Countywide : When It Comes to Chocolate, They Do

The only problem is the nuts.

“Never nuts in the chocolate,” says the leader, Howard Levin. “They take away from the chocolate.”

“They don’t take away,” argues Denise Yamano, the brownie-addicted member of the clique. “They add to it.”

Aside from the rift over nuts--walnuts, peanuts, pecans, almonds, it doesn’t matter--these committed chocolateurs are a tight-knit group. Each Wednesday afternoon they gather for a feel-good session of sarcasm, silliness and sweets.

“We take nothing seriously except our chocolate,” said Levin, a consultant who founded Chocolate Lovers of America and serves as its chieftain, oft donning a Hershey’s Kiss-shaped crown. “Give me chocolate or give me . . . carob.”

Levin estimates that he and his followers swallow 10 times as much chocolate as most Americans.

Despite their daily indulgence, almost all of the cocoa consumers are in tip-top shape. “We know we’re going to eat chocolate so we exercise beforehand,” explained Levin, 54, who jogs 20 minutes every other day to keep fit.

“We pass on the onion rings and take the dessert,” added Ward Blackburn, 47, a Laguna Beach publisher.

The club began a decade ago at a tennis tournament.

Levin and some friends were waiting for a court when they noticed a fellow player had left a box of Tollhouse cookies by the bench. Fearing that they would melt--or, worse, that the owner of the cookies would be protective of the sweets once she returned--Levin and the others gobbled them up.

Now, nearly 300 people across the country receive Levin’s monthly newsletter, the Chocoholic, and have “Chocolate Lover” buttons pinned to their bibs. The die-hards meet for weekly snacks.

“We’ve all come out of the cupboard and admitted we’re chocoholics,” Levin said. “Our definition of being a chocoholic is when someone gives you candy, you say, ‘Thank you,’ and put it away. You don’t share it with anybody else.”

Joyce and George Saunter, a retired couple who joined the club about six months ago, have traveled the world to satisfy their cravings.

Truffles in Hong Kong, Cadbury bars in England, and “the best” cookies, called chocolate toffee pops, in New Zealand.

“Everywhere we go, that’s what she looks for,” George Saunter said of his wife of 43 years. “We go to a restaurant, she looks at the desserts first.”

Though they consume cocoa products in myriad forms, the Chocolate Lovers are purists. They prefer dark chocolate to milk, and don’t even try to offer them white chocolate, which replaces cocoa beans with lecithin and, therefore, doesn’t count.

“We don’t acknowledge white chocolate,” insisted Levin, dubbed “Professor Chocolate” and renowned for passing out Hershey’s miniatures (except the Special Darks, which he saves for himself) to acquaintances on the street.

Pressed for their wildest chocolate fantasies at a recent meeting, club members got creative.

Tim Plumb, Yamano’s boyfriend, would fill a water bed with chocolate puree and stick a straw in the single hole. Levin fully plans to partake in pudding wrestling--he’s just not sure whether the winner will be the one who gets licked the cleanest or the one who does the licking.

And Blackburn hopes to someday find himself inside an igloo made of Haagen Daz deep chocolate ice cream with the challenge of eating his way out.

“It might take all winter,” he mused. “You wouldn’t want to be by yourself, though.”