As a temporary emotional situation and a relatively stable state of being happy (subjective happiness level), happiness can be considered. In fact, people with high subjective happiness level think more positively than others. There are many factors with potential positive or negative effects on happiness such as: the (dark and milky) chocolate, Yoga, outdoor group walks in the natural en...

Chocolates consist of a suspension of fine cocoa solids and sugar particles dispersed in a continuous lipid phase in a process assisted by emulsifiers, usually a combination of lecithin and PGPR. In the conventional process, the tempering is a pre-crystallization step in which the melted mass is cooled at a controlled rate of temperature decay under continuous shearing action in order to organi...

The present work was carried out to study the mycobiota of cocoa beans from farm to chocolate. Four hundred and ninety-four samples were analyzed at various stages of cocoa processing: (i) primary stage at the farm (fermentation, drying, and storage), (ii) secondary stage at processing (testa, nibs, liquor, butter, cake and powder) and (iii) the final chocolate product (dark, milk, white and po...

Seventeen strains of Haemophilus ducreyi were isolated from genital lesions which were negative for syphilis by dark-field examination. Media used for primary isolation at various times during the study were enriched chocolate agar, chocolate agar plus vancomycin (3 microgram/ml), rabbit blood agar plus vancomycin (3 micrograms/ml), fetal bovine serum agar, and fetal bovine serum agar plus vanc...

Safety in the food industry is gaining more and more importance every passing day. In recent years, several outbreaks of Salmonella have occurred in chocolate products. Traceability and HACCP system are important instruments for the food safety management. Traceability is useful to properly and efficiently handle a recall, but by itself it has no effects on the safety of the production. The HAC...