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By Hillary Ibarra

I once saved a Godiva cheesecake from near annihilation and senseless waste.

My fridge had been turned off on a lark by my preschooler for several hours, and I had to quickly choose what to save. The pounds of meat? No caveman bonfire for me. The milk and eggs? Warm and hatching. The limp celery and dry carrots? Not even ranch dressing could help them now. The two-ton, 5,000-calories-per-slice cheesecake? I grabbed a fork and dug in, simultaneously congratulating and loathing myself, salivating and sweating.

It turns out my desperate binge was a good decision. I may not have such a delicious choice to make again, for the world will soon run out of chocolate. Pleasure doomed in about five years, give or take, or so goes the rumor.

And all because we've been told for years that moderate intake of concentrated chocolate is not only yummy but great for our sex lives, our heart health, our skin and our emotional stability. If moderate consumption was good for us, we figured overkill was even better. Now the demand for chocolate is spreading like some greedy super virus in places like China. China! The world's most populated country! They have cookies that tell fortunes, for crying out loud. Isn't that enough for them?

To us addicts this chocolate prediction is as dire as a Mayan or Nostradamos end-of-world prophesy. We're skeptical that the world could really run out of our beloved cacao bean, but we're also anxious when we pause from ingesting our daily five-pound candy bar to consider the possibility. Like build a doomsday bunker for our dark chocolate morsels and bury canisters of cocoa powder in the backyard kind of jumpy. What will be the first pleasures to disappear? We fret. Chocolate fondue? It's just wasteful, really. Caf Mochas? Surely they don't use that much. Smores? Say goodnight to campfire fun! The only Halloween candy worth swiping remorselessly from our kids' bags? A heart-stopping fright! Fudge? Even Jolly Old St. Nick will lose the holiday spirit.

Don't look at me like that. Yes, I know I could survive without chocolate, but we cacao addicts aren't the only ones with dependency issues. We all — even those sad, misguided white chocolate advocates — have something in the foodie department that we think we must have to make life worth living.

For instance, my littlest boy has an unhealthy attraction to crackers. I had to regularly hide them from him when he was a toddler for fear his skin would dehydrate from all the salt, taking on a crumbly texture that would flake when I hugged him. But my efforts were for naught. Many times I entered my kitchen, investigating noises, to find the boy had scaled the counters and appliances and ransacked the pantry cupboards like Po in Kung Fu Panda, a buttery smile on his face. If the world ever ran out of crackers completely, he would likely go door to door, begging neighbors for stale bread and sea salt.

As for my dear husband, he loves beer. But he doesn't love just any beer, no cheap domestic concoction in a can for him. He only drinks fancy stuff out of a bottle from specialty breweries, lovingly coddled in a beer cozy. If the world ever ran low on hops, I would not be one bit surprised to find my desperate husband standing on a street corner most weekends with a sign held high reading, "Will work 4 Craft Beer!" And he's not even used to manual labor, poor guy.

But I worry most about my skinny oldest daughter. She's our protein lover. Yogurt, beans and eggs are all fine, but what she really craves is the heavy-duty red stuff. While my other kids come home begging for ice cream after school, she walks in the door with hungry eyes, scrounging for leftover meat from last night's dinner. What would we do if meat became too costly, reserved for the mega rich, and we were all forced into vegetarianism? Well, I know she would be alright. Though it would no doubt be an agonizing decision for her, she would eventually eat the rest of us.

We all have something. I just happen to be obsessed with chocolate. It got me through a period in my life while my kids were small when sleep was purely imaginary and meltdowns far too common. I owe it my life and sanity.

Everything's better with chocolate. Sex, social occasions, breakfast. Except skin care products. I mean, really, people! Haven't you heard the world's running out of chocolate? We don't need to be rubbing precious cocoa butter on our faces, lathering it into our tresses or massaging it into our flabby bums. After all, we don't know how long we've got before things get really serious here. There's no room for vanity. If you want to plump up your hair and skin and feel content with life, do it the old-fashioned way. Eat a candy bar.

But tell your Chinese friends chocolate is poisonous. It might buy us some time.

— Hillary Ibarra

Hillary Ibarra has had several humor pieces published on Aiming Low and the Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop blog and was recently published at Hahas for Hoohas. She is a mother of four who dreams of playing the banjo, living in Jane Austen's childhood home and writing for more than spam artists and 50 loyal readers, but can't seem to find them in the laundry. She is the mysterious blogger at No Pens, Pencils, Knives or Scissors. In her spare time she likes to threaten to sell her children to the zoo, and their little dog, too.