Why I won't be sleeping tonight

"The fudge is the life." Bela Lugosi, Dracula (1931) En route from the bedroom to the dishwasher, Karen's not-quite-finished dessert became a bit lighter. In eight or nine paces, I, Diet Boy, managed to polish off several teaspoons of molten Dreyer's Chocolate Ice Cream and a heaping congealed teaspoon of Mrs. Richardson's Hot Fudge.

If I don't drug up on Benadryl, I'll be up until 3 or 4. The culprit? Theobromine, a close relative of caffeine. Like caffeine, theobromine is a mild stimulant. Also like caffeine, it has a whoppingly long half-life (6 to 10 hours). So if like me you are sensitive to it, eat your chocolate early. Let's take a closer look at theobromine.

And you thought you'd never have to see one of those again, huh? It gets more interesting. Here's the structure of guanine, a key component of DNA (it's the G that always pairs with C, cytosine):

Do ya see it yet? Do ya? The structures are awfully similar. One could, with little effort, imagine a genetic code in which caffeine and theobromine are key players. Imagine further that we were incapable of synthesizing these compounds (which is, in fact, true: our bodies don't make caffeine or theobromine, more's the pity). Do you see where I'm headed with this? Theobromine and caffeine would be vitamins -- essential nutrients we cannot synthesize for ourselves. Chocolate and coffee would be the bottom tier of the food pyramid. One could live on One-a-Day Vitamins and tiramisu. Perhaps I had more of a point when I first got rolling, but isn't that point enough? D.