11 facts
1. Cocoa is a Nahuatl-word, a very old Aztec language. Based on the term cacahuatl – for cocoa bean – it turned into the Spanish cacao first.
2. Originally chocolate was a very bitter drink. For the Aztecs Xocóatl was a mix drink of water, cocoa, maize, vanilla and very hot pepper. Only in Europe did xocoatl became a sweet drink by adding sugar.
3. For ancient civilizations - like the Mayas or Aztecs in today’s Mexico - the cocoa beans were so valuable that they were used as currency. It was called “Brown gold”. Cocoa was sacred for them and they considered it as a gift from Quetzalcoatl, an important ancient Indian God.
4. The Spanish conquerors brought chocolate over to Europe 500 years ago and kept it a secret for a hundred years!
5. The melting point of chocolate is 37° C which is why it always „melts in your mouth“.
6. Do you want to smell of cocoa? No problem. Today’s, cocoa and chocolate are used as ingredients e.g. for special soaps - and for perfumes.
7. How much chocolate do Europeans consume? The Germans lead the table with 10.2 kilos per person! The Swiss come second where each person consumes 9kilos, followed by Brits (8.8kilo) and Austrians (8.5kilos)
Image: convert into bars of chocolate, this means that, on average, every person in Germany eat more than 100 bars of chocolateper year!
The further South you travel, the less they eat chocolate: in Italy 3,5 kg, in Portugal 2,0 kg and in Spain only 1,6 kg per person.
8. Cocoa fruits are harvested by hand only – like the past 500 years.
9. One single cocoa fruit can weigh up to 700 grammes and can contain up to 60 cocoa beans.
10. Most of the cocoa beans for our chocolate are farmed by almost six million small farmers and their families. Most couldn’t recognize the taste of chocolate or cocoa. They have never eaten chocolate one or drunk a cup of cocoa!
11. Not only adults are working in the cocoa fields: more than 200.000 children have to work under extremely dangerous conditions, mainly in West-Africa. Many of them aren’t getting even paid for their hard and dangerous work.
