Keep Your Dark Chocolate, and Your Unearned Sense of Superiority

The Halloween loot, the Hanukkah gelt, the Christmas stockings brimming with candy: No wonder the fourth quarter of each year erupts in bitter fights between the partisans of dark and milk. Yes, sadly, we've reopened the chocolate wars.

This year's opening salvo was fired by Megan Garber, who wrote a jeremiad against dark chocolate at the Atlantic. Dark chocolate, she complains, is bitter. And also unpleasing of texture, for it is, (she quotes About.com) “more prone to a dry, chalky texture and a bitter aftertaste.” These qualities are perversely celebrated by chocolate snobs who adopt a pitying tone when they tell you that they can’t possibly enjoy anything with less than 70 percent cacao.