Chocolate:

1
Chocolate

• A Taste of History
• Bonnie J. Orozco, Ellsworth High School

2
Where does chocolate come from?

• Answer true or false
• Chocolate comes from syrup.
• Chocolate is from a cacao plant.
• Chocolate originally comes from Europe.
• Chocolate is a by-product of coffee beans.
• Chocolate originally comes from South America.

3
Chocolate comes from

• A bean?
• A pod?
• A kernel?

4
Is this chocolate?
5
Cacao is

• a pod full of beans.

Inside the pod is a layer of sweet pulp that has
anywhere from 20-60 seeds or cocoa beans embedded
in it. Over 1,000,000 tons of cocoa beans are
harvested every year.
6
Did you know?

• the cacao bean has been cherished for more than
  its rich flavor and was given as a gift at
  religious ceremonies.
• cacao was known for its ability as a cure-all
  medicine for almost a thousand years.
• cacao was a drink reserved
• for kings and nobility.
• cacao was literally
• money that grew on trees
• during early Mesoamerica.

7
Kakaw Cacao Chocolatl

• Chocolate and Maya civilization go hand in hand.
  Over 2,500 years ago in the Maya lowlands, the
  Maya were already making the chocolate drink from
  cacao seeds. Circumstantial evidence suggests
  that even earlierperhaps 1200BCthe Olmec of the
  Mexican Gulf Coast had discovered the process of
  turning the cacao seed into chocolate.

8
Chocolate as Medicine

• Colmenero de Ledesma (1631) reported that cacao
  preserved consumers health, made them corpulent,
  improved their complexions, and made their
  dispositions more agreeable. He wrote that
  drinking chocolate incited love-making, led to
  conception in women, and facilitated delivery. He
  also claimed that chocolate aided digestion and
  cured tuberculosis.http//whatscookingamerica.net
  /Beverage/HotChocolate.htm (Linda Stradley)

9
Chocolate in the 21st Century

• There have been many studies linking cocoa and
  chocolate with health benefits. These may keep
  high blood pressure down, reduce the blood's
  ability to clot, thus the risk of stroke and
  heart attacks may be reduced.
• Do you eat chocolate often?
• Do you celebrate when you eat chocolate?
• Do you have chocolate at weddings? funerals?

10
The KISS

• Dark chocolate or milk chocolate?

http//www.hersheys.com/discover/chocolate.asp
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Choose dark because

• Data from the recent study sponsored by The
  Hershey Company and previous data from USDA and
  others indicate that dark chocolate is one of the
  most concentrated sources of flavanol
  antioxidants among plant foods. The antioxidant
  capacity of 1 serving of HERSHEY'S EXTRA DARK
  dark chocolate (37g) is equal to 3 cups of tea, 2
  glasses of red wine or 1 1/3 cups of
  blueberries.
• http//www.hersheys.com/products/details/extradark
  /index.asp?nameEXTRA20DARK

12
Do you know?

• how the Maya prepared the first cups of
  chocolate?
• how cacao becomes chocolate?
• how cacao arrived in Hershey, PA and became the
  Hershey bar?

http//www.hersheys.com/discover/history/company.a
sp
13
Sources

• Linda Stradley. http//whatscookingamerica.net/Bev
  erage/HotChocolate.htm
• Dr. Brent Metz. Assistant Professor of
  Anthropology, University of Kansas.
• Hersheys. http//www.hersheys.com/discover/chocol
  ate.asp
• http//home.howstuffworks.com/chocolate1.htm
• http//www.cacaoweb.net/nutrition.html
• Science Museum of Minnesota. http//www.smm.org/sl
  n/tf/c/chocolate/chocolate.html
• Kakaw, el chocolate en la cultura de Guatemala.
  Museo Popol Vuh, Universidad de Francisco
  Marroquín, Guatemala. 2005.
• Presentación. Michael D. Coe, Profesor Emerito de
  Antropologia, Yale University.
• Etnobotanica del Cacao. Camero L. McNeil.
• Tierra de Cacao. Oswaldo Chichilla Mazariegos
• Chocolatera Nuez de coco incisa, con
  guarniciones de plata.
  Posiblemente del siglo XIX.
  Altura 15.5 cm ancho 11 cm.