When I was a child and helping my mother prepare a dessert, I remember discovering a bag of unsweetened chocolate tucked away in the pantry. The smell of it was familiar and intoxicating. But the taste! I brought a handful of the chocolate chips to my mouth, and performed a spit-take like you’d see in a movie. The bitterness caught me unprepared; it was nothing like chocolate I’d tried before. It needed to be blended with heaping spoonfuls of sugar before I could find its flavor palatable. Since then, I’ve learned the importance of balancing bitterness and sweetness, of allowing one flavor to enhance the other. And I have a few friends from To Whom It May who make this lesson all the more inviting.

Photo: fancymaterial.com According to evolutionary biologist Jason Cryan, humans are much more perceptive to bitterness than sweetness, since bitterness could be an indicator of toxins to early plant-eaters. Of course, this analogy goes beyond the realm of cuisine: it’s easy to overlook the sweetness in life when you’re still stinging from a bitter aftertaste.

This month at Sway, we’re elevating the sweet. Through October, we’ll examine the ways that people sweeten their daily experiences through ambition and creativity. We’ll also be serving up dollops of gastro-related content, plus images, videos, and other content we hope will be the cherry on top to your web watching.

Stay sweet. And be sure to grab a bon bon for the ride.

When I was a child and helping my mother prepare a dessert, I remember discovering a bag of unsweetened chocolate tucked away in the pantry. The smell of it was familiar and intoxicating. But the taste! I brought a handful of the chocolate chips to my mouth, and performed a spit-take like you’d see in a movie. The bitterness caught me unprepared; it was nothing like chocolate I’d tried before. It needed to be blended with heaping spoonfuls of sugar before I could find its flavor palatable. Since then, I’ve learned the importance of balancing bitterness and sweetness, of allowing one flavor to enhance the other. And I have a few friends from To Whom It May who make this lesson all the more inviting.

Photo: fancymaterial.com According to evolutionary biologist Jason Cryan, humans are much more perceptive to bitterness than sweetness, since bitterness could be an indicator of toxins to early plant-eaters. Of course, this analogy goes beyond the realm of cuisine: it’s easy to overlook the sweetness in life when you’re still stinging from a bitter aftertaste.

This month at Sway, we’re elevating the sweet. Through October, we’ll examine the ways that people sweeten their daily experiences through ambition and creativity. We’ll also be serving up dollops of gastro-related content, plus images, videos, and other content we hope will be the cherry on top to your web watching.

Stay sweet. And be sure to grab a bon bon for the ride.