important in all of this for me. In any case, so I go to Fermilab and, you know, I'm sitting up postdocs and I go to graduate school and I find something in the magnet accelerator physics group for the superconducting super collider that looks great

and then Congress cancels the super collider and there's a big politics thing around the top quark and all these things sort of combined together to cause me to be very unhappy and so I bailed out and went and took a job designing airplanes that didn't quite materialize. So I had a temporary job doing a thing nobody had ever heard of before, which was writing physics for video games,

which was not even a thing. And suddenly I was in the video game business, and it was so exciting and wonderful to be around working with the people and contributing to the beginnings of what is now, you know, video games. like three-dimensional video games and 3D rendering. And, you know, like my variable names and stuff are still used in all those engines because I was just around at the right time, like a guy looking for the men's room, right? Who walks in the wrong room?

And then that's where I was. Well, certainly right place, right time with the right skills as well. I mean, it was still fairly awkward to tell people you worked in video games because it hadn't occurred to most people yet that video games. were made by people. I mean, it sounds odd. But it's not like it is now. So I did that for a long time, and that led to me trying to make a big magnum opus game

at a new company called DreamWorks, where I was like the 80th employee or something. And, you know, just biting off more than I could chew and failing at that. You know, and I worked for Steven Spielberg, and I knew all these guys. And again, you know, typical for me, I was just sort of walking through this place thinking, wow, okay, of course everybody hangs out with Stephen Spielberg. And it wasn't really, you know, the work you're doing, this is such a physicist thing. Like the work you're doing is so hard that everything else kind of seems peripheral. And it's not like you're sleepwalking, but I know it's really aggravating for people around you because they don't see the thing in your mind that you're working on. They don't see the kind of, you know, infinite landscape of thought that you have going on all the time.

So you just seem like a space cadet and you're not paying attention. But it's quite the opposite, right? So that's what games was like then because we were figuring out, hey, what is a renderer? Like what, like how do you, how would you, what, when you go through a door, how do you deal with that in memory? Because we have four megabytes and, you know, this kind of stuff. And anyway, my big game there failed because I was. you know, working with a bunch of movie people who didn't get it. And I was, you know, 27 or 28 or something.

And I feel like I probably wasn't even toilet drained, you know, it was really so young. And that huge failure led to me going to try to hide out at Microsoft because I had met Bill Gates, again, sleepwalking through all this stuff. And he had said, based on some of the physics demos that he saw that we were doing, and, you know, locomotion physics that we'd done with dinosaurs and humans and all this, that I should come work at Microsoft. someday. And so I sort of sheepishly mailed him and then I ended up working at Microsoft and then

couldn't help myself when I realized that Microsoft could, you know, could make a game console that could beat Sony and et cetera, et cetera. So I just keep on, you know, looking at seeing interesting stuff to work on. And I for some reason don't have the common sense that most people have about well that's really stupid you're going to lose your house I just go ahead and do it anyway so there you go and so now we end up with you know me

doing you know another secret project that I can't tell you about right now and and a lot of hobby projects that I talk about a lot like the ancient Egyptian bakery which I believe it or not you know we're now I think going to build in Cairo and and this chocolate stuff.

Well, you know, I talk a lot in the podcast about teaching people to think like a physicist, you know, which is not to use your common sense, but to follow your curiosity and your intuition and try to make sense of the world and to, you know, think differently. And I think that's something we definitely should cultivate. And so maybe your training as a physicist is what helped you follow your curiosity and end up in all these exciting adventures. This is, I think, probably universally true about all human endeavor has come from someone following that curiosity and doing, as Penjolette says,

you know, an amount of work on something that most people would consider insane, right? You know, he says that's what magic is, right? Magic is somebody working on something, you know, in a way that most people would consider to be insane. But that's truly what, like everything, all human progress, like every story you read about anything important, beautiful, world changing, you know, always has an element of an individual or group of individuals who are working on it despite all indications that it's insane and following that.

And I think that within physics, we need more of that. Because sometimes you get to see a secret and you're not going to see that secret unless you open yourself to being compelled to just following that curiosity. despite every practical concern. And it's weird because you are a physical being. You have to have practical concerns. You have to eat. You have to have relationships. You know, you don't want to have like Feynman's second wife's divorce papers saying all he thinks about is calculus.

But also, I mean, all I think about is calculus. I mean, that's like, it's just how it is because sometimes, you know, it turns up a gold nugget, man. So that's so important. It's really, really, really important. And I mean, to get back around a chocolate, that's where the chocolate comes from is the musing of how strange is it that dirt can produce this chocolate bar. And, you know, could we do that? We could try. Let's try.

Let's see what it's like. Because it'll just be a thing we do in the background. It'll take years for the tree to grow. let's just see if we can not kill the tree. But why chocolate specifically? I mean, were you trying to develop a useful skill so you can create something valuable in the end times? Or do you think there's a deep physics chocolate connection?

It's chocolate. What else do you need? I mean... All right, so let's get to chocolate then. Can you walk us through the process? Because I know you did a deep dive into the research how to go from dirt to bar. Walk us through every stage of the process

of how you grow this thing, how you ferment it, how you roast it, what are all the secrets there? that humanity has slowly discovered over thousands of years. It's impressive, kind of in the same vein as coffee. And I was thinking about coffee because I did grow coffee also years ago. And it's just so interesting that we would, you know, cultivate these plants because they had a stimulant in them. And everybody knew that a stimulant.

So it's like tea. You cultivate these plants and they make these little red berries. I don't know if you've ever seen coffee berries on a tree. And then you harvest them when they're red. And then you throw away the fruit and you keep the seed. Okay, fair enough. And then you dry the seeds. And then you roast the seeds.

And then you grind the seeds. And then you boil the seeds. And then you also throw the seeds away and you drink the water. That's insane. Nobody would think of that. And so there's some kind of evolutionary process in there that's very lucky. And part of what you wonder is, if that is the optimal way to enjoy the coffee bean or not,

or if it's merely habitual. And, you know, there are many coffee traditions, but they all basically follow that same extraction principle. And it is a biological extraction, right? I mean, it's every, it's a biology lab kind of a process. But the biology lab process probably came from people understanding that type of extraction and applying it elsewhere. So the question is how it fits together.

