Is White Chocolate Chocolate?

Fast facts about chocolates from several sites on the Net: 

Approximately one billion people in the world eat chocolate every day.

Nine out of ten people love chocolate.

Fifty percent of people in the globe cannot live without chocolate.

Those facts make me odd. I am not a fan of chocolate. 

Although I eat chocolate, I don’t go out of my way to buy it, because I can live without this global favorite. What I love though—with a passion—is white chocolate, which is not chocolate. 

So why is it called chocolate?

It doesn’t look like chocolate or smell like chocolate, and it doesn’t even taste like chocolate. It contains no chocolate solids. It is usually made from a blend of cocoa butter, milk solids, sugar, milk fat and lecithin—a fatty emulsifier that holds it all together.

Nonetheless, I love this chocolate impostor.

I got a windfall, and what a windfall, of white chocolates last Christmas. My brother who resides in Australia came home for a vacation and in his bags were oodles of Australian chocolates. He gave my sons, who adore the stuff, enough to last them months. So I asked if he happened to have white chocolates.

He did. And I got them all (or most of them anyway).   

What’s so good about white chocolate? Let me ask back that question, “What’s so good about chocolate?”

My mind tells me this is a perfect illustration of that well-known adage (first recorded in 1576) that has become an English idiom, “One man’s meat is another man’s poison.”

And it is exactly what’s happening in our country today. Many Filipinos think that President Duterte is the best-ever head of the land; others think he is the worst ever. One side can never convince the other, so the status quo remains: a nation gravely divided.

Now what of this? “Any kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and a house divided against itself will fall.” Luke 11:17-18 (NIV)

Despite our taste differences—chocolate vs. white chocolate—may we never tire in praying for God’s grace to enlighten our minds about what is right according to His precepts.