What is the real story of chocolate?
                     WHAT IS THE REAL 
STORY OF CHOCOLATE?
INTRODUCTION
Our love affair with chocolate began at least 4,000 
years ago in Mesoamerica, in present-day southern 
Mexico and Central America, where cacao grew wild. 
When the Olmecs unlocked the secret of how to eat 
this bitter seed, they launched an enduring 
phenomenon.
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Making of chocolate 
In fact, the making of chocolate has evolved into an 
industry so large that forty to fifty million people 
depend on cocoa for their livelihoods—and chocolate 
farmers produce 3.8 million tons of cocoa beans per 
year
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The Olmecs 1500 B.C.-100 
B.C.
The Olmec’s, famous for carving colossal stone 
heads, were the first people known to process and eat 
cacao beans, which they called kakaw. They devised 
the fermenting, drying, roasting and grinding process 
that remain the basis of chocolate production as it is 
known today.
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Mayans 1800 B.C.-1500 
A.D.
Perhaps the first chocoholics, they referred to cacao 
as ‘food of the gods,’ and carved the shape of the 
pods into their stone templates, artwork, drinking 
vessels and even used the beans in human sacrifice 
as well as for medicinal purposes.
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South-Western Americans 
1000-1125 A.D.
The early Mesoamericans traded cocoa with their 
neighbors living many miles to the north. People 
living in northwest New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon drank 
cacao from cylindrical jars as part of ritualistic 
practices. The closest cultivated cacao grew in central 
Mexico.
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Aztecs 1420 A.D.-1520 
A.D.
While the Aztec royals continued the tradition of 
drinking cacao at ceremonies, they could not grow it 
in the central highlands of Mexico, so they too traded 
for it, with their southern neighbors the Mayans and 
others.
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Who Eats The Most?
In 2010, Switzerland led, at 22 pounds per person. 
Austria and Ireland followed at 20 pounds and 19 
pounds. The United States comes in at 11th place, 
with Americans gobbling nearly 12 pounds apiece 
each year.
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Special Occasions
Many of the chocolate dollars spent go toward 
celebrating holidays, to bring home Valentine’s hearts 
or Easter bunnies, Halloween candy and chocolate 
Santa’s.
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Medicinal Use
Throughout history, chocolate has been used to treat 
a wide variety of ailments—most commonly to help 
thin patients gain weight, to stimulate the nervous 
systems of feeble people, to calm those who are 
hyperactive, or to improve digestion and kidney 
function.
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Production And Process
Most of the world’s cocoa is grown in the narrow belt 
10 degrees either side of the Equator because cocoa 
trees grow well in humid tropical climates with regular 
rain and short dry season. 
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