And that's a little bit of the motivation for chocolate. So, as I said, in my lab, we have space and temperature control and some humidity from a water jet, a machine that cuts difficult stuff using high pressure water. It has a big water tank, and so there's always a kind of a humid environment around it. So we had accidentally grown some plants around it just for some cheer, or actually we had a contest to see how big a tomato plant we could grow. And in this environment, this little tomato seedling in six or seven months, you know, grew like 25 feet to the ceiling and was winding out onto the ceiling. And so we thought, all right, well, this is a great growing environment. What's the most interesting thing we could grow? And, you know, chocolate is probably the weirdest and most interesting thing you could grow because I don't think intuitively, at least for me, I didn't think about chocolate as being a plant.

you know what is it as a petroleum product like what does it come from and so we you know got some seeds and planted them and they sprouted and then we had a few years of you know just happily you know figuring out how to not kill them and you know it had to do with soil acidity and such and there are papers you can read so we kind of you know did the classic nerd thing which is to look to the literature. And it's kind of scant for for cacao and chocolate actually. And part of that is because the industry can be kind of kind of secretive like a lot of industries. And part of it is because in the places where cacao grows, it's kind of weed like. And so the idea of, you know, nutrition of cacao plants is, you know, an absurd kind of a study given the fact that

that chocolate industry's real problem is like child slavery. So, and the reason there's child slavery is the plants grow around anywhere. And so the economics are around harvesting and moving the product around, not around optimizing for growth. Anyway, we're nerd, so we're optimizing for growth. And we got these beautiful trees and they started to flower. And we're thinking, all right, well, we have no idea if these things are self-fertile or not. you know, and these are indoors, so we're not going to introduce a bunch of, you know,

pollinators in here, so let's hope. And so we waited a really long time. And, yeah, they're not self-fertile. And we, you know, we have a day job, too, and other projects. Meaning that you're wondering if, like, one flower can fertilize another flower or if you need a whole separate plant to have some basically cacao sex. We have microbiologists and other people with a background in biology in our staff. So there was a, you know, there was some debate about this at lunchtime.

And then finally, we looked up the literature and realized that not only are they not self-fertile, but they need to be fertilized by trees that are preferably, you know, somewhat genetically distant from themselves. And the preferred pollinators are a certain kind of biting gnat that lives only in these environments where the trees come from. And so that was not good news. So we then started a program of learning how to. pollinate these things by hand you couldn't just go on like cacao tinder and look up a matching tree

you know put them on a date and hope that hope it works out unfortunately uh that's not it's not there yet but it's a good business idea for you dan so go for that that's my next side project um but you know interestingly if you if you actually look up online there's a there's not a lot of information that's particularly helpful if you actually have trees and you don't know what to do with them because everybody who has trees already knows what to do with them which is just leave them and the fruit appears. You know, we feel like we're the only people in the world who, like, have these trees without the pollinator around.

Okay, so we, you know, get out microscopes and the electron microscope, and we start looking at the pollen and the different parts and structures in the flowers. We have three trees now because we know we need genetic diversity. The flowers are slightly different. We identify the parts. We tried different strategies and schedules for pollination. and we start getting flowers that will create fruit.

We start and we get a little fruit. And then the fruit falls off and we learn a little bit more about when to pollinate. We learn a little bit more about care and feeding and we get fruit that sticks. And now we have a bunch of pods growing on trees. And we realize we have another problem, which is that we have no idea what to do next. You know, how do you know when these things are ripe? What do you do? And so, again, you know, you look to the Internet and there's really, you know, there's a lot of information that plenty of people take a tour of a cacao farm and see the fermentation and the drawing and all these things.

And there are lots of videos like, you know, like travel promo videos or like, you know, Starbucks promotional type videos of like, you know, the cute indigenous people like, you know, mixing. the beans with their feet in all this. But there's nothing like, here's a fermentation schedule. So again, we look to the literature and discover again, you know, not as much as you would want, but there are some good studies of cacao fermentation, which seems like the most relevant next thing we need to learn. And fortunately, fermentation is something that I know a great deal about from all of the, you know, ancient bread projects and other types of wild-piece collection and stuff.

I mean, fermentation is basically helpful rotting, right? It's like microbial processing of your gunk into other kinds of gunk. Yeah, it's it's nanomachinery at your command. And so it's primarily a yeast-based fermentation that then becomes a bacterial fermentation. And you can tell because of the temperature profile and timing and the off-gassing that happens during cacao fermentation. And it's really an art form more than that. in a science. It's been studied some, but all the papers are from, you know, agriculture research stations. And so they're not really, you know, it's not the kind of

paper that you would look at and think this is really good, well-controlled data. But it's enough of a hint that we felt we could figure it out. And so we did a couple things. But I think it's worth pausing there and noting like a lot of this knowledge obviously wasn't developed using what we would consider to be modern, scientific, empirical studies, right? It's like thousands of years of people accidentally doing stuff and discovering, oh, look what happens, right? This is like a random walk through, through possibility space. Yeah. And look, I mean, I think this is the perfect example of the mind of a physicist in the sense that, you know, this is really a deeply kind of artful thing with a lot of feel in it. And if you're going to bring a scientific process to it,

You need to bring that scientific process to it in an open way, in a way where you're paying attention to what's going on. And I think that this is really the difference between physics and engineering is like, you know, I have a book project that's given me the opportunity or the excuse to read, you know, like all of Heisenberg's papers and and Rutherford and, you know, in his lab and, you know, finding the neutron. And the thought process that those guys had, it's the perfect analogy here. It's that, you know, you cannot overpower this. You cannot brute force this. They didn't have the equipment to do that. So they had to just pay attention. They had to surf along with nature.

