This article is more for fun for all those Chocolate Loving
Touretters out there, as well as for those that may follow and
prescribe to the Feingold Diet as part of their alternative
treatment approch to Tourette's Disorder.

Paul Marshall
Owner/Editor

Eat chocolate, improve your health

Middletown chocolatier is nationally known for sweets that may ease
behavioral disorders New shops add service

STORY BY AL KEMP / PHOTOGRAPH BY GINGER WALL

09/21/2005

Chocolatier Nancy Kemble is not accustomed to someone walking into
her Broad Street shop in Middletown with a crinkly bag of Reese's
Peanut Butter Bites and asking her professional opinion of the
contents.

But Kemble has been in the business of making all-natural chocolate
for 25 years, so she knows her stuff -- essentially, sugar, butter,
cocoa and pure vanilla.

She patiently puzzles over the Reese's bag and its list of 20-plus
ingredients. "It's not food," she says with a sigh.

"What you should do when you read a label is go from the bottom
backwards, because that's where the artificial colors and flavors
usually are," she says.

Just as the sweets in the movie "Chocolat" were reputed to have
restorative powers, Kemble's confections at the Squirrel's Nest are
said to work wonders by her primary customers, followers of the
Feingold diet.

The diet is named for Dr. Benjamin Feingold, a pediatrician and
allergist who in 1973 proposed that certain artificial ingredients
aggravate and even cause learning disorders and behavior problems in
some people.

Many adherents are people seeking a non-drug treatment for attention
deficit disorders. Some are simply taking an all-natural approach to
nutrition.

"Eighty-five percent [of her business] is to people with ADD, ADHD,
Tourette's [syndrome] and autism," she says. "I have hundreds of
families who swear by Feingold."

"I can smell artificial ingredients," she says. She's only half
joking.

Preservative-free chocolate such as Kemble's is a tiny slice of the
American chocolate pie, said Susan Smith, senior vice president of
public affairs with the National Confectioners Association, which
has 450 member companies.

But for Feingold adherents, the Squirrel's Nest is a nationally
known resource. "For us, it's a godsend," said Annette Miller, vice
president of the Feingold Association of the United States, which
has 30,000 members.

Kemble's shop smells sweet and pure, like one perhaps run by a young
Willy Wonka before he went global.

The shelves are laden with butter creams (her top seller), toffees
and pretzels, all enrobed in chocolate that's daringly dark or milky
and mellow.

While the Squirrel's Nest attracts foot traffic from a fair number
of garden-variety chocoholics, the bulk of Kemble's business is mail
order.

At Halloween she ships out hollow jack-o'-lanterns and thousands of
lollipops. The top sellers at Christmas are corporate gift boxes. At
Easter, her peak season, her shelves spill over with chocolate cats,
dogs, pigs, ponies, trucks, tractors and "tons of bunnies."

Kemble started making all-natural sweets when she learned that her
firstborn child, Jason, could not tolerate artificial colors or
flavors.

Jason died from a rare cancer when he was almost 16, and Kemble
carried on with the chocolate business as a way to cope with her
grief.

"Coming to work is what kept me going. Helping other kids is what
kept me going," she says. "This store is not about money at all."

"The best thing is that people are becoming more aware of what they
eat.''

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