Disease Proof

Parents looking to feed their kids healthfully might want strike Hershey Park from their list of vacation destinations. Why? The oodles and oodles of free chocolate bars! Freakonomics Blog talks about a certain chocolaty perk offered at the Hershey Lodge:

My 5-year-old daughter, Anya, had heard from a schoolmate that Hershey Lodge gave away free Hershey bars — big ones — whenever you wanted and as many as you wanted. My wife and I were pretty sure that this was 5-year-old wishful gossip — but, lo and behold, we were handed four candy bars when we checked in, and when Anya went back to the registration desk five minutes later and asked for another couple of candy bars, they obliged.

It gets weirder, check out what they sell in snack shop:

The strangest part was that the shop was selling Hershey bars, stacked up next to the cash registers. Granted, these were not the same standard bars available for free a few steps away — one was an “antioxidant” bar, the other a “whole bean” coffee-flavored bar — but still, I wondered how they could get away with selling something in one location that was free of charge a very short distance away.


The clerk was a nice teenage kid, so I asked him about it. “Yeah, nobody ever buys them,” he said, laughing. “Well, sometimes kids do because they don’t know about the free ones at the desk. Their parents never tell them.”

(via TrueHoop)

Wow! Wheeling and dealing free candy to kiddies, and, covering their tracks by selling “health” food—sounds like a sweet game of bait and switch to me! Now, admittedly I am a chocolate-freak. So how do I beat the craving? Chocolate Pop’ems for starters and this handy piece of advice from Dr. Fuhrman:

You do not have to stay off chocolate, you can purchase raw cacao buds and make smoothies and sauces and healthy puddings with that chocolate flavor. All the beneficial compounds, antioxidants and flavonoids in the raw cacao make it a valuable food, even with minimal exposure to toxic components such as caffeine. I have no problem with you powdering some cacao in the VitaMix and making some chocolate style treats occasionally. Spinach, kale, banana, cacao powder, macadamia nuts and dates make a great, healthy chocolate pudding.