They had to see what she would give up. Very careful, very thoughtful. And the rigor of your process isn't about like a scorched earth color. of ideas into engineering principles to be put into a book. The rigor of your approach is your own discipline in listening well and really seeing what's happening, right? And then that can give you a useful tool and model that you can use then to understand and then to predict perhaps. So that's what we try to do. You know, all of these people who talk about bean to bar and all these chocolate people who, you know, have their artisanal chocolate and curated, blah, blah, blah, salted caramel thing, you know, are buying cacao beans from somewhere, most of the time already dried and fermented.

And then talking about how they've made chocolate from scratch. And that's not chocolate from scratch. We were making chocolate from scratch. And it was pretty hard. so we did it and it was a lot of work and it was really satisfying and the best part is that unlike when you spend weeks you know solving some horrible partial differential equation that gives you a part of a result that you thought you needed but turns out not to be what you wanted but you still feel a sense of soul and pride that you did it and you can only share it with

yourself and two colleagues who can understand when you make chocolate everybody's happy. Okay, we have so much more chocolate in physics to talk about, but first we have to take a quick break. Hey, sis, what if I could promise you you never had to listen to a condescending finance bro? Tell you how to manage your money again. Welcome to Brown Ambition. This is the hard part when you pay down those credit cards. If you haven't gotten to the bottom of why you were racking up credit or turning to credit cards, you may just recreate the same problem a year from now. When you do feel like you are bleeding from these high interest rates. I would start shopping for a debt

consolidation loan, starting with your local credit union, shopping around online, looking for some online lenders because they tend to have fewer fees and be more affordable. Listen, I am not here to judge. It is so expensive in these streets. I 100% can see how in just a few months you can have this much credit card debt when it weighs on you. It's really easy to just like stick your head in the sand. It's nice and dark in the sand. Even if it's scary, it's not going to go away just because you're avoiding it and in fact it may get even worse for more judgment free money advice listen to brown ambition on the i heart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast i had this like overwhelming sensation that i had to call it right then and i just hit call said

you know hey i'm jacob chick i'm the CEO of one tribe foundation and i just wanted to call on let her know there's a lot of people battling some of the very same things you're battling and there is help out there the good stuff podcast season two takes a deep deep look into One Tribe Foundation, a non-profit fighting suicide in the veteran community. September is National Suicide Prevention Month, so join host Jacob and Ashley Schick as they bring you to the front lines of One Tribe's mission. I was married to a combat army veteran and he actually took his own life to suicide. One Tribe saved my life twice. There's a lot of love that flows through this place and it's sincere. Now it's a personal mission. Don't have to go to any more

funerals, you know. I got blown up on a React mission. I ended up having amputation below the knee of my right leg and a traumatic brain injury because I landed on my head. Welcome to Season 2 of the Good Stuff. Listen to the Good Stuff podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hola, it's Honey German and my podcast, Grasasas Come Again, is back. This season, we're going even deeper into the world of music and entertainment with raw and honest conversations with some of your favorite Latin artists and celebrities.

You didn't have to audition? No, I didn't audition. I haven't auditioned in like over 25 years. Oh, wow. That's some real G-talk right there. Oh, yeah. We've got some of the biggest actors, musicians, content creators, and culture shifters

sharing their real stories of failure and success. You were destined to be a start. We talk all about what's viral and trending with a little bit of chisement, a lot of laughs, and those amazing vibras you've come to expect. And, of course, we'll explore deeper topics dealing with identity, struggles, and all the issues affecting our Latin community.

You feel like you get a little whitewash because you have to do the code switching? I won't say whitewash because at the end of the day, you know, I'm me. But the whole pretending and cold, you know, it takes a toll on you. Listen to the new season of Grasas Has Come Again as part of My Cultura Podcast Network on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Your entire identity has been fabricated. Your beloved brother goes missing without a trace. You discover the depths of your mother's illness, the way it has echoed and

reverberated throughout your life impacting your very legacy. Hi, I'm Danny Shapiro, and these are just a few of the profound and powerful stories I'll be mining on our 12th season of Family Secrets. With over 37 million downloads, we continue to be moved and inspired by our guests and their courageously told stories. I can't wait to share 10 powerful new episodes with you, stories of tangled up identities, concealed truths, and the way in which family secrets almost always need to be told. I hope you'll join me and my extraordinary guests for this new season of family secrets. Listen to Family Secrets Season 12 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Okay, we're back, and I'm talking to Seamus. Blackley, ex-particle physicist, ex-inventor of the Xbox, current grower of bread from ancient yeast and CEO of a secretive tech startup. And I'm talking to him because he has made chocolate from dirt to bar. I want to hear all the details like you grow it, you harvest it, you ferment it, you dry it, you dry it, you roast it. Now you have the nibs. How do you go from the nibs to the actual bar? You buy a seed or you find a seed, you plant it, it grows a tree. you raise the tree well, you pollinate it, pods appear. Interestingly, the pods on cacao trees grow off of the trunk, not off the branches.

So it looks a little bit alien. And the pods themselves actually look a little bit in invasion of the body snatchers, which is cool. When they're mature, they turn these beautiful fall leaf colors. Like it's a very New England of them, like these deep yellows and oranges and reds. Very beautiful. And you cut them off and you split them open. And inside are these seeds that are covered in a white pulp. And it's delicious.

It smells like leachy fruit. It's very fresh, very fragrant. And it tastes really good. But the beans themselves, if you eat them, very bitter. And it tastes nothing like chocolate. There isn't a hint of chocolate in any of the flavor profiles of any of this. Okay? The pods have a very planty smell.

