Things You Never Knew About Chocolate

#This is a collaborative post

Chocolate is among the most popular foods in the world. Many of us eat the stuff every day. It’s fantastically versatile, and comes as a food and as a drink, in shades ranging from pure-white (we’ll get to that shortly) to 100% black. We buy it for everyday consumption in handy bar form, and as a treat for special occasions in the form of chocolate hampers and boxed selections. The darker stuff can even be incorporated into everything from chili-con-carne to dry-rub ribs.

But as much as we consume the stuff, some of the more obscure facts about chocolate are not widely-appreciated. Let’s correct that by running through a few things you might not have known about it!

Cocoa and Cacao are the same thing

First, let’s clarify some terminology: both of these words, though they’re spelled and often pronounced differently, are synonymous. They refer to the same plant! It takes a lot of beans to make a chocolate bar. Of the stuff that’s taken from a tree, just a tiny proportion makes its way into the final chocolatey product. According to the Rainforest Alliance, it takes 400 beans to make a pound of chocolate, with
each tree producing around fifty pods of around thirty beans each per year. As such, it needs to be farmed intensively to be commercially viable.

Solid Chocolate is quite a recent invention

To begin with, chocolate was largely enjoyed as a drink. It wasn’t until the mid-19 th -century that Fry and Sons developed the first eatable chocolate, using sugar and cocoa butter. The first efforts were a little bit on the grainy side – but that distinctive smoothness came with further refinement.

Drinking Chocolate was preferred by the Aztecs

Before cocoa eventually arrived in Europe, it was being enjoyed by the Aztecs as a drink. This stuff was, however, quite unlike the milky, sweet drink we’re all used to. On the contrary, it was dark and bitter, and brought out only on special occasions.

Cocoa was used as money

The cocoa bean actually functioned as a unit of currency at one point in Aztec civilisation, with everyone having to pay a tribute (a kind of tax). It was limited in supply, easily divisible, and could be transported from place to place. Not only that, but the stuff was treated with a quasi-religious reverence.

Cocoa now comes from Africa

Though cocoa was first cultivated in the Americas, the bulk of modern production now takes place in Africa. The Ivory Coast alone accounts for almost a third of global production.

White Chocolate isn’t Chocolate

Despite what clever marketers might have you believe, the white version of the stuff doesn’t qualify as chocolate, as it lacks cocoa solids or liquor. It instead contains cocoa butter, which isn’t quite the same thing!

Have you learned something new about chocolate today?? 🙂