Toffee Crisp and Blue Riband can't be called chocolate any more Toffee Crisp and Blue Riband bars can no longer be called chocolate after maker Nestle changed their recipes. To be described as milk chocolate in the UK a product needs to have at least 20% cocoa solids and 20% milk solids, a level each product fell below once a higher amount of cheaper vegetable fat was used. Nestle said its reformulations were needed due to higher input costs but were carefully developed and sensory tested and there were no plans to alter the recipes of other chocolate products. As many ingredient costs, such as cocoa and butter, increased food companies have altered recipes to use less of the expensive ingredients, as well as shrinking serving sizes. Nestle now describes the treats as being encased in a smooth milk chocolate flavour coating rather than being covered in milk chocolate.

The increased predictive power of machine learning models comes at the cost of increased complexity and loss of interpretability, particularly in comparison to parametric statistical models. This trade-off has led to the emergence of eXplainable AI (XAI) which provides methods, such as local explanations (LEs) and local variable attributions (LVAs), to shed light on how a model use predictors to arrive at a prediction. These provide a point estimate of the linear variable importance in the vicinity of a single observation. However, LVAs tend not to effectively handle association between predictors. To understand how the interaction between predictors affects the variable importance estimate, we can convert LVAs into linear projections and use the radial tour. This is also useful for learning how a model has made a mistake, or the effect of outliers, or the clustering of observations. The approach is illustrated with examples from categorical (penguin species, chocolate types) and quantitative (soccer/football salaries, house prices) response models. The methods are implemented in the R package cheem, available on CRAN.

Shiny tanks of molten chocolate stand guard over a factory floor where three production lines squirt, chill and fill festive treats into existence. Production of Hotel Chocolat's Christmas selection starts in June at its factory in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, and finishes several weeks before Christmas, when it switches to making Valentine's Day and Easter delicacies. Christmas is by far the busiest time of year for Hotel Chocolat's shops, where sales easily outstrip Easter, the traditional time for a chocolate binge. This year, robots have been shouldering a bigger share of the work in making peanut butter and jelly confectionery and batons of dark chocolate as the company copes with rising costs that led it to report an annual loss this year, after a bumper time during the coronavirus pandemic, when sales jumped by two-thirds over two years. On one production line, workers in hairnets and white coats sprinkle florentine and biscuit pieces into moulds for chocolate Christmas wreaths.

We all have a craving for chocolate now and again, but not usually when we first wake up. However, a new study has claimed that eating the sugary snack for breakfast could actually have'unexpected benefits' by helping your body burn fat. Researchers in Boston, Massachusetts gave 100 grams of milk chocolate to 19 post-menopausal women within one hour after waking up and one hour before bedtime. Starting the day with chocolate could actually help your body burn fat, scientists at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston say That is about the equivalent of two standard-sized Mars bars (58g) – although the researchers used standard milk chocolate containing 18.1g of cocoa. Amazingly, the team discovered that neither morning or night time milk chocolate intake led to weight gain, likely because it acted as an appetite suppressant.

Chemicals in cocoa can boost memory abilities in older people, a new study suggests. US researchers found flavanols – plant chemicals that are abundant in cocoa beans – improved performance in a list-learning task for people aged between 50 and 75. Flavanols belong to a group of compounds called polyphenols, which are also abundant in red wine, tea, olive oil, onions, leeks, broccoli and blueberries. Flavanols are'bioactive food constituents' that protect against cognitive ageing, enhance cognitive performance and boost blood flow to the brain, studies suggest. Researchers advise caution, however, as chocolate'is a treat and not health food' and is generally low in flavanols.