did you know you might have a stack of gold sitting in your house well a stack of brown delicious metaphorical gold if you were living hundreds of years ago in this weird world on today's show we're diving into the history of chocolate although that stack of chocolate in your house might not be worth its weight and gold today chocolate is still a highly sought-after item the world over with the worldwide chocolate industry being valued at over $127 billion in 2024 even so that sweet C for chocolate will soon cost us a little more with the
average price of a chocolate bar going up about 8% since 2023 this surgeon price is due to climate change and there's a disease which is sweeping through the West African cocoa crops and cocoa beans are being smuggled still increased price or not people continue to enjoy different types of chocolate maybe even more so than before join me today as we follow this Brown trail of history and see just how much chocolate has changed throughout the world I'm Doug sharp and we're living in a pretty weird world the first stop on our brown brick road of
chocolate history starts in Central America specifically in what's now known as Mexico with the mme Mayes and Aztecs thech were the first people to experiment with the cacao fruit which is where chocolate comes from although they didn't keep any written history it's believed that they consumed chocolate in various Ways by making different types of food with it as evidenced by traces of chocolate in pots and by ingesting it as a ceremonial drink mixed with other spices now the ones who were really about this not so sweet delicious cocoa fruit were the Mayans the Alx passed
on their cacao knowledge to the Mayans who didn't just like chocolate they honored it you may think there's a big chocolate craze on now with more than 7.5 million tons of chocolate eaten every year but that's nothing compared to how valuable it was back then the mines revered chocolate so much it was used to finalize or celebrate any anything that was important got a huge wedding there was probably chocolate finished building a temple chocolate The Village dog just had puppies you beta chocolate again despite it being revered ceremonially chocolate was actually readily available for everyone
not just the rich as with the MX Mayan chocolate was described as thick and frothy often mixed with other additives like Chili Peppers honey or water which is probably where Mexican hot chocolate comes from just like the Mayans the Aztecs took their chocolate business to the next level to the point where they woried the cacao beans believing they were given to them by the gods so much so that they valued cacao beans more than actual gold they would still enjoy spiced chocolate drinks but they would also use the cocoa beans to trade for food and
other Goods there was even a notorious Aztec ruler named montazuma II Who Loved chocolate so much he allegedly drank gallons of chocolate every day much like how many of us enjoy our daily cups of coffee except he would use it as an aphrodesiac so it might have been more like wine unlike the Mayans however the Aztec chocolate called shatal was mainly enjoyed by the higher classes though occasionally enjoyed by the lower classes at weddings and other large events still the Aztecs definitely enjoyed more than their fill of chocy goodness which held a prominent position in
their culture from there the word of the Holy cacao traveled over the sea spreading its roots of culture into the Caribbean making its way over to the land of the Tropical Breeze chocolate held similar cultural importance to that of the mines Aztec andx one of the main indigenous groups who enjoyed chocolate culture were the tyos the native people of the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico cacao was a staple in their Agriculture and they valued it just as much as the mines did even indulging in similarly spiced choco drinks even today cacao holds a prominent role
in the agriculture of different parts of the Caribbean and with so many different terrains unique to the islands this allows for a wide variety of diverse cacao flowers meaning each Bean has its own distinct hints of flavor kind of like coffee these flavors can be spicy floral sweet or fruity these ranges of flavors were first discovered with the tyo population as they cultivated cacao in different parts of the islands for a more complex flavor profile however the word of the Holy cacao bean with was still only within the Caribbean and meso America so how did
chocolate get to the Eastern parts of the world well that's where the Europeans come in when the Europeans first came to the Caribbean and were introduced to Chocolate they realized its huge financial potential so then the Europeans subjugated the tyo population to slave labor profiting off the goods while draining the island of resources and potential economic strength due to this chocolate history in the Caribbean is left with a harsh mark as slavery had become intertwined with the chocolate industry at least at the beginning after wiping their hands of making the slaves do all the work
European ships brought back cacao to Spain where chocolate wasn't actually that much of a hit at first but before we hop on the ships to bring chocolate to Europe let's look at some other things Europeans brought back from the new world it would be hard to imagine a European without some form of tobacco in their hand though there's no records of natives using tobacco recreationally it was thought to be used for rituals and as a painkiller originally it was only used for medicine until Jean ni de which is where the word nicotine comes from said
that tobacco actually had a bunch of medicinal properties since then tobacco leaves have been used all throughout Europe becoming a staple of European culture and in some cases tobacco was actually used as a currency potatoes are a staple in many European dishes and one of the most important vegetables to every never be brought back to Europe it was such an important crop that its introduction to Eurasia improved people's nutrition all throughout which allowed for a more diverse and plentiful production of food the European soil previously thought to not have much use for growing different kinds
