Since 1992
Print and digital marketing
By Barbara McAllister
Word of the Day: Chocolate
If your favorite trick-or-treat candy contains chocolate, you’re not alone. An amazing 90 million pounds of chocolate candy is sold for Halloween in the U.S. The word “chocolate” comes from the Aztec word for the cacao seed, considered by Mayans to be a gift from their powerful god of wisdom, Quetzalcoatl. In Latin American countries, cacao trees are called theobroma cacao, “food of the gods.” Cacao seeds were so prized that early meso-Americans used them as currency. Thirty beans could get you a rabbit. To show how human nature has not changed all that much, crafty early inhabitants created counterfeit money by hollowing out real beans and filling them with sand or molding and painting life-like clay beans.
It takes a cacao tree four to five years to produce its first beans, and cacao trees can live to be 200 years old. Although cacao initially started in Central and South America more than 4,000 years ago, nearly 70 percent of the world’s cacao is now grown in Africa.
Early chocolate was mostly consumed in liquid form, often fermented. It wasn’t until 1847 that British chocolatier J.S. Fry and Sons made the first chocolate bar molded from a paste made from a cocoa butter and sugar paste. The Swiss added powdered milk a year later to create milk chocolate. Several years later, Henri Nestle created the Nestle Co. to bring milk chocolate to the mass market.
By the late 19th century and early 20th century, other chocolate companies like Cadbury, Mars, Reese and Hershey were mass-producing a variety of chocolates to meet growing demands. Two traditional chocolatey treats are often rumored to be kitchen mistakes: chocolate chip cookies and the creamy chocolate filling known as “ganache,” which roughly translated is French for “you idiot!” and said to be the result of a careless apprentice who mixed hot milk with melted chocolate.
While your average chocolate bar isn’t really considered health food, dark chocolate is shown to be heart-healthy and rich in antioxidants. Cacao pods are a fruit produced by the cacao tree. That makes cacao seeds fruit and since the American Heart Association recommends eating four to five servings of fruit per day, pass the candy dish.
