On average, Americans eat about a pound of chocolate a month, so about 12 pounds a year.
To get to the bar, you have to go back to the bean.
"Chocolate: The Exhibition" at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University in Philadelphia starts in the rainforest, where you'll find the tropical cacao tree and its pods, better known as chocolate.
As soon as you walk in, you'll smell it. They pump in the sweet smell of chocolate.
While you try to take a whiff, let's get back to basics.
"I think a lot of people don't even know that chocolate comes from a plant, and especially a crazy plant like this one," said Mary Bailey, special exhibits education coordinator. "I just think it's fascinating that we ever took something like this and turned it into a chocolate bar."
Records date back 5,000 years, and in MesoAmerica, warriors would drink it before battle. Mayans would whip up the bitter concoction for their kings and queens, and you can blame your modern day chocolate habit on monkeys.
"The reason why we think that they even started consuming it is because they saw monkeys eating it and they weren't poisoned, so they knew it was safe to eat," Bailey explained.
From consumption to currency, the Aztecs even used cacao seeds to pay their taxes. Eventually, sugar was added and Europeans made chocolate mainstream.
Chocolate houses predate coffee houses.
In all this time, the process to get to the good stuff remains relatively the same.
Perhaps, it's even more important then to know how it all began and how to keep it going.
from 69News:Home http://ift.tt/1CeQf4T
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