To Eat or Not to Eat — When Did We Stop Being “Chocoholics?”
Painting of Shakespeare Writing (Edited to be holding a chocolate bar)
Maria Gottemoller:
A Bittersweet Story of Growing Up, Growing Older, and the Changing Taste of Chocolate in Black America
When I first started brainstorming for this blog post, I thought I’d be writing about ethics. I was ready to dive into the realities of cocoa farming, labor exploitation, and what it means to enjoy a Nestle chocolate bar in the global north knowing it came from the brutal exploitation and extraction of the global south. But then I stumbled onto something else entirely. As I searched through The HistoryMakers Digital Archive, what kept coming up wasn’t just chocolate as a commodity; but chocolate as a memory and as a phase.
I started noticing how so many Black Americans in the archive talked about chocolate not as a product, but as a part of growing up, something sweet you got on Sundays, or from your grandmother on your birthday. Chocolate showed up in childhood stories, in family traditions, in moments of joy. But then, as I kept listening, something began to change. The tone shifted. People talked about how they don’t eat chocolate anymore. Health issues. Diabetes. Getting older. A sense that chocolate was for a different version of themselves; something they had to let go of in their youth.
This blog is about how our relationships with chocolate change as we age; especially within the Black community. It’s about the way something once tied to comfort and innocence can become complicated by the realities of life. Chocolate starts sweet, but as you age, does it become bitter?
To Eat:
For many Black Americans, chocolate begins as a marker of love. As a kind of inheritance. It’s not just a sweet; it’s synonymous with family, warmth, and belonging.
Dorothy Harrison remembers it vividly:
"They had stored chocolate drops... and my brother and I went in there and ate those chocolate drops until our stomach hurt... They were delicious, I still remember that delicious taste, and I love chocolate to this day, I must have one little piece each day somewhere."
That small act, eating until your stomach hurts, is a child’s way of experiencing joy. Even amid all else, chocolate was something to indulge in without reservation. It was something to be remembered.
Tina Lewis’s most cherished memories also swirl with sweetness:
"My mother would bake a special birthday cake just for us... my favorite, a chocolate layer cake with bananas in the filling. It was just wonderful."
Chocolate was more than food. It was care folded into flour and sugar. It showed up at holidays and birthdays. It meant someone loved you enough to stop their day and make something from scratch.
Family gathering happily for a holiday (1955-1957)
Before the sugar warnings, before the blood tests, before we became cautious and calculated there was just chocolate. And there were evenchocoholics.
Doris Zollar says it plainly:
“My favorite food is Fannie Mae Candies; chocolate. I’m a chocoholic. I love chocolate milkshakes. I don’t drink alcoholic beverages, so I like sweets.”
That word, chocoholic, might sound lighthearted, but it speaks to something real: a craving that was emotional, juvenile, and constant. Chocolate wasn’t a vice; it was a form of everyday joy.
For Dale Clinton, the obsession ran deep, deep enough to risk a whipping:
“I loved chocolate. Those large chocolate bars like this, you could get them for a quarter. I must have eaten two a day... My mother needed her quarter... but I would go in her purse. And then the store man... he would tell, and I’d get another whipping.”
There’s something bold and deeply human about that memory. Chocolate wasn’t just a treat. It was an act of rebellion from one child to her mother.
And then there’s celebration. Pure and simple.
Young girls enjoying sweet popsicles (circa 1970s)
In one of the most vibrant reflections from the archive, Daphne Maxwell Reid recounts how every birthday in her household came with its own signature dessert:
“Mine, of course, was chocolate with chocolate with chocolate.”
Her mother’s cake?
“Yellow cake with pineapple in between and coconut, and white frosting.”
Her father’s?
“A pound cake.”
Each cake was more than flavor, it was identity. She continues:
“We spent a lot of time around the kitchen table... we sat down and we ate; we talked; we laughed... And I remember being so happy when I could graduate from the kids’ table to the grownup table.”
Chocolate, and food more broadly, became a marker of belonging. Of growing up. Of family systems held together by love and routine, by yellow filling and white frosting.
Or Not to Eat:
But then, something shifts.
