posted by Michael on 12/9/08
A friend of mine recently gave me the wonderful news that chocolate is a fruit! Why? Because anything that goes with chocolate is a fruit, and since chocolate goes so well with chocolate, chocolate must be a fruit. That’s good news because I like chocolate, especially dark chocolate, and always need an excuse to eat more of it. Chocolate goes with strawberries, bananas, apples, pineapple, and bananas, not to mention cherries, or even cantaloupe. Did you ever have chocolate-covered watermelon? Everyone knows chocolate-covered raisins are great. Chocolate-covered prunes couldn’t be much different. Hmm, lets see, blackberries would go well with chocolate too. Ever had chocolate with pawpaws? You know, those delicious “Hoosier bananas”? Me either, but someone must have, because they wound up in the fruit category. Same with juneberries and goji berries and goumi berries. Then there is oranges, just imagine it, and you’ve GOT to try chocolate-covered grapefruit! Everyone knows lemons and limes go with chocolate, after all, they are fruits.
I don’t think anything is quite as closely associated with chocolate as peanuts, you know, those southern legumes that G.W. Carver made famous? So peanuts are definitely a fruit. Interestingly, vanilla and coffee are two other legumes that go well with chocolate, maybe all legumes are fruits! You never know until you try it – maybe chocolate would go well with limas and peas and green beans and soy nuts! Peanuts – that reminds me of some other nuts – I mean fruits – that go with chocolate: almonds, hazelnuts, macadamia nuts, etc.
There’s one thing that rivals peanuts: milk. Chocolate-milk and milk-chocolate – you can’t get much closer than that! Chocolate in ice-cream, on ice-cream, under ice-cream… Yes, there is no doubt about it: milk is a fruit.
Might as well throw in caramel too – you wouldn’t believe how many times I have eagerly bit into a beautiful piece of dark chocolate only to discover it had a cruel, tenacious blob of caramel hiding inside waiting to stick to my teeth and glue my mouth up. Oh well, I guess someone thought caramel was a fruit. Speaking of sticky things, we all know marshmallows are fruit too – must be one of those seedless fruits – and graham crackers for that matter. Crackers. Does that mean flour is a fruit? Yeahhhh… you know, chocolate cake, chocolate [chip] cookies, brownies, even chocolate-covered pretzels. Flour and chocolate right together over and over again.
I’m starting to wonder about this whole thing. What if we just stayed with the historical definition of fruit? Changing the definition of something commonly said to be healthy for the sake of accommodating something I like and provide license for greater indulgence ends up destroying its own purpose: “edible fruit” would no longer represent such a uniformly wholesome food category. Hence, chocolate would be no better off than it was before.
Don’t forget chocolate-covered grasshoppers. I’ve never met anyone who said chocolate didn’t go with grasshoppers – of those who actually tried it that is. You never really know until you try it. Ever used chocolate as a salad dressing? If this keeps going, even lettuce might end up in the fruit category. OK, I say let fruit be fruit and enjoy it with chocolate and other things in their proper place. Health is part of happiness and “making provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof” is only part of a way that seemeth right unto a man but ends in the ways of death.
Moral to the story:
Conforming truth to personal pleasure always leads to throwing the truth out altogether. But thankfully, conforming personal pleasure to absolute truth always leads to ultimate happiness.
8 Comments » | posted in The Bright Side
People crowded around the book tables so tightly that I could not go anywhere! The enthusiastic response to each session was amazing. We were in 
Mexico sharing the truths of the commands of Christ with over one thousand pastors and churchgoers. The book How to Resolve 7 Deadly Stresses had just been translated into Spanish! At meeting after meeting people were hungry for truth and eager to hear God’s Word proclaimed.
