Chocolat

By Supermom <no1supermom@hotmail.com> (and some unknown person on the internet)

Rating: G

Submitted: August 2001

All disclaimers apply, blah, blah, blah.

******

Lois ranted as she ripped the wrapper from her third Double Fudge Crunch Bar of the day. "How *dare* he accuse me of eating too much chocolate! I know how much is too much, and three bars during a workday is *not* too much."

She bit off a huge chunk of the bar, chewed it noisily, and then took a big gulp of coffee to wash it down.

"Next thing he'll be telling me is that I drink too much coffee," she griped. "Of course, I've seen all the junk food he keeps at his place so he really doesn't have room to criticize me. Twinkies? DingDongs? Ha! And then he didn't even have the decency to stay and fight like a man. He used one of his lame excuses to get away from me. Really!"

Crrrrunch! Lois bit off yet another hunk of the delicious treat and savored its taste. She really was a chocolate connoisseur. She knew where to buy the finest bars and the gooiest bonbons. How could something so tasty...so delightful...so downright sensual... be bad for you? There had to be ~something~ redeeming about chocolate.

Lois giggled as a brainstorm hit. She logged onto her favorite search engine and typed in the words "chocolate" and "healthy" and waited to see what kind of hits she would get. A smug grin crossed her lips as she glanced at the screen. And precisely ninety minutes later, she tapped the "Send" key to dispatch an email to Clark that would shut him up for good.

*******

Clark Kent glanced around the bullpen as he exited the elevator and headed for his desk. It had been a long afternoon for Superman. First a bank holdup and then a chemical fire by the docks had kept the Man of Steel away from his job at the Daily Planet, which was probably good since he and Lois had argued terribly earlier that morning.

Vernon, who ran the newsstand and snack bar in the Daily Planet lobby, had stopped Lois on her way toward the lobby elevators and pulled four boxes of Double Fudge Crunch Bars from underneath the counter.

"Here you go, Miss Lane," he said. "Your monthly shipment. Shall I just charge your credit card as usual?"

"Sure, Vernon," Lois replied absentmindedly as she grabbed the boxes and balanced her purse on top of them.

Clark watched the transaction take place and then watched Lois juggling her load.

"Can I help you with some of that, Lois?"

"No, Clark. Thanks, but I can manage," Lois responded right before her purse crashed to the ground.

Grinning sheepishly, she shoved the boxes of candy into Clark's hands and stooped to retrieve her purse.

"Do you ~really~ eat four boxes of these things every month?" Clark inquired.

"And what business is it of yours it I do?" she snapped back.

"Well, Lois, there *is* a lot of fat in chocolate...."

"Are you saying I'm fat?"

If looks could kill, Lois would have been headed for death row at that moment. And if common sense was as common as it sounded, Clark would have dutifully apologized and let the matter drop. But he hadn't, and every attempt to make things right with Lois had only served to dig the hole he was in just a little deeper. It was only the sound of a bank alarm, and his departure to "get his allergy medication refilled," that stopped what had promised to be full-scale warfare.

As he dropped into his desk chair, Clark noticed that he had a number of new email messages. Most of them were from sources with follow-up information on his stories. One was from his mother to let him know that his father's cold was much improved. Two were spam messages. But it was the last one that caught his eye. It was from Lois.

Clark hesitantly clicked on the message, knowing that if Lois had a way to rig the email system to a bomb under his chair, she would have done it to him today. The message screen opened and Clark read.

TO: Clark FROM: Lois RE: Chocolate is Good

Dear Clark,

After our discussion this morning about my "chocolate habit" as you referred to it, I decided to do a little research. I have found the following information about chocolate that may just surprise you. I guess now we know why you eat all those chocolate cupcakes and stay in such good shape.

Chocolate is a vegetable. How, you ask? Chocolate is derived from cocoa beans. Beans are a vegetable. Sugar is derived from either sugar cane or sugar beets. Both are plants, which places them in the vegetable category. Thus, chocolate is a vegetable. And you're supposed to eat several servings of vegetables every day.

To go one step further, chocolate candy bars also contain milk, which is a dairy food. So candy bars are a health food, with calcium. You wouldn't want my bones to get brittle, would you?

Chocolate covered raisins, cherries, orange slices, and strawberries all count as fruit. So you can eat as many as you want. Fruit is very healthy and is a good source of vitamins, minerals, and fiber.

Chocolate has many preservatives. Preservatives make you look younger. Therefore, you need to eat more chocolate to look younger. I don't know about you, Clark, but I want to stay young.

If you eat a chocolate bar before each meal, it will take the edge off your appetite and you will therefore eat less. See? Instant diet!

A nice box of chocolates can provide your total daily intake of calories in one place. Now, isn't that handy?

And as a side issue, chocolate has been proven to be a boost to the economy. If not for chocolate, there would be no need for control top pantyhose. Now, you wouldn't want to put the control top pantyhose people out of business, would you?

So I will kindly thank you to stop making snide remarks about my case lot purchases of Double Fudge Crunch Bars. As you can see above, I'm not only supporting two industries (well, more actually, if you want to count all the cocoa bean and sugar cane farmers, not to mention Vernon), but I'm eating something healthy.

Lois

Clark shook his head.

"Ohhhhhh boy!" he thought. It was going to be a long afternoon.

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