They insist there is a huge gulf between choccy bars and gourmet chocolates, as their prices reflect. “They suggest chocolate is somehow naughty, it’s an insidious substance that rots you from inside, it’s generally immoral. But how is it immoral? A chocolate bar is not expensive like cigarettes or alcohol. Even at its humblest it’s no more of a monster than most other snacks, such as biscuits and crisps.”If Caroline Sarll and her band are happy with Dairy Milk and Mars bars, the New Wave purists are not. Food writer Linda Collister, who bakes with chocolate, thinks it’s time we grew up. “Chocolate-eating is an indulgence which has been legitimised, but I hate it when they say it is wicked.” She does, however, sense a shift in attitude as the country moves away from overly sugary chocolate to the grown-up taste of more bitter varieties.Caroline Sarll is more catholic in her tastes. “Our members enjoy every sort of chocolate, from Cadbury’s Dairy Milk to Belgian Cote d’Or, from Suchard to Sainsbury’s.” She resents the fact that chocolate-eaters are often pilloried by the healthy eating establishment.

This is food for thought as we approach the annual Chocolate Week junketing which begins on Saturday. Chocoholism must be the most misunderstood phenomenon in the food world. It comes as a surprise to find that chocoholics, for the most part, are not overweight. Real chocoholics, that is, not those who live off Mars bars and Yorkies. Gerard Ronay, who was for seven years Britain’s most acclaimed chocolate-maker, selling at Harrod’s and Fortnum & Mason, eats chocolate every day and there’s less fat on him than a greyhound; Patricia Lousada, author of books on cooking with chocolate, eats chocolate every day and is as slim as you’d expect an ex-ballerina frow New York to be; Chantal Coady, owner of the chocolate shop Rococo in Chelsea tastes her wares every day but remains remarkably svelte; the chairman of Chocoholics Unanimous, Caroline Sarll, eats chocolate all the time and she’s the skinniest of the lot. Every book blurb, all the chocolate bar adverts, every woman’s magazine article, appeals to the spirit of self- indulgence and excess, emphasising how “wicked” and “sinful” it is to eat chocolate.
It infuriates true aficionados of chocolate.

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