Chocolate

Chocolate is a preparation of roasted and ground cacao seeds that is made in the form of a liquid, paste, or in a block, which may also be used as a flavoring ingredient in other foods. The earliest signs of use are associated with Olmec sites (within what would become Mexico’s post-colonial territory) suggesting consumption of Chocolate beverages, dating from the 19th century BC. The majority of Mesoamerican people made Chocolate beverages, including the Maya and Aztecs. The English word "chocolate" comes, via Spanish, from the Classical Nahuatl word xocolātl.

With some two million children involved in the farming of cocoa in West Africa, child slavery and trafficking were major concerns in 2018. International attempts to improve conditions for children were failing because of persistent poverty, absence of schools, increasing world cocoa demand, more intensive farming of cocoa, and continued exploitation of child labor.

Dark Chocolate is produced by adding fat and sugar to the cacao mixture. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration calls this "sweet chocolate", and requires a 15% concentration of Chocolate liquor. European rules specify a minimum of 35% cocoa solids. A higher amount of cocoa solids indicates more bitterness. Semisweet Chocolate is dark Chocolate with low sugar content. Bittersweet Chocolate is Chocolate liquor to which some sugar (typically a third), more cocoa butter and vanilla are added. It has less sugar and more liquor than semisweet Chocolate, but the two are interchangeable in baking. It is also known to last for two years if stored properly. As of 2017, there is no high-quality evidence that dark Chocolate affects blood pressure significantly or provides other health benefits.

By the 15th century, the Aztecs gained control of a large part of Mesoamerica and adopted cacao into their culture. They associated Chocolate with Quetzalcoatl, who, according to one legend, was cast away by the other gods for sharing Chocolate with humans, and identified its extrication from the pod with the removal of the human heart in sacrifice. In contrast to the Maya, who liked their Chocolate warm, the Aztecs drank it cold, seasoning it with a broad variety of additives, including the petals of the Cymbopetalum penduliflorum tree, chile pepper, allspice, vanilla, and honey.

An early Classic-period (460–480 AD) Mayan tomb from the site in Rio Azul had vessels with the Maya glyph for cacao on them with residue of a Chocolate drink, suggests the Maya were drinking Chocolate around 400 AD. Documents in Maya hieroglyphs stated Chocolate was used for ceremonial purposes, in addition to everyday life. The Maya grew cacao trees in their backyards, and used the cacao seeds the trees produced to make a frothy, bitter drink.

The sequencing in 2010 of the genome of the cacao tree may allow yields to be improved. Due to concerns about global warming effects on lowland climate in the narrow band of latitudes where cacao is grown (20 degrees north and south of the equator), the commercial company Mars, Incorporated and the University of California, Berkeley are conducting genomic research in 2017–18 to improve the survivability of cacao plants in hot climates.

In 2009, Salvation Army International Development (SAID) UK stated that 12,000 children have been trafficked on cocoa farms in the Ivory Coast of Africa, where half of the world's Chocolate is made. SAID UK states that it is these child slaves who are likely to be working in "harsh and abusive" conditions for the production of Chocolate, and an increasing number of health-food and anti-slavery organisations are highlighting and campaigning against the use of trafficking in the Chocolate industry.

Representing only 5% of all cocoa beans grown as of 2008, criollo is the rarest and most expensive cocoa on the market, and is native to Central America, the Caribbean islands and the northern tier of South American states. The genetic purity of cocoas sold today as criollo is disputed, as most populations have been exposed to the genetic influence of other varieties.

Roughly two-thirds of the entire world's cocoa is produced in West Africa, with 43% sourced from Côte d'Ivoire, where, as of 2007, child labor is a common practice to obtain the product. According to the World Cocoa Foundation, in 2007 some 50 million people around the world depended on cocoa as a source of livelihood. As of 2007 in the UK, most chocolatiers purchase their Chocolate from them, to melt, mold and package to their own design. According to the WCF's 2012 report, the Ivory Coast is the largest producer of cocoa in the world. The two main jobs associated with creating Chocolate candy are Chocolate makers and chocolatiers. Chocolate makers use harvested cacao beans and other ingredients to produce couverture Chocolate (covering). Chocolatiers use the finished couverture to make Chocolate candies (bars, truffles, etc.).

According to a 2005 study, the average lead concentration of cocoa beans is ≤ 0.5 ng/g, which is one of the lowest reported values for a natural food. However, during cultivation and production, Chocolate may absorb lead from the environment (such as in atmospheric emissions of leaded gasoline, which is still being used in Nigeria). Reports from 2014 indicate that "chocolate might be a significant source" of lead ingestion for children if consumption is high (with dark Chocolate containing higher amounts), and "one 10 g cube of dark Chocolate may contain as much as 20% of the daily lead oral limit."

White Chocolate, although similar in texture to that of milk and dark Chocolate, does not contain any cocoa solids that impart a dark color. In 2002, the US Food and Drug Administration established a standard for white Chocolate as the "common or usual name of products made from cacao fat (i.e., cocoa butter), milk solids, nutritive carbohydrate sweeteners, and other safe and suitable ingredients, but containing no nonfat cacao solids".

Cacao trees are small, understory trees that need rich, well-drained soils. They naturally grow within 20° of either side of the equator because they need about 2000 mm of rainfall a year, and temperatures in the range of 21 to 32 °C (70 to 90 °F). Cacao trees cannot tolerate a temperature lower than 15 °C (59 °F).

Food conglomerates Nestlé SA and Kraft Foods both have Chocolate brands. Nestlé acquired Rowntree's in 1988 and now markets chocolates under their brand, including Smarties (a Chocolate candy) and Kit Kat (a Chocolate bar); Kraft Foods through its 1990 acquisition of Jacobs Suchard, now owns Milka and Suchard. In February 2010, Kraft also acquired British-based Cadbury; Fry's, Trebor Basset and the fair trade brand Green & Black's also belongs to the group.

