A sweet history of chocolate

Chocolate swirl

We don't hear about "potatoholics" or "pavlovaholics", nor do we ever hear about "vegemiteaholics" or "sushiholics". Generally "holics" has a negative connotation, but not when it comes to chocolate.

When Cadbury changes its formula or reduces its size but still charges the same the reaction is nationwide. The world of chocolate is a world of passion, a world of desire, and a world of exquisite tastes.

Over here in the Ewe Ess the average American eats about 12 pounds (5.4kg) per year, adding up to more than 3 billion pounds! People buy about 48 million pounds of chocolate during Valentine week alone, and more for Halloween, Easter and Christmas.
Chocolate is made from the seeds of the cacao tree which grows primarily in the wild in the rainforests of Central and South America though it is also grown on farms in other tropical areas. Cacao trees grow to about 9m and in the wild taller trees growing around them protect them from tropical heat, wind and dryness.

About 3000 years ago the Maya people in Mexico and Central America created a spicy chocolate drink.
Cacao seeds are bitter-tasting.
The Maya ground the seeds into paste and mixed it with water and sometimes gave their chocolate an even sharper taste by mixing it with spices such as red peppers.
They drank their chocolate at religious and political ceremonies and it became a valuable trade item as they introduced their drink to other people including the Aztecs who did not have the cacao trees due to their cooler climate.
Cacao seeds were so valuable that Aztecs used them as money in the 1400s and 1500s. They offered cacao seeds to their gods and their chocolate drink was drunk mainly by royalty, priests, and warriors and merchants receiving special honours.

In the early 1500s Spanish explorers learned of the valuable chocolate drink from the Aztecs and they took the seeds back to Spain where they mixed the drink with sugar.
In the next 100 years visiting Europeans tasted it in Spain and wanted it too.
In the late 1600s and 1700s Italian chefs began using chocolate as a flavouring in other foods and even went as far as coating liver in chocolate and frying it.

After thousands of years, solid chocolate candy was invented. In 1847 Fry and Sons Company in England sold the first solid chocolate candy and in 1868 Richard Cadbury introduced the first Valentine's boxed chocolates in England.
Today we indulge in chocolate in every form possible — whether it is mixed with Guinness or whiskey, or any other ingredient.

SOME CHOCOLATE FACT-A-ROONIES
* It takes about 400 cacao seeds to make one pound of chocolate.
* A cacao tree doesn't produce beans for the first four or five years of its life but the trees can live to be 200 years old.
* Cacao and cocoa are the same thing — cacao is the Spanish spelling.
* In the USA the Hershey's company makes a small wrapped chocolate called a kiss — and they make 70 million every day.

Now that your appetite has been whetted it's time to head to the Thistle — wow — the store for treats when I was at Keith Street School in the 40s and 50s — or your local supermarket for that special chocolate treat.