Most people love chocolate in one form or another. Whether as a chocolate bar, dipped strawberry, in syrup form, drizzled over cheesecake, or as a hot drink with marshmallows on a cold winter’s night. Chocolate is a feel good food, associated with positive emotions such as love and romance.
Anybody who’s every gone shopping for their sweetheart on Valentine’s Day naturally reaches for the king and queen of romance foods whether it be white, dark, fruit/nuts, or milk chocolate. Here are twelve “feel good” (and even healthy) facts on chocolate…
1. Chocolate’s Sweet History…
Chocolate was first discovered by the ancient Mayans then later by the Aztecs when they learned how to grow the trees. The word “chocolate” was derived from the word “xocoati”, used to describe the bitter, dark drink made from cocoa beans. Chocolate beans are grown on the Theobroma cocoa tree, the name which translates into “food of the gods”.
Chocolate was primarily consumed in liquid form for over 90-percent of the time since its existence. Historians estimate that the Aztec Emperor Montezuma II drank upwards of 50 cups of chocolate each and every day. Currently South Africa supplies more than 2/3 of the world’s cocoa, with Cote d’Ivoire the runner up supplying 33-percent of cocoa.
2. Chocolate Takes the Edge Off
Chocolate lovers everywhere can rejoice in the fact that their favorite sweet can actually be considered healthy. Did you know that the smell of chocolate can help calm your nerves? That’s right!
Research published in journal Nature Neuroscience shows that inhaling the fragrance of chocolate increases the amount of theta brain waves in the brain, which in turn promotes relaxation. Who’d have thought, the smell of chocolate is actually good for you!
3. White Chocolate Isn’t Chocolate
For all of you white chocolate lovers out there I’ve got some bad news: white chocolate isn’t actually chocolate. Yes you read that correctly.
From a technical standpoint you can’t call white chocolate…chocolate at all. Why you ask? Well because it doesn’t contain any cocoa, cocoa liquor, or for that matter, cocoa anything. Interesting isn’t it?
4. M&M’s
Most of us are very familiar with the yummy, crunchy, multicolored, candy-coated chocolates that “melt in your mouth, not in your hands”. That advertising slogan helped make M&Ms a household name in chocolate. But, did you know that M&Ms were not initially intended for the civilian market?
That’s right; in the year 1941 M&M’s were invented so that soldiers could enjoy chocolate without the sticky mess of them melting all over their hands. Hence, the slogan they “melt in your mouth, not in your hands”.
5. How Much Chocolate Do We Eat?
People love their chocolate. In every form be it dark, milk, or white, and as bars, toppings, drinks, syrups, chunks, or shavings. We also can’t get enough of the sweet stuff on cakes or donuts, over nuts and fruit, rice crispy, or plain.
It’s no understatement that Americans love their chocolate! In fact American’s love chocolate so much that at any given second they are consuming 100 pounds of it, according to USA Today. That’s 6000 pounds a minute, 36,000 pounds an hour, 864,000 pounds a day and just over 6 million pounds a week!
6. Full of Beans!
How many beans do you think it takes to make a single pound of chocolate? Ten? Twenty? One hundred? No. It takes 400 cocoa beans to make 1 pound (450 grams) of delicious, mouth-watering chocolate for your enjoyment.
If we look at the previous example of how much American’s eat, that means roughly 40,000 beans are consumed per second, 2,400,000 per minute, and 14.4 million cocoa beans per hour are consumed! That’s a lot of cocoa beans from bean to bar!