Okay. Very, very fragrant like fresh cut grass. And the pulp has a kind of an astringent, but very pleasant, slightly sweet, lighty flavor. And the beans are sort of these like purple, bitter, soft seeds. And so when you hold this in your hand, you think, how the hell does this become chocolate? it. So the next step is to ferment them. And to do this, the beans are put into piles for thermal purposes so that the heat of fermentation can build up, which accelerates fermentation. And they have to be covered with something that prevents moisture from escaping because they require a moist

environment to ferment. And so I have plenty of fermenters that do excellent temperature control. we set up some fermenters with different piles. And in the literature, there are people in the industry who errate their piles, who mix their piles, who don't touch them. There are different varieties of cacao. We now know which variety we have, but we didn't at the time. So the fermentation profiles are apparently different between, like, let's say, a crioia, which is one variety and a frontera, which is a different variety.

but fundamentally what happens is a yeast just a regular you know sacramides yeast fermentation takes place and that creates a certain temperature profile so let's say the fermenter is running at 85 degrees Fahrenheit it will then go up to 95 or 98 degrees Fahrenheit because of the heat induced by the mechanical action of fermentation itself, the biological action. That will then fall off and you can smell, as you know, as one does, is going to measure the temperature of your cacao fermentation piles. You can smell a strong yeast note. So you get a bready note out of it.

And the temperature will drop and then it will rise again as the bacteria that are symbiotic with those yeasts begin their fermentation process. And they are an acid-producing bacteria, actually similar to the bacteria that make acetic acid, and probably identical in many cases. And you can smell that ascetic smell as you do your temperature checks and potentially your rotation. There's a second spike in temperature. And then that goes down. And this takes anywhere from five to seven days. And you want to be very careful because, Once that bacterial action ceases, you're in danger of a mold step, which comes afterward, as the mold is no longer deterred in its growth because of the action of the other organisms.

So like in a lot of fermented foods, the preservation comes from biological competition, not from sterility. So, you know, in most fermented foods, or like in your starter for your sourdough, The reason that it doesn't go bad right away is because there's so much, you know, bacterial action from the yeast and bacteria in your starter that no other organisms can compete. And that keeps it sterile. Okay. So the same thing is happening in the cacao. You don't want to let it go too long.

But during the end of that bacterial fermentation phase, and this is the craziest thing in the universe, It starts to smell like brownies. Wow, that's when the chocolate comes back. So it goes from, and I was not prepared for this. And you can't read about this. Apparently, you know, I have one of my son's best friends is from Trinidad. And while I was doing this, he visited with my son from college. And I was doing this fermentation.

And he looked over and he was like, oh, you're fermenting chocolate, cool. Because, of course, he'd seen this his whole life, right? But for me, I was unprepared for this transformation to take place. And it really, it smells just like brownies. So it's gone from this very sort of like grassy pod, lichy, bitter thing to smelling like bread, to smelling like vinegar. and one day you open the fermenter and it smells like brownies.

It's insane. Makes me wonder who the first human was to experience that, you know, thousands of years ago. One experiment that I will do shortly is to just leave some cacao pods around and to see if I let them ferment internally, if I crack them open, at some point they smell like chocolate. You can imagine that somebody happens upon one that's sat for the right amount of time and it's delicious smelling, right? It might occur to that person to try to recreate that somehow, right? So then you dry them.

They have at this point become kind of like a very dry mac and cheese consistency. So you spread the beans out on a dehydrator or out in the sun. We use a dehydrator because we can control it. And you get them to about 3% moisture content. And I have all the equipment to measure this, but, you know, it just basically means pretty dry. And it takes a while. It takes about two days. And if you're running the drying machines in your house, it'll drive you insane because your whole house will smell like brownies.

But at first, sort of acid brownies because the vinegar smells still there. And as you dry them, it goes down, but there's still notes of vinegar from the bacterial fermentation process in the beans. And you end up with these brown cacao beans, and they're a little shrunken and a little sad looking. And then you're ready to roast. And the roasting is, again, it's pretty similar to coffee roasting, but it's much easier and shorter. And I'm really glad that I had done coffee roasting in the past because it prepared me for this. But you roast them with a decreasing thermal profile from about. 250 down to 200 C, and you want the bean temperature to get to around 200 C at the end.

And you'll hear them crack. If you have 3% moisture, that moisture inside the bean will boil and pop the shell. Actually, it's kind of like ADS, right? It goes from, it changes the curvature of the shell, and then you get to pop. and then you know that you're done. And people will do two pops or one pop. And there's a lot of YouTube video on this because people buy a lot of fermented dried beans

from South America and process the chocolate out of and that's one of the things that a fancy San Francisco chocolate shop will do. Okay? So we sort of, after I did the fermentation and the drawing, I reentered the realm where there's a lot of video help on how to do this, right? But I didn't really look at it

because I was like, I'm better than all them. I did all this, right? So do the roasting, and then you have these beans that are sort of like now puffy. So they're kind of, you know, rugby ball shaped. And then you have to shell them. And there are machines that do this. When you buy commercial nibs, the nib is actually the bean itself once it's been shelled after being roasted and dried and roasted. They're all little bits. And it's because of the machine in order to remove the shell, mechanically, it has to sort of pulverize everything. But if you do it by hand sitting in front of the television, you get the complete beans out.

And there are a picture of this on my Twitter. And I have to say, during the roasting process, what happens is the vinegar smells and all the other strange odors go away. And you're left with just a pure chocolate smell. And it's very, very remarkable. It smells like the most incredible chocolate cake brownie that you've ever baked in your oven. at the end of the roasting process. I've actually roasted cacao beans myself on the stovetop and been amazed. It's like a river of chocolate smell.

It's like snorting pure chocolate. It's incredible. Yeah. And so then from there you go on and do the normal thing to make chocolate. And it's important to have a wet grinder. It's important to let it go for, you know, three or four days. Because the cacao beans are actually just basically wood. And it's extremely fibrous.

But it contains, you know, a lot of fat, the cacao butter, inside that fiber structure. And there's a sort of a magical thing that happens when you grind this and you get a little bit of heat out of the mechanical grinding action, which is that you start to get this magical haste. And that's getting close to the thing that we think of as chocolate. And you have to wet grind this thing in a wet stone grinder for days and days to get the average particle size small enough in that fiber structure that on the tongue it feels like you would expect from smooth chocolate. And so that takes a lot of time and turns out some equipment and knowledge.

I did a little study, you know, because I have microscopes and autoclaves and all the stuff in my kitchen from the bread project. So I was able to do some smears and look at average particle sizes and correlate that because I was given the hint from some chocolatiers. Correlate that with the current drawn by the Melangeet by the wet grinder.

