Originally consumed as a spicy drink, chocolate can be traced back to
the ancient Mayan and Aztec civilizations in Mexico, Central and South
America where the Theobroma cacao tree, or cocoa tree, grows wild in
tropical rain forests. Their drink was made from ground cocoa beans.
Since sugar was unknown to the Aztecs, they flavored the ground beans
with spices, chili peppers and corn meal. Some say it was frothed and
eaten with a spoon. The Aztec emperor, Montezuma, was said to drink
chocolate that was thick as honey and dyed red. He liked it so much that
he drank 50 goblets of it every day, and when he was done, he threw the
golden goblets away. They weren't valuable to him, but the chocolate was.
Solid chocolate as we know it today wasn't created until the late 1800's
in Europe. Hundreds of years before the Europeans got into the act, the
Mayans and the Aztecs treasured the cacao beans, later called cocoa, for
their value as an ingredient for their special drink and as a currency.
Christopher Colombus is said to have brought the first cocoa beans back
to Europe between 1502-1504. However, with far more exciting treasures
on board, the beans were neglected. It was his fellow explorer, Spain's
Hernando Cortez, who realized a potential commercial value in the beans.
Cortez, upon conquering the Aztec emperor and his people, sampled the
drink but didn't care for it. However, he did take some beans back to
Spain where it was made into an agreeable drink by substituting sugar
and vanilla for the chili peppers. This beverage was kept a secret from
other European countries for nearly a century. And when the British
captured a Spanish vessel loaded with the cocoa beans in 1587, the cargo
was destroyed as useless.
During the 17th century, the chocolate beverage quickly became the
fashionable drink all over Europe, but not without opposition. Some
condemned it as an evil drink. Frederick III of Prussia prohibited it in
his realm. In the countries that did accept the drink, it was limited to
the wealthy because of its high price. The London chocolate houses
became the trendy meeting places where the elite London society savored
this new luxury beverage. The first chocolate house opened in London in
1657, advertising "this excellent West India drink." As cocoa
plantations spread to the tropics in both hemispheres by the 19th
century, the increased production lowered the price of the cocoa beans
and chocolate became a popular and affordable beverage. In England, the
heavy import duties which had made chocolate a luxury for the wealthy
were reduced in 1853, allowing a number of cocoa and drinking chocolate
manufacturers to get into the business.
Chocolate was still exclusively for drinking until around 1830 when
solid eating chocolate was developed by J. S. Fry and Sons, a British
chocolate maker. Then in the 1870's, Swiss manufacturers added milk
creating the first milk chocolate.
Industrialization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have since
made chocolate a food for the masses. But despite its availablilty,
people continue to hold onto the notion of chocolate as a special treat.
In the early 1990s, annual U.S. production of chocolate and related
confections exceeded 1.2 million metric tons. Annual consumption in the
U.S. was about 11.3 lb per person.
Cocoa Plant
The Cocoa Plantgrows only in a narrow band around the center of the
Earth, > approximately
20 degrees north to 20 degrees south of the equator. The first cocoa
trees-Theobroma cacao-grew wild about 4,000 years ago in either the
Amazon Basin in Brazil, the Orinoco Valley of Venezuela or somewhere in
Central America.
How Chocolate is Made
The processing of the cacao seeds, better known as cocoa beans, is
complex. The fruit harvest is cured or fermented in a pulpy state for
three to nine days, during which the heat kills the seeds and turns them
brown. The enzymes activated by fermentation impart the substances that
will give the beans their characteristic chocolate flavor later during
roasting.
The beans are then dried in the sun and cleaned in special machines
before they are roasted to bring out the chocolate flavor. They are then
shelled in a crushing machine and ground into chocolate. During the
grinding, the cocoa butter melts, producing a sticky liquid called
chocolate liquor, which is used to make chocolate candy or is filtered
to remove the cocoa butter and then cooled and ground to produce cocoa
powder.
Cocoa
Common name for a powder derived from the fruit seeds of the cacao tree
and for the beverage prepared by mixing the powder with milk. When cocoa
is prepared, most of the cocoa butter is removed in the manufacturing
process. After the fat is separated and the residue is ground, small
percentages of various substances may be added, such as starch to
prevent caking, or potassium bicarbonate to neutralize the natural acids
and astringents and make the cocoa easy to dissolve in liquids. Cocoa
has a high food value, containing as much as 20 percent protein, 40
percent carbohydrate, and 40 percent fat. It is also mildly stimulating
because of the presence of theobromine, an alkaloid that is closely
related to caffeine.
Good News
Recent research suggests that chocolate may have some health benefits.
For example, scientists at the University of California at Davis
revealed in 1996 that chocolate is rich in antioxidants called
phenolics, the same compounds in red wine that seem to offer protection
against heart disease. The researchers calculated that a 1.5-ounce
chocolate bar contains 205 mg of phenolics, comparable to the 210 mg
found in a 5-ounce glass of cabernet. Even a cup of hot chocolate made
from 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder delivers 146 mg of phenolics.
And cocoa butter, the fat in chocolate, does not appear to be so bad for
your heart and arteries. Its principal saturated fat, stearic acid, is
converted by the body into oleic acid, a heart healthy monounsaturated
fat also found in olive oil. A 1994 study at Pennsylvania State
University found that volunteers put on a diet high in milk chocolate
(which also contains a small amount of milk fat) did not experience a
rise in blood cholesterol levels. In contrast, volunteers who consumed a
similar amount of saturated fat from butter had a significant increase
in cholesterol levels.
Scientists are also testing out why eating chocolate makes us feel good.
In 1996, researchers at the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego
announced that a compound in chocolate called anandamide activates the
same receptor in the brain as marijuana. While you would have to eat a
Herculean quantity of chocolate (25 pounds, by one account) to get high,
the substance may promote a sense of well-being. The researchers also
found two other substances in chocolate that interfere with the brain's
ability to break down anandamide, making the effect longer lasting.
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