Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World

by Mark Miodownik

Personally, I eat chocolate obsessively every afternoon and every night. Whether this is down to the brainwashing I received watching Flake adverts, or a psychophysical addiction, or sexual repression due to a Northern European upbringing, I am not sure. I prefer to think it’s because I truly appreciate that chocolate is one of our greatest engineering creations. It is certainly no less remarkable and technically sophisticated than concrete or steel. Through sheer ingenuity, we have found a way to turn an unpromising tropical rainforest nut that tastes revolting into a cold, dark, brittle solid designed for one purpose only: to melt in your mouth, flood your senses with warm, fragrant, bittersweet flavors, and ignite the pleasure centers of the brain. Despite our scientific understanding, words or formulae are not enough to describe it. It is as close as we get, I would say, to a material poem, as complex and beautiful as a sonnet. Which is why the Linnaean name for the stuff, theobroma, is so appropriate. It means “the food of the gods.”