White Chocolate was first introduced to the U.S. in 1946 by Frederick E. Hebert of Hebert Candies in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, near Boston, after he had tasted "white coat" candies while traveling in Europe.

He was an actor, known for Abacaxi Azul (1944), Carioca Maravilhosa (1936) and Rua Sem Sol (1954).

Chocolate was born on December 20, 1923 in Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil as Dorival Silva.

Although cocoa originated in the Americas, West African countries, particularly Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana, are the leading producers of cocoa in the 21st century, accounting for some 60% of the world cocoa supply.

Besides Nestlé, several notable Chocolate companies had their start in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Rowntree's of York set up and began producing Chocolate in 1862, after buying out the Tuke family business. Cadbury was manufacturing boxed chocolates in England by 1868. Manufacturing their first Easter egg in 1875, Cadbury created the modern Chocolate Easter egg after developing a pure cocoa butter that could easily be molded into smooth shapes. In 1893, Milton S. Hershey purchased Chocolate processing equipment at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and soon began the career of Hershey's chocolates with chocolate-coated caramels.

Known as "Dutch cocoa", this machine-pressed Chocolate was instrumental in the transformation of Chocolate to its solid form when, in 1847, English chocolatier Joseph Fry discovered a way to make Chocolate moldable when he mixed the ingredients of cocoa powder and sugar with melted cocoa butter. Subsequently, his Chocolate factory, Fry's of Bristol, England, began mass-producing Chocolate bars, Fry's Chocolate Cream, launched in 1866, and they became very popular. Milk had sometimes been used as an addition to Chocolate beverages since the mid-17th century, but in 1875 Swiss chocolatier Daniel Peter invented milk Chocolate by mixing a powdered milk developed by Henri Nestlé with the liquor. In 1879, the texture and taste of Chocolate was further improved when Rudolphe Lindt invented the conching machine.

New processes that sped the production of Chocolate emerged early in the Industrial Revolution. In 1815, Dutch chemist Coenraad van Houten introduced alkaline salts to Chocolate, which reduced its bitterness. A few years thereafter, in 1828, he created a press to remove about half the natural fat (cocoa butter or cacao butter) from Chocolate liquor, which made Chocolate both cheaper to produce and more consistent in quality. This innovation introduced the modern era of Chocolate.

The Baker Chocolate Company, which makes Baker's Chocolate, is the oldest producer of Chocolate in the United States. In 1765 Dr. James Baker and John Hannon founded the company in Boston. Using cocoa beans from the West Indies, the pair built their Chocolate business, which is still in operation.

Chocolate has been prepared as a drink for nearly all of its history. For example, one vessel found at an Olmec archaeological site on the Gulf Coast of Veracruz, Mexico, dates chocolate's preparation by pre-Olmec peoples as early as 1750 BC. On the Pacific coast of Chiapas, Mexico, a Mokaya archaeological site provides evidence of cacao beverages dating even earlier, to 1900 BC. The residues and the kind of vessel in which they were found indicate the initial use of cacao was not simply as a beverage, but the white pulp around the cacao beans was likely used as a source of fermentable sugars for an alcoholic drink.

While Columbus had taken cacao beans with him back to Spain, Chocolate made no impact until Spanish friars introduced it to the Spanish court. After the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs, Chocolate was imported to Europe. There, it quickly became a court favorite. It was still served as a beverage, but the Spanish added sugar, as well as honey (the original sweetener used by the Aztecs for chocolate), to counteract the natural bitterness. Vanilla, another indigenous American introduction, was also a popular additive, with pepper and other spices sometimes used to give the illusion of a more potent vanilla flavor. Unfortunately, these spices tended to unsettle the European constitution; the Encyclopédie states, "The pleasant scent and sublime taste it imparts to Chocolate have made it highly recommended; but a long experience having shown that it could potentially upset one's stomach", which is why Chocolate without vanilla was sometimes referred to as "healthy chocolate". By 1602, Chocolate had made its way from Spain to Austria. By 1662, Pope Alexander VII had declared that religious fasts were not broken by consuming Chocolate drinks. Within about a hundred years, Chocolate established a foothold throughout Europe.

The new craze for Chocolate brought with it a thriving slave market, as between the early 1600s and late 1800s, the laborious and slow processing of the cacao bean was manual. Cacao plantations spread, as the English, Dutch, and French colonized and planted. With the depletion of Mesoamerican workers, largely to disease, cacao production was often the work of poor wage laborers and African slaves. Wind-powered and horse-drawn mills were used to speed production, augmenting human labor. Heating the working areas of the table-mill, an innovation that emerged in France in 1732, also assisted in extraction.

The Maya and Aztecs associated cacao with human sacrifice, and Chocolate drinks specifically with sacrificial human blood. The Spanish royal chronicler Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés described a Chocolate drink he had seen in Nicaragua in 1528, mixed with achiote: "because those people are fond of drinking human blood, to make this beverage seem like blood, they add a little achiote, so that it then turns red. ... and part of that foam is left on the lips and around the mouth, and when it is red for having achiote, it seems a horrific thing, because it seems like blood itself."

Until the 16th century, no European had ever heard of the popular drink from the Central American peoples. Christopher Columbus and his son Ferdinand encountered the cacao bean on Columbus's fourth mission to the Americas on 15 August 1502, when he and his crew seized a large native canoe that proved to contain cacao beans among other goods for trade. Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés may have been the first European to encounter it, as the frothy drink was part of the after-dinner routine of Montezuma. José de Acosta, a Spanish Jesuit missionary who lived in Peru and then Mexico in the later 16th century, wrote of its growing influence on the Spaniards: