Chocolate Vitamins: A “Healthy Indulgence”?
November 17, 2010 at 8:49 am 1 comment
Decadent chocolate indulgence. Luscious pleasure. X-rated snacking. It feels good, but oh, the guilt.
Not any more, ladies. Hero Nutritionals to the rescue. The diet and supplement company has just launched the first ever ‘multivitamin dark chocolate supplement,’ part of the “Healthy Indulgence” line of chocolates. It’s 60 percent cacao solids dark chocolate, with a multivitamin thrown in the mix.
Founder and CEO Jennifer Hodges explains:
“Our goal was to develop the most premium supplement for women that makes taking vitamins enjoyable and satisfies chocolate cravings without guilt. … [They are] completely natural and utterly indulgent.”
Indulge, satisfy your chocolate cravings, without the guilt. Which is to say, if your chocolate doesn’t have vitamins mixed in, you should feel guilty about it, because it’ s just candy. But if you sprinkle a little vitamin C and vitamin B-12 on top, you’ve got a “nutritional supplement.”
But don’t we need vitamins? If you are a healthy person eating a diverse diet, you’re getting plenty of vitamins. Vitamin deficiency is a disease of poverty and dietary inadequacy. People who buy “Healthy Indulgences” and gummy bear vitamins are not suffering from a lack of vitamins in their diets.
It appears that the pleasure of chocolate is only allowed when it is cloaked as being “therapeutic.” Don’t enjoy it unless it’s good for you. Pleasure is medicalized: enjoy your body by prescription, under a doctors orders.
This is also another example of the miracle of candy transfiguration: add this or that and it’s not candy any more, and if it isn’t quite food, it nevertheless can stand in for health, purity, and virtue.
“Healthy Indulgences” are being marketed to women: the imagery and language clearly evoke a specifically female sensual pleasure. I’m not sure what dad’s candy vitamin is going to look like, but we can surely look forward to a day in the not too distant future when the whole family will be eating candy gummy vitamins and chocolate vitamin supplements, and still feel so righteous for taking care of their health by avoiding candy.
Entry filed under: Chocolate, Current Candy News, Health. Tags: candy vitamins, hero nutritionals.
1.
Loralee | November 18, 2010 at 3:26 pm
Then there are those who cite research showing that dark chocolate, even without added vitamins, has outstanding health benefits. I’m always eager to be persuaded by those studies.