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🌳 Plants 🌽 Vegetables and crops

Chocolate

Chocolate

📖 In short

Chocolate is a delicious treat loved by young and old. It's made from the seeds of a tropical tree called the cacao tree. The ancient peoples of Central America, like the Maya and the Aztecs, knew it already and drank it as a bitter drink with spices.

🤩 Did you know?

  • Hernán Cortés took cocoa beans to Spain in 1528.
  • By 1707 cocoa had become a popular drink in London.
  • The Aztecs used cocoa beans as money.
  • Today most cocoa is grown in West Africa.

🔎 Find out more

🌟 From the tree

Big fruits shaped like rugby balls grow on the trunk of the cacao tree, with seeds inside surrounded by white pulp. These seeds are cocoa beans.

🔍 From bean to bar

Cocoa beans are fermented and dried in the sun, then roasted and ground into a brown paste. Sugar, milk and cocoa butter are added, and it becomes chocolate.

💡 A journey around the world

Spanish explorers brought cocoa beans from Mexico to Europe about 500 years ago; people added sugar, it became a famous drink, and then chocolate bars appeared.

🎯 In moderation

Chocolate is tasty, but it has lots of sugar and fat. So let's eat just a little, and brush our teeth afterwards.

📸 More pictures

Chocolate
Chocolate

🧩 Test yourself

1 Which tree is chocolate made from?

2 Who first knew about cocoa?

3 Spanish explorers brought cocoa beans from Mexico to Europe about ?? years ago; people added sugar, it became a famous drink, and then chocolate bars appeared.

4 Which picture shows “Chocolate”?

🌳 Discover more

📷 Picture sources: Wikimedia Commons