VERY DARK (CHOCOLATE) DAYS LIE AHEAD.

Byline: Jillian O'Connor Columnist

Chocolate's gone legit, and this can only end tragically.

In this country, we can't just like a certain food - or hear it may have health benefits for morbidly obese lab mice - without going to extremes.

Even if we know deep down it's just a big hunk of candy.

Chocolate's image will never be the same now that recent studies have found lower cholesterol and better cardiovascular function in chocoholics hooked on dark cocoa.

Some earthy-crunchy markets are charging upward of $3.50 for a small Instant Bliss Beauty Bar from Ecco Bella, touting the concoction's skin-protecting benefits and added dose of lycopene, which is apparently really, really good for us, or something like that.

Even traditional confectioners are getting into this campaign to make over candy as the world's gift to health junkies. Mars released its CocoaVia bar last year in a few stores and plans to roll it out across the country by this month.

Its main appeal, apart from the fact that it's a solid piece of dark chocolate, something that's never exactly been a hard sell? It's specially designed for heart health. And though it is still candy, it's not sold anywhere near the Lik-m-Aid Fun Dip, but over in the health-food aisles. Despite the fact that it's, um, you know, candy.

But who's going to be able to eat only the recommended amount for promoting good health and heart functioning, a mere 1.6 ounces? Instead, most of us would opt for the Big Block, the recommended dose for developing love handles and saddlebags.

Meanwhile, the food, cosmetic and drug industries surely won't miss out on the health nuts' flavanol free-for-all, and I foresee the same crazes that other antioxidants have set off in the past decade: Attractive brown chocolate eye creams. Daily multivitamins - now with 87 percent more cocoa! And, of course, chocolate-enrobed burgers for fast-food chains' health menus.

Without chocolate being deemed bad, what will the country's mild-mannered rebels do for fun? This move toward branding their beloved chocolate as health food could drive them toward more dangerous acts of sedition, such as drinking cake batter with dinner, or free-basing trans fatty acids.

Where can society's meekest outlaws turn, if not to chocolate? The push for recognition of chocolate's many health benefits removes the substance's old social role, letting people practice moderate naughtiness within the safe confines of a candy shop.

The health brigade may not even be the biggest threat, since the food snobs are now starting their old wine-tasting game with chocolate; they'll mess up sweets forever if we let them get their way.

According to a recent New York Times article, cocoa with a traceable past and clear geographical origins is all the rage: a very bored smattering of people actually see the need for a sommelier of chocolate slabs, as opposed to a co-worker with a candy dish.

Upscale chocolate dealers, who are now operating out of swank storefronts in New York and San Francisco, have a perfect business model, as every American kid is primed to crave the cheap version of the product from years of trick-or-treating (much like little crack addicts in training). Later, when they're cut off from the freebie street supply, they'll have to pay dearly for a gram of the good stuff, once the gourmands' chocolate revolution is complete, that is.

A tasting wheel can't be far behind, with bulimic-style chocolate tastings based on the Napa Valley vineyard model: bite, swish, spit, repeat. Chocolate's not just for kids and premenstrual women anymore, but for peevish gourmets who should really get back to their quail eggs before they ruin a perfectly good substance with pedantic observations and arbitrary rankings. ("Sweet, yet bitter ...") It's not just the percentage of cocoa that counts now, but the land of origin and the specific growers, despite the fact that most people could barely make out the difference between a smooshed Three Musketeers and pralines flown in from Belgium last night.

This push will send the cost soaring soon, just like the price of a cup of coffee. As far as we knew in 1980, coffee came from magic processed crystals; now it comes from Sumatra and Ethiopia. If we had never learned the difference between a cup of Taster's Choice and Peet's, just think how much more cash we could each have - probably enough to start our own Starbucks.

Devoted chocoholics, like many coffee drinkers before them, could be priced out of their passion altogether, sent begging for surplus chocolate-flavored bunnies, reduced to scrounging for Cocoa Krispies.

People have never before needed an inducement to scarf down bowls of Milky Ways, either milk chocolate or dark. But the simple pleasures of a midafternoonsnack-size Snickers will be stolen away from office workers who have neither the time nor the inclination to start a chocolate cellar.

Besides, the standard bars from Hershey, Pa., simply won't do the trick as luxury-good marketers slowly convert Americans to their new cacao-head religion: 85 percent cocoa or bust. Preferably served in a boutique. With a guide.

In the past, we've all just enjoyed blends from all over the place, but we lowbrow cocoa freaks were apparently mistaken, our palates untrained. (We only thought we were enjoying it.)

If the gourmets get their way, chocolate will never be fun, or affordable, again.

At least we'll still have Jujubes - until the food nuts discover the health benefits of yellow No. 5.

Jillian O'Connor, [phone]

jillian.oconnor(at)dailynews.com

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