Legal Law

fun facts about chocolate

There are so many weird and wonderful fun facts about chocolate that it’s hard to know which ones to include and which ones to leave out due to space considerations.

First of all, the Mayans used cacao beans as currency because they believed that they were more valuable than gold dust. They controlled bean production so that their currency would not be devalued.

White chocolate is not strictly chocolate. We have been plowing under a misunderstanding for many years. Chocolate has to contain cocoa solids, but white chocolate does not. Instead, cocoa butter is used in the production of white chocolate.

Europeans are the biggest fans of chocolate and account for the consumption of almost half of the chocolate produced globally.

Where was the largest chocolate bar produced? In the United Kingdom; it was made by Thornton’s for their centenary. It was a record, with a weight of 5,792.50 kilograms.

Toblerone is so popular that if the number of bars sold each year were extended to 62,000 km. That’s more than the circumference of the Earth.

Chocolate contains theobromine which is a very powerful stimulant. If you eat too much, it can prove fatal. However, you’d have to eat about 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 about due to an accident that occurred in the 1930s. Ruth Wakefield ran out of cooking chocolate, but undeterred, she used chocolate chunks in her cookie dough. The chocolate she used was Nestles, and she later sold her recipe to the company in exchange for a lifetime supply of chocolate.

A pound of chocolate contains 400 cocoa beans and a cocoa tree will produce around 2,500 beans. Beans are the seeds of the cacao tree. These trees are delicate, and cacao farmers lose about 30 percent of their crop each year.

Most of the world’s cocoa comes from West Africa, with the Ivory Coast accounting for about 40 percent of the world’s cocoa supply.

Ancient peoples fermented the pods of cocoa beans to make beverages 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.

Every November in Germany, people celebrate St. Martin’s Day with sweets and mugs of steaming hot chocolate.

How many of these curious facts did you already know? Comments are welcome.

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