H. P. Newquist - The Book of Chocolate: The Amazing Story of the World’s Favorite Candy

CHOCOLATE. THERES NOTHING ELSE LIKE IT ON THE PLANET. Just saying the word chocolate evokes thoughts of deliciousness, sweetness, and irresistibility.

Pick a flavor. Pick a sweet. Pick your favorite thing to eat. For nearly everyone who reads this book, chocolate is going to be their favorite flavor, or in their top two or three.

There is something special about chocolate. The way it tastes, the way it looks, smells, and feels. The way it is packaged and wrapped. The way it is given as a gift, as a treat, as a reward. No other food has the power to evoke emotions the way chocolate does. If you dont think so, try giving someone chicken as a gift on Valentines Day. Or try filling a Halloween bag with different kinds of cheese.

You get the idea. It doesnt matter how old you are: chocolate, more than any other food, is special.

Chocolate in most cultures is the very definition of candy. It is a staple of gift giving throughout the year, from Valentines Day to Easter to Mothers Day to Halloween. Americans eat an average of ten pounds per person per year, while Europeans eat as much as twenty-five pounds. Chocolate candy in all its forms is produced in the billions of pieces. More than eighty million Hersheys Kisses alone are made each and every day. More than one hundred billion M&Ms are made each year.

At various times in history, chocolate has been the embodiment of luxury, royalty, privilege, love, and health. Today you can purchase chocolate at conceivably every single grocery, deli, restaurant, convenience store, bakery, pharmacy, gas station, and mall in America.

Cocoa, the ingredient at the heart of chocolate, is one of historys most prized organic substances. Few natural products have been as intensely fought over, and jealously guarded, as cocoa. Once upon a time, it was even used as a form of money, its value greater than gold. Nations have battled over it, families have made astounding fortunes from it, towns have been built around it, movies and books have featured it. It is one of the most precious crops grown on Earth.

Despite its huge popularity, chocolate has rather tiny origins. The story of chocolate starts in rain forests and plantations along the equator, where its creation begins with a fly no bigger than the head of a pin.

WHAT IS CHOCOLATE,
REALLY?

ALL CHOCOLATE COMES FROM TREES.

Yes, trees. Chocolate itself doesnt grow on trees, but cocoa does, and cocoa is the primary ingredient in chocolate.

The cocoa tree can only grow in very specific areas of the world, limited to a narrow band above and below the equator.

Cocoa comes from the seeds of the cocoa tree (also called the cacao tree), a medium-size tree that grows to a height of about twenty-five feet. The cocoa tree is an extremely sensitive plant. It requires high heat, preferably maintained between 70 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit, as well as a tremendous amount of rain: more than forty-eight inches per year. If any of these conditions are missing, the cocoa tree cant survive. This means that it can only grow naturally on land between a latitude of 20 degrees above and 20 degrees below the equator, where many of the worlds rain forests lie.

The cocoa tree has tiny yellow-white and pink flowers that grow right out of the trunk. They bloom all year round. These flowers are barely half an inch in diameter, and in order for the tree to produce seeds, the flowers have to be pollinated. Many of the worlds plants are pollinated by bees, butterflies, and birds. But these creatures are too big to crawl into the tiny cocoa flower to deposit pollen. That task can be performed by only one minuscule insect: the midge.

The midge is a fly so small you can barely see it. In fact, it has relatives in North America called no-see-ums, due to their size. A full-grown midge is barely / of an inch long.

The midge is barely as big as the head of a pin.

In order to stay airborne during flight, the midges wings must beat an incredible one thousand times per second. (To understand how fast that is, consider this: You can blink your eyes five times a second if youre incredibly quick about it. For each blink, a midges wings beat two hundred times.)

The midge carries pollen from flower to flower, fertilizing the cocoa tree. Only about three flowers out of every thousand manage to grow into a seedpod. This results in about thirty seedpods per tree during each harvesting season. Even though pods grow out from the tree all year round, growers usually pick them during just two or three harvests per year.