There's a pretty linear relationship between the amount of current that you're using and the particle size. And that's how they determine when they get done. So you can tell the size of your chocolate particles by how hard your grinder has to work basically. That's correct, yeah, at a given temperature. And then there's some chemistry involved in, like, actually making it a bar.

It's got, like, some complex crystal structure that you need to reach with the right temperature voyage for this whole process, right? You know, I'm going to go ahead and call that physics because it's really crystallography. You know, I work with a lot of chemists, so we can, you know, we can fight over this. But, yeah, the trick then after that is to make it into a stable bar. And that means establishing with the cacao butter with that fat, it's type 2 crystal, which is a stable crystalline matrix in shirt sleeve room temperature conditions for human beings. That's referred to in the industry as temper, but it's really a crystalline structure, as you know and alluded to. And so finding out how to establish that is a bit of a trick. And part of the problem that we had is we know too much.

So it was me and biologists and chemists and another physicist. And so we knew too much about crystallography. So we did all these crazy schemes that only kind of partially worked. And then finally we just did the thing that everybody else does and worked fine. And made bars. And, you know, when we made the first chocolate from our own beans from our trees, all of us thought it was the best chocolate we'd ever had easily and I am still completely ruined because it's been six months now but I am ruined and my wife is ruined and everyone is ruined

we can't we get other chocolate and it's just not as good and recently I I was very very very brave and I gave a bar of this chocolate to my friend Jose Andres, the chef, and he said it was the best chocolate he's ever had. And he's now told other people it's the best chocolate he's ever had. And so, you know, I think that keeping everything simple and pure, you know, not adding anything. The only ingredient in our chocolate bar is sugar in some measure to give you, you know, the amount that you like, how dark do you want your chocolate?

In our case, we went to about 70% the cow. It sounds amazing. There's nothing else in it, and it's really good. And, you know, we're going to keep on doing it because it's so good. It's very interesting. And really, even though it's so hard to do and has so many steps, the magic in the last part of the fermentation is worth it. It's worth it.

I do it over and over again because I never tire of that moment when it changes to chocolate. It's incredible. And, you know, I'm around fermentation all the time. We have the ancient bread project, other bread projects, other fermentation projects. And, you know, even when you're doing beer making, the fermentation is a, you know, nanomachinery process in service of something else, in service of getting CO2 distributed evenly through, you know, a piece of dough so that you can freeze it in the oven and have bread, right?

Mm-hmm. Freeze the structure by baking. In the case of the cacao, the fermentation, it is the flavor. It's everything. It's remarkable. So now that you've had this incredible dark chocolate and you understand it all the way from dirt to bar, what are your thoughts on industrial chocolate? for example, Hershey's.

Oh, it's a valid industrial product. Sometimes you have to have these things, and, you know, I'm not going to crap on them. It's an incredible story. Actually, the Hershey story is an incredible story, both from a business and a technology standpoint. But I am ruined now, and I am very seriously considering. you know, expanding this operation and maybe trying to grow a bunch more trees kind of hydroponically in this way and seeing if you could make more of this special chocolate in that way. So we'll see.

Sounds amazing and sounds delicious. Well, thanks very much for taking us on a tour of your chocolate adventure. Really happy to be grabbing on your coattails and following along to learn. Daniel, it's always a pleasure to talk to you, man. Send me more of your best students, please. We'll do. Thanks very much. Take care. All right.

Pretty interesting conversation there, Daniel. What was your big takeaway from all of this chocolate science? The takeaway for me is that once a physicist, always a physicist. You're trained to think like a physicist. You're going to apply that to everything else you do in your life. Whether it's baking bread, inventing new video game consoles, or growing chocolate bars. Now, do you think knowing all of this physics is helping him make better chocolate?

Or is he actually leaning on chemistry? I think there's a fuzzy line here. Yeah, absolutely. It sounds like pretty straight up chemistry. He's definitely scientific thinking. No offense. No offense. Yeah, that's fine.

I get it. You know, the chocolate is more chemistry than physics. I'll admit it, absolutely. So his physics preparation is of no help. I mean, he didn't get down to like the fundamental chocolate particle or anything. So having been a particle physicist, I don't think is an issue. But definitely his scientific background helped him, like, read the papers and do this carefully and methodically and, you know, gather some data. Well, I feel like this is maybe like a small batch type of chocolate production.

But things get a little bit more complicated and maybe more difficult when you try to scale it up and you try to give chocolate to a lot of people. Yeah, exactly. You have a lot more freedom to play when you're making up just a few bars for you and your friends. But when you're the chief chocolate officer at one of the world's biggest snack food companies, then you have a whole different set of challenges. Well, you actually got to talk to a former research scientist at a large corporation. How did you meet this fellow? So one of our listeners, Darcio, is a chocolate researcher in Brazil and heard us joking about chocolate on the podcast and wrote to me suggesting that we do a deep dive into chocolate. He was actually the inspiration for this episode and introduced me to.

his friend, Jim Kaiser, former chief chocolate officer at Mars Inc. Well, wait, wait, wait, wait. We know an actual chocolate researcher? Like, what's this research? It's like chemical engineering, you know, industrial processes for producing chocolate at scale with consistency and purity and quality. Whoa. Yeah, because I guess they farm a lot of chocolate in Brazil, right?

They do farm a lot of chocolate all over the world. And in the interview with him, we talk about the challenges. of getting chocolate from all different locations where the processes are different. And how there's a different taste that come from different beans, right? Exactly, which is not what you want if you're the Mars company.

You want your M&M to taste the same no matter where you are in the world and which batch of chocolate it was. We'll get into all of that, but first, let's take a quick break. Your entire identity has been fabricated. Your beloved brother goes missing without a trace.

