Chocolate Trivia: 10 awesome facts about “the food of the gods”.

We crave chocolate because it is good! It tastes good. It smells good. It feels good when it melts on our tongue. And all of those ‘feelings’ are the result of our brain releasing chemicals in response to each chocolate experience. So check out some cool facts about it!

1. People spend more than 7 billion dollars a year on chocolate.

2. Chocolate does not cause or aggravate acne, this is a myth.

3. Dark chocolate is most popular among men.

4. The largest chocolate bar ever manufactured was in Italy in 2000 and the bar had a weight of 2268 kilograms.

5. The scientific name for the tree that chocolate comes from, Theobroma cacao, means “food of the gods.”

6. It takes a almost a full year for a cocoa tree to produce enough pods to make 10 standard-sized Hershey bars.

7. Chocolate has over 600 flavor compounds, while red wine has just 200.

8. Theobromine, the compound in chocolate that makes it poisonous to dogs, can kill a human as well. You’d have to be a real glutton to go out this way though, as an average 10-year-old child would have to eat 1,900 Hershey’s miniature milk chocolates to reach a fatal dose.

9. The ancient Maya are believed to be the first people to regularly grow cacao trees and drink chocolate. The Aztecs got it later, but they had to trade for cacao because they couldn’t grow the trees.

10. More than twice as many women than men eat and crave chocolate.

11. The first chocolate bar was produced by Cadbury in England in 1842.

12. The word Chocolate comes from the Aztec word xocolatl, meaning, bitter water.

13. 71% of American chocolate eaters prefer milk chocolate.

14. Chocolate makers use 40% of the world’s almonds and 20% of the world’s peanuts.

15. Nestle introduced Chocolate Chips in 1939.