A Joyful Practice

The best thing since… July 7, 2020

“He showed the words ‘chocolate cake’ to a group of Americans and recorded their word associations. ‘Guilt’ was the top response. If that strikes you as unexceptional, consider the response of French eaters to the same prompt: ‘celebration.’”

– from In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan

When people like something (or someone) – I mean, really, really like something (or someone) – they sometimes say “it’s the best thing since sliced bread” – which is funny when you consider that there’s only one day honoring “sliced bread.” On the flip side, there are at least ten days devoted to chocolate:

• Bittersweet Chocolate Day (January 10^th)
• Chocolate Day in Ghana (the second largest producer of cocoa) (February 14^th)
• World Chocolate or International Chocolate Day (July 7^th and/or 9^th)
• World Chocolate Day in Latvia (July 11^th)
• Milk Chocolate Day (July 28^th)
• S. National Confectioners Association’s International Chocolate Day (September 13^th)
• White Chocolate Day (September 22^nd)
• National Chocolate Day in the United States (October 28^th)
• Chocolate Covered Anything Day (December 16^th)

Chocolate contains phenols, which may act as antioxidants in the body and reduce “bad” cholesterol. Other documented health benefits to eating chocolate include the fact that chocolate can cause the brain to release all four of its so-called “love chemicals” (oxytocin, serotonin, dopamine, and endorphins). That, however, doesn’t explain why there are so many different kinds of chocolate. I mean, when you really get down to it, there are probably as many kinds of chocolate – and ways of enjoying chocolate (or, in my opinion, ruining chocolate) – as there are people on the planet. We can break it down as chocolatiers do into real chocolate (made from chocolate liquor and cocoa butter) and compound coatings/chocolate (cocoa powder and vegetable oil); however, even then there are different kinds of chocolate.

Some people say mass produced chocolate in the USA tastes like plastic compared to chocolate from Europe. (It kinda does, see previous paragraph to understand why.) Some people only like chocolate in candy, while others only appreciate it in cake or brownie form. Dogs can only eat white chocolate, because, well… it’s not actually chocolate. And some people will eat anything – and I do mean anything – covered in chocolate. Chocolate has a long history of being used as a gift / token of affection and friendship. It also has a long wartime history as it was consumed during the U. S. Revolutionary War and has been a standard part of the United States military ration since the original ration D or D ration bar of 1937. The D ration bar was intended to “taste a little better than a boiled potato.” Arguably, it did not (but the K ration bars arguably did.) Allied soldiers reportedly gave bits of chocolate to people they freed from concentration camps and it is still something soldiers use to establish connections in the field. According to The Chocolate Store, (US) Americans consume 2.8 billion pounds of chocolate per year (over 11 pounds per person), which is significantly more than our European counterparts – who, I’ll add again, arguably have access to better mass produced chocolate.

Maybe one of these (chocolate) days, I’ll do a deep dive into why there are so many different days celebrating chocolate. (I mean, other than the obvious commercial reasons and well… because it’s chocolate.) Today, however, I just want to point out that people are as particular about chocolate as they are about beer, wine, and burgers – which makes yoga a lot like chocolate.

None of that, however, points to why we compare really amazing things to sliced bread instead of to chocolate.

“He was a very patient, inventive man.He had an office in the basement of this big house they lived in, in Davenport, Iowa, that he called his dog house. He went there every time he got in trouble with my grandmother. When he was there, he was inventing or thinking about inventing things.”

– Susan Steinhauer Hettinger  talking about her grandfather Otto Frederick Rohwedder

Otto Frederick Rohwedder, born today in 1880 in Davenport, Iowa, invented the first automatic bread-slicing machine for commercial use. Rohwedder was an inventor and engineer who studied optometry and spent a short period of time as a jeweler. His work with jewelry and watches inspired him to create machines that would make life easier for people. After a delay, due to a fire that destroyed his original blueprints and prototype, Rohwedder was able to apply for a patent and sell his first bread-slicing machine, which also wrapped the bread to ensure freshness. He sold his first machine to his friend Frank Bench, owner of Chillicothe Baking Company in Chillicothe, Missouri and his second machine to Gustav Papendick in Saint Louis, Missouri in 1928. Papendick reportedly improved upon the way the machine wrapped the bread and applied for his own patents. While there is some argument about who sold the very first loaf sliced bread using Rohwedder’s machine, documented evidence points to Bench selling the first loaf today in 1928. It was advertised as “the greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped.”

Texas Toast not-withstanding, commercially sliced bread was thinner and more easily accessible than a regular loaf of bread – so people ate more bread. Like chocolate, sliced bread was rationed in the United States during World War II. In fact, sliced bread was briefly banned in 1943. Whether the ban was lifted because of the huge outcry from regular every day housewives and people like New York City Mayor Fiorello Henry La Guardia or because there just wasn’t that much saved in the ban is a matter of opinion.

Bottom line, sliced-bread changed people’s lives and the way they moved through their days… kind of like yoga.

In addition to being World Chocolate Day and (what I’ll call) “the best day since sliced bread,” today is Ivanа-Kupala in the Ukraine, Poland, Belarus and Russia. It is a Slavic summer holiday that combines the pagan celebration and fertility rituals of Kupala with Orthodox Christian observations of the Feast Day of Saint John the Baptist. The observing countries use the Julian calendar (as opposed to the Gregorian calendar) so their celebration actually occurs (for them) on June 23^rd – 24^th (as opposed to July 6^th and 7^th, in non-Slavic countries). One of the elemental aspects of the celebrations focuses on the combination of fire and water.

Please join me today (Tuesday, July 7^th) at 12 Noon or 7:15 PM for a virtual yoga practice on Zoom that may be the best thing since sliced bread. Use the link from the “Class Schedules” calendar if you run into any problems checking into the class. Give yourself extra time to log in if you have not upgraded to Zoom 5.0. You can request an audio recording of this practice via a comment below.

Tuesday’s playlist is available on YouTube and Spotify. (This is the playlist dated 06/24/2020. If you have a free Spotify account, you may hear extra music that is not part of the original playlist.)

It’s Blackout Tuesday so consider buying chocolate from here today!

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