You discover the depths of your mother's illness the way it has echoed and reverberated throughout your life, impacting your very legacy. Hi, I'm Danny Shapiro. And these are just a few of the profound and powerful stories I'll be mining on our 12th season of Family Secrets. With over 37 million downloads, we continue to be moved and inspired

by our guests and their courageously told stories. I can't wait to share 10 powerful new episodes with you, stories of tangled up identities, concealed truths, and the way in which family secrets almost always need to be told. I hope you'll join me and my extraordinary guests for this new season of Family Secrets. Listen to Family Secrets Season 12 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I had this overwhelming sensation that I had to call it right then. And I just hit call, said, you know, hey, I'm Jacob Schick. I'm the CEO of One Tribe Foundation, and I just wanted to call on and let her know. There's a lot of people battling some of the very same things you're battling. And there is help out there. The Good Stuff podcast, Season 2, takes a deep look into One Tribe Foundation, a non-profit fighting suicide in the veteran community. September is National Suicide Prevention Month,

so join host Jacob and Ashley Schick as they bring you to the front lines of One Tribe's mission. I was married to a combat army veteran. He actually took his own life to suicide. One tribe saved my life twice. There's a lot of love that flows through this place and it's sincere. Now it's a personal mission. I don't have to go to any more funerals, you know. I got blown up on a React mission.

I ended up having amputation below the knee of my right leg and a traumatic brain injury because I landed on my head. Welcome to Season 2 of the Good Stuff. Listen to the Good Stuff podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, sis. What if I could promise you you never had to listen to a condesstance? sending finance bro. Tell you how to manage your money again. Welcome to Brown Ambition. This is the hard part when you pay down those credit cards. If you haven't gotten to the bottom of why you were

racking up credit or turning to credit cards, you may just recreate the same problem a year from now. When you do feel like you are bleeding from these high interest rates, I would start shopping for a debt consolidation loan, starting with your local credit union, shopping around online, looking for some online lenders because they tend to have fewer fees and be more affordable. Listen, I I'm not here to judge. It is so expensive in these streets. I 100% can see how in just a few months you can have this much credit card debt

and it weighs on you. It's really easy to just like stick your head in the sand. It's nice and dark in the sand. Even if it's scary, it's not going to go away just because you're avoiding it. And in fact, it may get even worse. For more judgment-free money advice, listen to Brown Ambition on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Hello, it's Honey German And my podcast Grasas Come Again is back This season we're going even deeper Into the world of music and entertainment With raw and honest conversations With some of your favorite Latin artists and celebrities

You didn't have to audition? No, I didn't audition I haven't audition in like over 25 years Oh wow That's a real G talk right there Oh yeah We've got some of the biggest actors musicians, content creators

and culture shifters sharing their real stories of failure and success You were destined to be a start. We talk all about what's viral and trending with a little bit of chisement, a lot of laughs, and those amazing vivas you've come to expect. And of course, we'll explore deeper topics

dealing with identity, struggles, and all the issues affecting our Latin community. You feel like you get a little whitewash because you have to do the code switching? I won't say whitewash because at the end of the day, you know, I'm me. But the whole pretending and code, you know, it takes a toll on you. Listen to the new season of Grasasas Come Again as part of My Cultura Podcast Network on the IHartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Okay, we're back and we're talking about physics and chocolate.

All right. Well, here's Daniel's interview with Professor Kaiser, former chocolate research scientists at Mars Corporation. So it's my pleasure to welcome to the podcast, John Kaiser, an expert in mass production of chocolate and a researcher who has worked on the forefront of chocolate knowledge. John, welcome to the podcast. Thank you, Daniel. It's a happy day if I get to talk about chocolates. I appreciate you invited me to this podcast. Thank you. Well, first, I want to know how does one become a chocolate researcher? Is that something you grew up wanting to be and followed your passion or you stumble into it? I knew I wanted to work on food. My father had worked on food at P&G, their brands, pringles,

Folgers. And I love the black box. And that's what chemical engineers solve. We have raw materials, dry potatoes entering one side of the box, and you have a beautifully shaped pringle out the other end. It tastes and looks great. So I was always fascinated by what's the black box. So I knew I'd enter the food industry.

And I started craft in Chicago first at the Glenview, working on a variety of food brands, ice cream, mayonnaise and Miracle Whip. And then that led us to a role at Mars working on cocoa and chocolate. And that's where I spent almost 30 years on really every aspect of coconut child production globally. So what do people not know about making chocolate? I mean, it's much more than just roast the beans and blend them up. What is the sort of the secret sauce to turning cocoa beans into chocolate that people

might not understand? Well, I'd say the fascinating part of chocolate, and I always include cocoa as part of that, is how difficult it is to produce a consistent, wonderful tasting product. And that's really what's kept me intrigued in this area for so many years. And I still work on it here at Iowa State. So the linkage I see is nearly every aspect of the unit operations that chemical engineering study from harvest of a cocoa pod in origin all the way to a molded product in M&M or Hershey, milk chocolate bar.

Nearly every aspect has a linkage to flavor and texture. And solving that, understanding that, and understanding that in an operational role every day is not easy. So that's really kept me very interesting because there was issues all along that product pipeline. Give us an example of something that's challenging and mass production of delicious chocolate. So back to the complexity. So cocoa is not cocoa first of all. So the variety of cocoa that you find in the origin can have an influence on flavor. So you have to pick what you want.

And what you want is what the consumer ultimately wants. So you have to really start with the consumer. But how that product is harvested, really more how it's fermented in origin, can again have a major impact on flavor. For example, and practices are not standardized. Growers, farmers across the globe, don't have. have a script and say, oh, this is how we do it. No, they don't have that script. They do it based on history. They do it based on economics. It's not well controlled. As soon as pods are open

in the origin, they're open with machete. I mean, that is the typical way of opening a pod. Paws have a very thick husk. You extract about 50 beans from a pod. And the beans are surrounded it by this sticky, gooey, high sugar, high acid, relatively speaking, pulp. That actually tastes delicious, by the way. If you're in origin, taste the beans. Really? Don't chew the beans because extremely astringent. We'll get to that point here about fermentation.

