Why Is the Sky Blue? Why Can't Animals Talk?

     Never mind.  What I really want to know is who invented chocolate milk?  If you google that question, you'll get several answers.  Like so much in life, the real story is complicated.  Here's how my mind sorted it out after 15 minutes of research.
     An Irish physician, Hans Sloane  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Sloane, learned about chocolate powder mixed with water when he visited Jamaica in the 1680's.  Sloane found the taste of the beverage was improved when it was mixed with milk.  He took the recipe back to England where it was sold as medicine in apothecary shops.
     In the very early 1800's, a father and son team in Holland figured out how to make better tasting chocolate milk.  The initial break through was made by the father, Casparus van Houten, Sr. Cocoa beans contain high amounts of fat which made cocoa products hard to digest.  The senior van Houten figured out how to press most of the fat out of the cocoa bean.  The son, Coenraad van Houten discovered that treating cocoa powder with alkaline salts made it mix better with water or milk.
     When the van Houten's patents expired in 1838, other people began to produce chocolate powder.  They started experimenting with making new chocolate products.  One of these people was Daniel Peter, a Swiss.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Peter  In 1875 or 1876, he added powdered milk to chocolate powder.  Peter worked with Henri Nestlé.  Voilà, Nestlés Quick.
     So, chocolate milk evolved, beginning in England and ending in Switzerland almost 200 years later.  But is it good for you?  That also is complicated.  Some studies show drinking chocolate milk after a work out is as restorative as drinking Gatorade.  Is drinking chocolate milk a good way to sneak milk into a child's diet?  Maybe not.  The oxalic acid in chocolate inhibits calcium absorption in the intestine.  This might not be an issue if you have a diet high in calcium from other sources, but it has been proven that people who eat chocolate every day have lower bone density.  I would conclude it's not a good idea to use chocolate as a vehicle for getting calcium into kids. Sorry, Mr. Hershey.
     Finally, one more study indicated the flavenoids in chocolate might reduce the development of atherosclerosis (thickening of the artery walls), but red wine works a lot better.  So long, chocolate milk.  Hello, Cabernet.

Who decided wine should be served in long stemmed glasses?