Written by Guest — Thursday, October 16th, 2014

The Story of Chocolate infographic

Chocolate has fascinated people all over the world for thousands of years.

The Olmecs (1500 B.C. to 100 B.C.+) were the first people known to process and eat cacao beans, which they called kakaw. The Mayans were perhaps the first chocoholics, and wrote about cacao as “the food of the gods." Today, forty to fifty million people depend on cocoa for their livelihoods — and chocolate farmers produce 3.8 million tons of cocoa beans per year. U.S. chocolate manufacturers use about 3.5 million pounds of whole milk every day to make milk chocolate.

Chocolate-lovers might think their favourite treat defies words — and botanists agree. Debate surrounds what the pod is, botanically. Some say it is a fruit, and others a berry. Many choose the middle ground and call the fruit baccate, which means "like a berry", but the bottom line is that the pod doesn’t fit into any existing categories. Like chocolate, it’s indescribable.