Dr Shock MD PhD

When I was a kid flying was still for the happy few. It was surrounded with luxury excitement and "going places". When someone from our family made a trip he or she would always return with a toblerone bar from the duty free shop of the airport.

Did you know that:

• Toblerone is with us for 100 years this year


• The recipe was never changed and is secret. It is a mix of almonds, nougat, honey and chocolate invented by Theodor Tobler in 1908 together with his nephew Emil Baumann


• It is available in 122 countries


• It is the last chocolate bar still produced in Switzerland, all other Swiss chocolate is made in the developing countries


• The name is a conjunction of the last name of Theodor Tobler and the Italian for nougat: torrone.


• 25% of all their chocolate bars are sold in duty free shops


• The shape of the bars the triangle is inspired by the mountain Matterhorn. It is an unique design for chocolate bars, and patented. Some say they can see a bear in the logo of the matterhorn


• Just before world war 2 and in the eighties of the previous century the factory almost went bankrupt

It is even used as a nickname for a moving operation of yahoo from London to Switzerland: operation Toblerone

Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO), which had been threatening its European operations for the last year to shape up or they would be shipped out, has done just that: it is moving its European headquarters from London to Switzerland, with 70 of its top managers in the UK told to relocate or lose their jobs, reports FT. The move, nicknamed Operation Toblerone, was made for corporate tax reasons, the story says citing a source.

About the video found on YouTube:

this late 90s Toblerone ad was designed to run in the surreal style of some of the Beatles songs. Featuring the confectionary made from Triangular Almonds from Triangular Trees, and Triangular Honey from Triangular Bees! That's a lot of Triangles!

Besides their dark chocolate no conflict of interest here.

Thanks NRC

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Sinterklaas and Saint Nicolas in French, is a holiday tradition in the Netherlands and Belgium, celebrated every year on Saint Nicholas' eve (December 5) or, in Belgium, on the morning of December 6. The feast celebrates the name day of Saint Nicholas, patron saint of, among other things, children.

Special candy is made for this event such as chocolate characters and pepernoten.
These chocolate characters come in all varieties and all kinds of chocolate. Dr Shock prefers the dark chocolate type. What kind of chocolate do you like? My hypothesis is that medbloggers like dark chocolate. If you want to participate in this observational study please vote on the top right of this blog.




On Saint Nicholas Eve gifts are given to mostly the children but also other invited parties. These gifts are usually ingeniously wrapped, and are therefore called surprises. They are also mostly accompanied by a poem. This poem is usually an occasion to have a laugh.


Pepernoten (Spice nuts?) are a cookie-like kind of candy, traditionally associated with the Sinterklaas holiday in the Netherlands and Belgium. You will see the pepernoot in two varieties, one light brown, randomly shaped and made from the same ingredients as taai-taai, but is very hard like a nutshell, where the name originated from (nut = noot). The other variety is nowadays more common and uses the ingredients that are used for speculaas. That one is not as hard as the first one. Peper, means spiced in this case.

Sinterklaas is the basis for the North American figure of Santa Claus; the Dutch colonial town of New Amsterdam maintained a Sinterklaas tradition, long after it was occupied by the English and renamed New York City. The name Santa Claus is derived from older Dutch Sinte Klaas.

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The history of chocolate will have to be revised following a new discovery, along with the history of humanity’s troubled relationship with alcohol. Archaeologists working in Honduras detected residues from cacao plants in liquid holding vessels from 500 years earlier than beverages of the chocolate precursor have previously been found. John Henderson and colleagues think the beverages in question were more like beer than a hot chocolate-type drink and could have been as potent at 5% alcohol by volume

On The Great Beyond:‘Chocolate beer’ is older than we thought

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