Did you know that today is World Chocolate Day? It is suggested that the day was created in 2009 and is observed to mark the introduction of cocoa to Europe in the 1500s. So, what is chocolate made from, and what can we learn about it? Read below to find out some of our favourite chocolate-related facts in spirit of the celebration.
First of all, chocolate starts its life as the seed from the tropical Theobroma cacao tree. The seeds are predominantly cultivated and harvested in West Africa, Mexico, Central America, and Northern South America and are initially very bitter. Once picked, they are fermented, dried, cleaned and roasted before being deshelled and ground. Eventually, this leads us to cocoa mass, the key ingredient in chocolate as we know it. It’s a historical and lengthy process that has been perfect over several millennia. So perfected, in fact, that 1 billion people eat chocolate every day! There are loads of fun chocolate facts, including:
- It takes two to four days to make a single-serving chocolate bar.
- The Aztec emperor Montezuma drank 50 cups of cacao a day from a golden chalice.
- Each cacao tree produces approximately 2,500 beans.
- Chocolatewas a form of currency in the Mayan times.
- Europe accounts for more than half of the world’schocolate
- White chocolate is technically not a type of chocolate.
- Cacao trees can live for up to 200 years
- The name ‘Theobroma Cacao’means “food of the gods.”
- It takes four to five years for a cacao tree to produce its first beans.
- 9 out of ten people say that they love chocolate!
