Many of us love chocolate and many countries make different kinds of chocolates as well as products in
which chocolate is an important ingredient. For some countries, like France or Switzerland, chocolate is one
of the main exports, bringing to these countries hundreds of thousands of dollars. But not many of us know
much about how chocolate is produced or about the history of chocolate and the chocolate making industry.
Chocolate is a kind of food that is made from the seeds of the theobroma cacao tree. ‘Theobroma’ is a
Greek word meaning ‘food of the gods’. The tree originally comes from the Amazon region of South
America. Hand-sized pods that grow in the tree contain cacao seeds - often called ‘cocoa beans’. These
seeds or beans are used to make chocolate. They started to use cocoa beans around 1000 BC. Later, the
Mayan and Aztec civilisations made a drink from cocoa seeds. They often flavoured it with ingredients such
as chili peppers and other spices. Drinking cups of chocolate was an important part of Mayan rituals such as
wedding ceremonies. People also believed that eating cocoa beans had positive effects on health. For
example, in Peru eating or drinking a mixture of chocolate and chili was said to be good for your stomach.
The Aztecs thought that it cured sicknesses such as diarrhea and one story says that their ruler, Montezuma,
drank fifty cups of cocoa drink a day.
Christopher Columbus, with his Spanish explorers, made his fourth trip across the Atlantic in the early
1500s, and arrived on the coast of Honduras, in Central America. There he discovered the value of cocoa
beans, which were used as money in many places. In the sixteenth century, another Spanish explorer named
Herman Cortez took chocolate back to Spain. The Spanish people added other ingredients such as sugar and
vanilla to make it sweet, and sweet chocolate remained a Spanish secret for almost a hundred years.
Chocolate finally spread to France in the seventeenth century after the marriage of Louis XIII to the Spanish
princess Anna, who loved chocolate. In about 1700, the English developed a new drink using chocolate and
milk, which became very fashionable. The popularity of chocolate continued to spread farther across
Europe and the American continent. The only Asian country to use it at that time was the Philippines, where
chocolate had been introduced by the Spanish when they invaded the country in the sixteenth century.
As chocolate became more popular, there was an increasing demand for people to work on the cocoa
plantations. Slaves were brought from Africa to the American continent specially to farm the cocoa. Later,
the cacao tree was taken to Africa and cultivation of the cocoa beans began there. Today, African
plantations provide almost seventy percent of the world’s cocoa, compared with one and a half percent from
Mexico.
