Who doesn't like chocolate? Although humans consume about 16 billion pounds a year of the stuff, not every chocolate lover knows its fascinating history. So let's explore that history, from a beverage considered the "food of the gods" in the New World to an inexpensive candy in North America and Europe, and beyond.
The core book, by two anthropologists, The True History of Chocolate, starts with the earliest known consumers, the Mayans, and moves to the Aztecs who used cocoa beans as currency as well as a source of a drink reserved for the elite. Europeans then transformed the drink and developed chocolate candy. When demand exceeded supply, they turned some of their colonies near the equator into chocolate plantations. Eventually enterprising chocolate lovers were determined to bring affordable chocolate to everyone, but at considerable cost to the growers and harvesters in Africa. And today's entrepreneurs are responding to a renewed interest in innovative high quality chocolate candy.
