billion. Chocolate is big business, and the market is dominated by some of the biggest brands in the world. Names like Mars, Nestlé, Hershey's, Cadbury’s and Lindt are indelibly burnt into our minds from childhood. Humans have been cultivating the cocoa bean for more than 3,000 years. The Aztecs believed that cocoa was a gift from Quetzalcoate—“the God of Wisdom” (who am I to argue with him)—and they valued it so much that it was frequently used as a currency. Early Spanish visitors to South America recorded that 100 cocoa beans was “worth a canoe of fresh water, or could be traded for a turkey.” It was traditionally served as a fermented drink called “nahuati,” which translates as “bitter water.” The Aztecs fermented the beans and then ground them into a paste, which they mixed with water and sometimes other spices. It was whisked into a froth (think weird mocha?) and served unsweetened. While the Aztecs thought of the cocoa bean like a precious metal, early European explorers saw little value in it. Christopher Columbus encountered cocoa for the first time in 1502 off the coast of Honduras. Visited by a local chief aboard the Santa Maria he was served nahuati and offered the beans to trade. He clearly wasn’t enamored
of the cocoa, as he declined and carried on instead to “discover” tobacco and hammocks. Oh, and apparently America as well. Instead it fell to Hernan Cortez, a conquistador, who—on his return to Spain 20 years after Columbus had declined the chief ’s deal—was cocoa’s biggest ever PR executive. He sold the magical drink from “New Spain” that conjured images of the furthest, exotic corners of the great Spanish empire, of wealth. Of power. Soon there were commercial shipments of cocoa arriving on the docks of Seville and the world’s love affair with chocolate fluttered into life. It was still mostly made into a bitter drink, as the Aztecs had showed them, and often drunk as an (bitter) aphrodisiac. (I can’t vouch for this claim myself, but I have doubled my intake of chocolate—just in case…). Lots of claims have been made about the benefits of chocolate, most of which you’ll have to take like good, dark chocolate—with a pinch of salted caramel. But one thing was true—people loved it. There is genuine scientific evidence to suggest that cocoa is good for you. And it makes you feel better. There’s a reason why so many of us reward ourselves with a dairy milk after a hard day at work, or grab the chocolate ice cream and a blanket when the world goes wrong. It contains lots of minerals and is good for your heart, circulation and brain function. It also contains
flavanols— which are great for your skin and your brain. Both excellent things to take care of. But one of its active ingredients (the most important one) is phenylethylamine, or (PEA), which is the same chemical your body produces when you fall in love—which explains a lot. We love chocolate. And it is good for you—in it’s purest form. Dark, high percentage cocoa chocolate can be beneficial for you. But we know that large amounts of chocolate aren’t good for you. In the 1550s two popular commodities met: sugar and cocao. And from that our love escalated. The sweet tooth of the European quickly turned a bitter frothy drink into a solid, creamy bar of chocolate. The genius of the industrial revolution created machines that tempered and molded chocolate, mass producing bars in the tens of thousands. Companies like Fry’s in England and Hershey in the US started to bring the joy of chocolate to everyone. It was no longer a luxury. And as the Europeans’ love affair with chocolate grew the production base of cocoa drifted away from South America and nearer the customer. It found a new home in the fertile lands of colonized Africa. A huge market developed as plantations were set up to quench the world’s thirst for cocoa. Today the continent produces two thirds
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