Patricia Andrews-Keenan tells a different kind of chocolate story:
"I ate so much chocolate cake one year, I still don’t care for chocolate cake... I eat it, but it’s never been one of my favorites."
This is what aging does; it complicates sweetness. What was once magical becomes ordinary, maybe even excessive. The same chocolate that meant comfort can later mean sickness.
Nancy Bowlin reflects on this shift through the lens of health:
The James Ford Parmacy (circa 1960s)
"Diabetes runs in my family... they loved to eat all the starchy stuff and the sugary stuff... but my generation doesn't have any."
But she pauses before admitting:
"Maybe a piece of chocolate [still means something], but outside of everything else, I couldn’t care less."
Her restraint isn't just personal; it’s generational. Chocolate, like so many pleasures, becomes something to manage, not savor. And often, that shift is driven by logic.
Sometimes, it’s not just health or age that reshapes how we relate to chocolate. Sometimes, it’s memory itself; the monotony of routine, or a taste pushed too far.
Donald Frank St. Mary remembers walking eight blocks to Sacred Heart School each morning, a memory tied not just to school, but to flavor:
"It seemed to me every morning for breakfast, we had two slices of toast bread... two slices of toast with butter and probably sometimes cinnamon and sugar and all kind of stuff on it and coco. My sisters loved coco. So I had cocoa every morning. I assure you, to this day, I hate cocoa (laughter). I don't like cocoa, don't even drink any cocoa, even though it's now better... but that was that early experience."
What’s poignant about his story isn’t just the routine; it’s the emotional reminder. Even decades later, the smell or idea of cocoa brings him back to something endured, not enjoyed. Unlike the others who left chocolate behind for health reasons, St. Mary’s rejection is rooted in something quieter: too much of a good thing, too early, too often.
His memory reminds us that even sweetness can wear out its welcome. That not all chocoholics stay chocoholics. Sometimes, the sugar just stays too long.
As we age, our relationship with chocolate shifts from delight to discipline, from taste to memory. But in that shift is a story, not of loss, but of adaptation. A story told through something as small and potent as a piece of chocolate.
So…to eat, or not to eat?
Maybe the real answer lies not in the chocolate itself, but what it meant durring that moment in time.
African-American children playing ring around the rosie (circa late 1950s- early 1960s)
References:
Dale Clinton (The HistoryMakers A2002.213), interviewed by Larry Crowe, November 21, 2002, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 2, story 4, Dale Clinton talks about misbehaving as a girl in Tupelo, Mississippi
Daphne Maxwell Reid (The HistoryMakers A2004.103), interviewed by Racine Tucker Hamilton, October 12, 2004, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 2, tape 1, story 11, Daphne Maxwell Reid describes special occasions during her childhood
Donald Frank St. Mary (The HistoryMakers A2012.214), interviewed by Larry Crowe, October 8, 2012, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 2, story 7, Donald St. Mary talks about his elementary school experience
Doris Zollar (The HistoryMakers A2002.097), interviewed by Larry Crowe, May 17, 2002, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 5, story 10, Doris Zollar's favorites
Dorothy Harrison (The HistoryMakers A2007.015), interviewed by Larry Crowe, January 18, 2007, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 2, story 5, Dorothy Harrison describes the sights and tastes of her childhood
Nancy Bowlin (The HistoryMakers A2007.144), interviewed by Larry Crowe, April 17, 2007, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 5, story 7, Nancy Bowlin talks about her health
Patricia Andrews-Keenan (The HistoryMakers A2014.030), interviewed by Larry Crowe, January 24, 2014, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 2, story 4, Patricia Andrews-Keenan remembers her home life
Tina Lewis (The HistoryMakers A2013.347), interviewed by Julieanna L. Richardson, November 22, 2013, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 1, story 7, Tina Lewis describes her earliest childhood memory
Search Terms:
“Chocolate” Results: 401, “Chocolate + Health” Results: 7, “Chocolate + Love” Results: 145, “Chocolate + Childhood” Results: 61, “Chocolate + Happiness,” Results: 3, “Childhood + Sweets,” Results: 185, “Chocolate + Memory” Results: 51, “Cocoa”, Results: 102, “Chocolate+Bar” Results: 24
Playlist: