Information About Chocolate

The cacao tree, known by its real name as “Theobroma.” which means “foods of the Gods” yields a fruit that contains the cacao beans. These beans are crushed in order to make chocolate. The crushed beans become fats, which is cocoa butter and solids which is made into a powder.

There are people that grow the trees, those that process the beans, more that work to make basic products for those that will eventually make the end product. There are some forty to fifty million people, around the world that make their living from working with cocoa.

The United States Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) controls the standards for what can or cannot be called chocolate. In order to be allowed to be called chocolate the product must contain cocoa butter. White chocolate does not have any cocoa solids in it but the USFDA allows white chocolate to fall into the chocolate category.

When it is gift giving time or season, chocolate tops the list of favorite gifts. It is estimated that over thirty six million heart shaped boxes filled with chocolate are given as gifts each year on Valentine’s Day.

Although chocolate has been used as far back as the ancient Mesopotamians, in 1765 it became known in the United States. On the advice of a penniless Irish immigrant named John Hanson, a gentleman by the name of James Baker started the firs chocolate company in Dorchester, Massachusetts.

In order to keep the farmers and laborers from being cheated the Fairtrade Labeling Organization International has developed a “fair trade” standard. Chocolate products that fall into this standard are Fair Trade Certified.

There is an outcry today for things organic and chocolate has not evaded this outcry. In the United States the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) inspects the farms that produce chocolate to be sure that they are not using pesticides. If they pass the test, the chocolate can then be marked as organic. Cacao beans are grown in the United States only in Hawaii for the production of chocolate.

In Ghana and the Ivory Coast where the largest amounts of cacao beans are grown, the people seldom, if ever, eat chocolate. This is their major export and they would rather have the money than the product.

The pod that holds the cacao beans is about the size of a pineapple and can have from thirty to fifty of the beans in it. However, unlike the pineapple which grows like any other fruit off a tree, the seed pods of the cacao tree grow from the tree trunk. In order to make one pound of chocolate you need to have about four hundred to five hundred of these beans.

Some people claim that they have an allergy to chocolate. While they do have a reaction after eating chocolate, researchers have found that the allergy is not to the chocolate but to one or more of the ingredients in the product they have eaten. Some chocolate product ingredients are corn, mild, soy, wheat gluten, peanuts or tree nuts, and other such allergens.