First, the Mayans used cacao beans as currency, as they believed that they were more valuable than gold dust. They controlled the production of beans so that their currency wouldn't depreciate in value. White chocolate isn't strictly speaking chocolate. We have been laboring under a misapprehension for many years. Chocolate has to contain cocoa solids, but white chocolate doesn't have any in it. Instead, cocoa butter is used in the production of white chocolate. Europeans are the biggest fans of chocolate, accounting for the consumption of nearly half of the chocolate that is produced globally. Here was the biggest chocolate bar produced? In the UK; it was made by Thornton's for its centenary. It was a record breaker, weighing 5,792.50 kilograms. Tolerance is so popular that if the number of bars sold each year were to be put end to end, they would stretch to 62,000 km, that's more than the Earth's circumference. Chocolate contains theobromine, which s a very powerful stimulant. If you eat too much of it, it can prove fatal. However, you would have to eat around 22 pounds of the stuff in one sitting, which isn't really possible. Theobromine poisoning causes seizures, heart failure, dehydration, and acute kidney damage. Chocolate chip cookies, adored by many around the world, came into being because of an accident which occurred in 1930. Ruth Wakefield ran out of cooking chocolate, but undeterred, she used pieces of chocolate in her biscuit dough. The chocolate she used was Nestles, and she later sold her recipe to the firm in return for a lifetime's supply of chocolate. A pound of chocolate contains 400 cocoa beans, and a cacao tree will produce around 2,500 beans. The beans are the seeds of the cacao tree. These trees are delicate, and cocoa farmers lose about 30 percent of their crop every year. Most of the world's cocoa comes from West Africa, with accounting for around 40 percent of the world's cacao supply. Ancient people fermented the pods of the cacao beans to make drinks other than chocolate. Montezuma, the Aztec emperor, used to drink 50 cups of chocolate a day. These were served to him in a golden chalice.
Dark chocolate rather than milk chocolate is better for our health because it contains more of the cocoa bean than white chocolate. Researchers believe that the flavors, present in dark chocolate, stimulate the endothelium (the arteries lining), thus producing nitric oxide (NO3). This, in turn, transmits messages to the arteries, instructing them to relax, so reducing blood pressure. A hundred gram bar of dark chocolate containing 70-85% of cocoa has various minerals in it, including selenium, which is a proven mood enhancer. It has 98% of the recommended daily dose of manganese, 67% of the recommended dose of iron, 58% of the recommended dose of magnesium, 89% of the recommended dose of copper and a huge 98% of manganese. It also has zinc, phosphorus, and potassium in it. In other words, dark chocolate is good for us! Another plus point is that it contains less sugar than milk chocolate. Caffeine and theobromine are also to be found in dark chocolate, but the small amounts of these stimulants are extremely unlikely to keep you awake at night! You can't compare eating dark chocolate to drinking coffee with caffeine in it.
Every November in Germany, people celebrate Saint Martin's Day with sweets and mugs of steaming hot chocolate.
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