Chocolate+(per+5)

__**Chocolate Bars and Cacahuatl **__

Many people around the world enjoy chocolate bars. Yet not many people still enjoy cacahuatl. The Aztecs ate a frothy beverage called cacahuatl, that is also known as chocolate drink. These two flavorful foods have many things in common as well as different. For example, a chocolate bar is sweet and sugary but, a cacahuatl drink is bitter and unsweetened. This is because the Aztecs filled their cacahuatl drinks with ingredients like red pepper and vanilla. Otherwise most chocolate bars are full of cocoa butter and sugar. One is a drink, and one you can bite into. Chocolate bars come in many flavors, but cacahuatl is by it self. Cacahuatl wasn't popular with many people, chocolate bars might be Americas favorite confection. Chocolate bars and cacahuatl are both made of cocoa beans from trees in warm climates. In other words, chocolate bars and the cacahutl drink share one thing in common and many differences. = = = = __**How Chocolate Affects Your Body**__ Most Americans can't stand chocolate cravings. Chocolate is in most desserts we eat and, even though it's irresistible, we never think about how unhealthy it is for us. Americans eat about three billion pounds of chocolate each year! That's about enough M&M's candies to reach the moon and back eleven times! We don't think about it, but chocolate contains a lot of sugar. In a regular milk chocolate bar there is about 20% milk, 20% cocoa butter, 10% cacao beans made into a liquid, and 50% sugar! In a sweet chocolate bar there's 15% cocoa butter, 15% cacao beans made into a liquid, and 70% sugar! People use chocolate in cupcakes, pudding, cookies, candy, cake, donuts, and in chocolate milk. Chocolate is good for us if we eat it as just a snack, but if you eat it daily for lunch and dinner, you could get very sick. Many people get sick from eating too much candy. Chocolate is bad for you, so, I think I'll just have an orange for a snack instead. __**Chocolate**__ = = __**A Sweet History**__ Everyone, from child to adult, loves chocolate. No one can resist that sticky sweet candy. But how did chocolate get so popular? Well, in Central Mexico, thousands of years ago, cocoa beans were very important to the Maya people. They even used cocoa beans for money! One day they created a frothy bitter drink called cacahuatl. Other groups like the Aztecs enjoyed the drink too. Then a Spanish explorer named Hernan Cort`es tasted it in 1519. Cort`es didn't like it, but he decided to bring it back to Spain anyway. At first, the recipe was top secret. They added sugar and honey to make cacahuatl taste good. When a Spanish princess married a French prince in 1615, the secret got out and Europe went crazy for the chocolate drink. By the 1700's, all over Europe there were chocolate drink shops where people would hang out. In 1755 Massachusetts sea captains began to trade directly with Caribbean farms for cocoa beans. In 1847, the first ever chocolate bars were produced in England. Then in 1860, the first candy shop in the USA opened for business, after chocolate bars were made. In 1911 candy bars like snickers, milky way, and Hershey were sold for the first time. In the summer chocolate bars melted and M&M's candies became very popular! Ever since chocolate bars were being made, it has become Americas favorite confection.

The information above is from the book The Official M&M's History of Chocolate Book, and the website []