But as you suck the pulp off the beans, they have a very pleasant, fruity characteristic. Those in Ecuador and Brazil, Darcy, who can speak to this, will extract that and convert into a beverage. Like a chocolate fruit beverage. It really doesn't taste like chocolate at all. It just has a fruity, pleasant flavor. I wonder how many people have ever tasted that. I don't think I know anybody else who's ever tasted the actual chocolate fruit. It's definitely rare. You have to pasteurize it in origin if you want to ship it somewhere because here's the point. It's the microflora in the environment automatically goes after those sugars as soon as you open it. So fermentation starts the instant you open the pot.

Those beans are manually scooped out. And this may seem a bit archaid because it is, because it has not really changed over the course of at least 100 years where those beans are then piled on banana leaves, typically on the ground in origin, heat, and the fermentation begins. And to be clear, fermentation means like microbial processing, right? Basically we're talking about desirable rotting. right that's it that's exactly correct okay but it has a huge influence yeah so if you and some growers do this around the globe where they'll skip the fermentation and they'll go straight to dry and if you

do that the beans are very very stringent very bitter and there are some recipes that that may be an attribute you want and it's another i say process driver that you can use to influence your flavor But typically, I'd say the fermentation is between five and seven days. Five and seven days sitting there rotting on a banana leaf. Yes. Now, the larger growers will have, I'll call box fermentation, they'll place these beans in a much larger wooden box. And then they'll actually use a hand agitator, really just hand scoop and move

those beans around because you imagine thermal heat, the fermentation will be great. is in the center so you want to spread that out across the whole box so yeah for sure beans that are not fermented and those that are fully fermented uh will taste dramatically different and those practices are very different i'll say the more of the standardized fermentation process that we've witnessed are those that you see in uh west africa ivory coast gala where they're typically fully fermented. Now, keep in mind, you can go, you can be over-fermented, and that will also cause a flavor impact, and then anything in between zero and, say, five to seven days. So this is where the complexity just begins, Daniel. So you can have a whole range of flavor influences,

and I won't call it a flavor defect because flavor is subjective. You may love it. I love an over-fermented bean and its flavor, or totally under-fermetted. So actually, and of being a consumer-driven experience. What do they want? But if you want to produce the same M&M every day, every year for 30 years, how do you handle that? When you get a batch of over-fermented and a batch of under-fermented, do you have to adjust the process or do you have some way to mask it?

Or how does that work? That's one of the distinctions you're hitting right now is the small versus large. I'm a little biased because I spent my career at Mars, working on all these challenges across 30 years. and it is difficult to make an eminent taste the same around the globe. It is very difficult because you have so many influences, including the practices they're observed. So the way you mitigate that is a lot of the Coke we've purchased off the market,

but per our spec, per our flavor and chemical spec. So you want to make sure that it is fermented properly and you're buying that specification. So that's how a margin would do it. The other way to mitigate, am I giving anything away here? This is pretty typical for a Hershey and a Mars and Mondalese is there's a cocoa recipe. You would not bank the farm on a single origin. You want a percentage of different origins.

And that gives you the flavor profile that is consistent. And it also helps mitigate that risk because civil wars do occur in Ivory Coast. You have weather impact, sustainability concerns. Lots of these things will occur over the course of a year, and you have to be prepared to move around and ensure that the product still meets the products back. So what's the major difference between like very fancy, artisanal, small batch, bar of chocolate you might pay like $8 for

and something like a Hershey bar? Is it the quality of the chocolate? Is it preservatives? something different in the process, what is basically the difference between the spectrum of quality for chocolate? The large manufacturer has a lot more at risk. So if you have a recall of a product because of some microbial contamination or adulteration due to incidental form matter that's in the product, you're recalling it could could really sacrifice your brand. So the large manufacturers tend to be very conservative, but they're very consistent.

I'll say very consistent. The smaller players have more leeway. They have less at risk. And they're faster. They're more flexible. I think the thing that I think is interesting is the large manufacturers have a business, you have an M&M's biggest global brand for chocolate. They want to be as flexible as a small guy's, but they can't.

The small guys want to have more market share. But that's a challenge for them also. So the small manufacturers, as you said, cost, before this call, I just took a look at a cost per gram, two cents per gram for a dove or Hershey no chocolate, roughly, 20 cents a gram for Seattle Line, which is a very specialty niche product. Really, you know, that's the difference, you know, order of magnitude and difference. So what are consumers willing to pay for what they get? Let's talk about the Hershey bar also because it's iconic.

On the podcast recently, I commented that I was not a particular fan of the Hershey bar because it has this sour flavor to it. Where does that sourness come from? Is it some property of milk chocolate? Is it some secret process that Hershey has? Why are Hershey bar so sour? Yes. I love the history of chocolate.

So let's talk Hershey. Hershey started making caramel in Lancaster, PA. That's where my family and I spent 30 years. just north of there in Mannheim started that business grew it grew it pretty well downtown lancaster went to the expo in chicago this famous expo where he's iconic clombian expo in chicago where he came across layman which is a germany facie chahut really liquor milling equipment came across that thought at that time that the future was chariot not car Carmel. So moved to child production, bought that equipment in Chicago, brought it back and

started Hershey Pee and making chocolate small scale. Didn't know how to do it yet. Didn't know how. He hired a German scientist by name of Klein, Klein, and with him began to learn about chalet production. And if you ever talk to a European, I don't want to despair of Hershey. I just want to give you kind of what my skew is, my spin on it is. And you've already mentioned this. The Europeans are not accustomed to sour milk and their chocolate. They're just not accustomed to it. And that's the history of chocolate.

And with our chocolate tastes very different from those in the U.S. So the story is. And I'm sure a Hershey representative may dispute my, my spin on this is we talked to Europeans and say, you know, they got the process of drying liquid milk wrong in that it became this lipid catalysis that creates organic acids that gives you the sour character that you get from baby puke. I'm sorry, did you just say baby puke? I did. I did. And I've heard those terms from other Hershey people. So I'm not taking these terms out of context. So we have it on the record from an expert in chocolate that Hershey's tastes

like baby puke. All right. I'm going to get a retribution on this one. As I said, flavor is subjective. My father loves Hershey chocolate. That's what he was offered. That's what he ate. He still loves it. And it has a unique, I'll call it a unique acid character. It's organic acid, butyric acid flavor in that chocolate but gives it that unique flavor. So the story is, and it could be a meth, that in the process, because it was not known how to dry liquid milk and do it in an efficient way that did not harm the quality, not in the U.S. Nestle was figuring that out in Europe.

