Chocolate, Not Coffee

Into the gritty night you go, sneering at the need for rest before further flight. But rather than reheated FBO coffee in your hand, you hold … a chocolate bar?

jwanwest

Saturday, January 13, 2024 at 08:00 AM ET

Verified

Macro chocolate pieces isolated against a white background

Key Takeaways:

The author, a fatigued pilot, discovered high-cocoa chocolate to be a more effective and sustained stimulant for maintaining alertness during flights than coffee.
High-cocoa chocolate provides a slower, longer-lasting mental clarity without jitters, attributed to both caffeine and theobromine, a related stimulant.
A key advantage for pilots is that chocolate avoids the "biological imperatives" (restroom needs) often associated with coffee, crucial in small aircraft.
Effectiveness varies between high-cocoa bars based on their cocoa solids content, requiring personal experimentation to find the optimal type and dosage for sustained focus.

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Back in the days when I had two children under the age of two, I was writing full-time plus instructing part-time. This left me getting as much sleep as the crew of Apollo 13 when they rounded the dark side of the moon.

Someone willing to look an IMSAFE checklist in the eye would have given up the flying jobs. But I couldn’t. Instead, I did what any young, headstrong and foolish pilot would do: I abused caffeine.