Chocolate [antikvár]

1 The world of chocolate Most people love the taste of chocolate. Some enjoy sweet milk chocolate and others prefer strong dark chocolate. But most chocolate lovers agree - there is no other food like it. It has a wonderful rich taste which stays in your mouth. Did you know that chocolate has more than 300 different flavours in it? It is no surprise that chocolate is now more and more popular in countries all around the world. But what is chocolate and where did it first come from? Chocolate is made from the beans of the cacao tree. These trees first grew in the rainforests of Central and South America and people began to use the beans a very long time ago. The tree has large fruits called pods and these hold the beans inside. The scientific name for the cacao tree, Theobroma cacao, tells us about the wonderful food that comes from it. Theobroma means 'food of the gods'. People now grow cacao trees in more than twenty different countries and not just in Central or South America. The trees need hot weather and you can find them in Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Ivory Coast in Africa too. Farmers grow around 4 million tonnes of cacao beans a year and more than a third of this comes from the Ivory Coast.