So they were figuring it out. Hershey was trying to do it his way and came up with a way to do it. developed this acidic flavor, which became the trophy, which is now their signature flavor. And it is well, well, like. It's the biggest brand in the U.S. So they've got something going there. So, you know, no disparaging Hershey. They've got a well, well-like product that consumers here really love.

I mean, if you can make a billion dollar business out of baby puke candy, then hats off to you, right? Like, wow, very impressive. I could never have accomplished that. I don't think I'd invest in that startup, but I'd be wrong, apparently. So then, you know, if we are still innovating on chocolate and still using chemical engineering and creative ideas to develop new chocolates, what's happening right now? What's like at the forefront of chocolate research? The most brilliant minds in chocolate, what problems are they trying to crack right now?

So if you look at the headlines today, sustainability, carbon dioxide. So things around replacing berry powders with plant-based proteins are hot. They were hot five years ago. I know there's interest in it, and they are still very important to consider to reduce greenhouse gases. I'd imagine I know Mars for sure has a sustainability plan, and all the large manufacturers certainly have a public disclosed approach that they're taking for that. So anything around the way that is processed is being examined to reduce energy consumption. That's, I say a blanket statement, because each of these components, whether it's roasting,

conching, which is an intensive mixing step or size reduction, are very energy intensive. There's a lot of energy that's required to get to the state that's appealing to consumers. So any place, now it's more innovation on the process side. Okay, it's innovation with the process side, but it's really important. You're important for the manufacturer. And also, the consumer is also looking at businesses to see what they're doing that's good for the planet. So for sure, that's where a lot of innovation is occurring. And then, as I mentioned, on the ingredients side, it's more plant-based raw materials that can be used

and still deliver that superior taste. Fascinating. Now, you mentioned you started your career being intrigued in things like Pringles. You've taken the potatoes on one side and out come these perfect crisps. And I've noticed this bizarre innovation in desserts recently, this chocolate-covered Pringles. And since you began your career in Pringles and you ended up in chocolate, I wondered, is this something you came up with? Is this your unholy unification of the snack universe? I can't take credit for that. Cannot. I wish I could. But do you enjoy them? I do you think Chuck for sure yeah I think that you said the savory sweet combination I think is

you know very good really appealing and coming from the Charlotte capital of the US which is southeastern Pennsylvania that's that's Hershey bars has a large operation there you have blammer which is a large industrial producer there uh get divers based out of you have a lot of candy a lot of candy York peppermint patties York Pennsylvania so you have a lot of candy production that occurred there. It's also the savory snack capital. Oh, I see. So, hey, they're both there. Why not? So nobody knows snacking like Pennsylvania. It's right. You know, pretzels, a lot of pressell production. The Dutch, you know, if you ever go to live in Pennsylvania, it's deemed the place for pretzels in the U.S. were first created. And that's not far from

Lancaster. So yeah, pretzels and savory snacks are really big in that part of the country. Well, I guess we have Pennsylvania to thank us for pushing us forward on the forefront of human snacking. That's amazing. And thanks very much, John Kaiser, for telling us all about chocolate production and the challenges in producing huge quantities of consistent chocolate that everybody enjoys around the world. Really appreciate your time. Thanks for the invitation. This has been a blast for me. Appreciate it.

All right. Interesting. What did you think about how they approach chocolate making in large scales? I think it's fascinating how the small batch people are really trying to make a unique flavor and the large batch people are really not. They're really struggling with the same question, but they're on different sides of the issue. Jim talks about how the difference in the fermentation process leads to different kinds of flavor. And that sounds awesome if you're artisanal, but that's a nightmare if you're industrial.

Well, I feel like it's not like they're not trying to come up with any unique flavor. It's like they're trying to keep the flavor consistent. Yeah, exactly. They might be aiming for like the flavor the most amount of people like and to make that consistent. Yeah, I think that is exactly what they're going for. And also I didn't realize what a deep rivalry there is between Hershey and Mars. There's a long history there involving like espionage and theft and like really deep anger between these two companies. And you all know that Hershey's isn't my favorite, but no disrespect to those who love it.

Because it's not about cost. There's lots of cheap chocolate out there. I love and expensive ones I don't. It's just personal preference. So probably if I want an unbiased opinion about the flavor of Hershey's chocolate, I shouldn't have been talking to somebody from Mars. Well, I didn't even know there were two separate companies. Like, there's just those two.

Like, those are the big chocolate. Those two Pennsylvania snack companies really do dominate the chocolate market. Wow. And they're both based in Pennsylvania. Exactly. The snack capital of the world, according to Jim Kaiser. Wow. why Pennsylvania

somebody from Pennsylvania has to answer that for us well we might have to buy him a bar chocolate for them to tell us once that grant comes in we'll be ready to do that all right well another interesting dive into Daniels snack habits hasn't your doctor at this age told you like hey maybe you should dial down

on the saturated fats there no chocolate is healthy man has all sorts of good stuff in it in moderation again we're doctors but we're not kind of doctor fermented foods ban my wife tells me fermented foods are good for your gut these statements have not been approved by the federal drug administration do not take health advice from me please do not take health advice don't even take writing advice from me or anything that's right don't take any advice career advice life advice any of that stuff just listen for the jokes and

the knowledge yeah how about physics advice i'm doing my best to give us an honest understanding of the physics of the universe for sure All right. Well, we hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us. See you next time. For more science and curiosity, come find us on social media where we answer questions and post videos. We're on Twitter, Discord, Insta, and now TikTok. Thanks for listening. And remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of IHeartRadio. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or where ever you listen to your favorite shows.

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