of crops was perfect for growing potatoes farmers were Overjoyed finally making a profit off the land they owned while also being able to feed their families plus because of the nutritious benefits of potatoes there was a thing called the Irish diet where you could eat potatoes milk and butter and get all the nutrition you'd need to survive though many countries in Europe don't really use spicy peppers in their food when the capsicum pepper reached to the West Indies and India it found its calling by being ground up into the popular spice paprika hungarians use Paprika
in a variety of different dishes and it was later crowned their National spice Beyond just flavor capsicum has plenty of health benefits such as having high amounts of vitamin A B and C it can also aid in digestion and be used to treat muscle and joint pain Mediterranean Middle Eastern and Italian food owe so much to tomatoes this fruit vegetable whatever you think it is is a Cornerstone of European Cuisine the Italians loved it so much they called it the Pomodoro which roughly translates to Apple of gold along with its nutritious qualities it was recently
found to contain lopine which is a powerful antioxidant thought to help deter cancer because of its popularity over time tomatoes have become a global food enriching people with their healthy flavorful juices and confusing people over what kind of food it actually is now let's get back to the main focus of this video chocolate there are many different stories on who actually brought chocolate to Spain some say Christopher Columbus brought it back after his last voyage to the Americas others say it was found on a Spanish ship after intercepting trade routes and others say that hernand
Cortez brought back chocolate after meeting with our Coco crazy friend montazuma II what we do know is that it actually took chocolate about 60 to 80 years to really take off in Europe cacao wasn't that popular in the early 1500s when it was first brought back probably because they were still out expanding their empire and all that other stuff but once they got tired and came back towards the end of the 1500s the Spanish Court started getting a little bit of choco fever once Spain started importing cacao beans from Mexico in 1585 representatives from other
countries started visiting Central America and bringing chocolate back with them to their countries soon enough a good portion of Europe was indulging in that chocolatey goodness so much so that the British used hot chocolate as a medicinal drink to treat tuberculosis and other medical conditions for a majority of these years chocolate stuck around as a medicinal drink flavored with pepper wine and coffee and it stayed that way until the Dutch came up with their own version of chocolate called Dutch cocoa Dutch cocoa was made by grinding cocoa butter from chocolate lure into powder then adding
alkaline salts to make it less bitter this invention laid the groundwork for solid chocolate with that many chocolateers popped up during the Industrial Revolution leading to the average worker being able to make 50 times the amount of chocolate paste compared to a worker before the Industrial Revolution with the equivalent of a chocolate Gold Rush going on the popularity of bar chocolate was propelled even further when Swiss chocolate maker Daniel Peter combined powdered milk with chocolate to make the world's favorite kind of choco treat milk chocolate after this Innovation after Innovation came rapidly in the world
of chocolate rodolph invented coning making chocolate bars smooth then came kual CH chocolate making it creamier then came tempering which gives chocolate bars their signature snap yet despite all these crazy inventions bar chocolate consumption in Europe was mere chump change compared to the place where it all started America well more specifically the United States ever since chocolate production was moved from the Americas to Asia and Africa the price of chocolate dropped and the market for chocolate went way up so much so that between 1896 and 1909 chocolate consumption in the United States increased by an
insane 44% as a comparison chocolate consumption also increased exponentially in Europe basically quadrupling as well but only between 1880 and 1902 meaning the US overtook that ridiculous consumption rate in less than 10 years that means by the time a grew up and went to college in England that same child in the US barely got into middle school and they had consumed nearly the same amount of chocolate beyond that the USA's love for chocolate is pure pure enough that they won't call anything that's not made out of 100% cocoa butter chocolate whereas the Europeans allow for
5% of cheap fats to make up their versions of chocolates sure the Europeans had innovated chocolate to higher and higher levels each time but none of them could match the success of American chocolate manufacturers like Mars mandelas and Hershey's who bring in a combined $87 billion in annual revenue that is of course if you ignore Swiss owned Nestle who brings in $18 billion every year still even with America's intense love of chocolate cacao Farms have strayed further and further away from America Outsourcing more and more of their cocoa from other countries such as the ivory
Coke coast and Ghana which make up the majority of the world's chocolate production though the Outsourcing has made bars of chocolate cheaper it doesn't come without its costs recently it's been reported that due to unfavorable dry weather conditions crop disease and over 15,000 tons of cocoa being smuggled out of Ghana lots of cocoa contracts will most likely go unfulfilled which may cause the cost of chocolate to Skyrocket again but as for now Americans still average about three chocolate bars per week but of course that doesn't account for the American Montas out there who are always
looking for their next chocolatey fix chocolate has been around for a long time and has been the object of sweet Cravings everywhere for hundreds of years though the way we interact ingest and experiment with chocolate has differed from person to person it seems to hold a Timeless charm which will never lose its luster from being expensive to cheap to slowly growing towards being expensive again chocolate will still be revered as it always has been with people enjoying it in different capacities whether through regular sugary milk chocolate refined bitter dark chocolate or chocolate harvested from special
grounds
