Mmmm… POLKADOT SHROOM BARS. Double Deckers, Mars Bars, Milky Bars, Snickers, Flakes, Crunchie bars, Ripples… What’s your favourite?It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when chocolate was born, but it’s apparent it was savoured right from the start. Here are 10 things you might not know about personalised chocolate bars (or chocolate in general!)
In the UK, we eat around 70,000 London buses worth of the stuff every year – that’s around 500,000 tonnes! It’s our favourite little bit of indulgence, whether it’s a couple of chocolate-coated biscuits with a nice cup a’ cha, or curling up in front of a film, pigging out on a bar of your choice.
When you’re feeling a bit blue, what better pick-me-up than – yeah, you guessed it – a box of chocolates or a delicious bar? Nowadays, you can even get personalised chocolate bars and boxes of personalised chocolates, which you can customise with any name and even a li’l message of your choice.
All the choccie we devour is courtesy of the special plant known as the cacoa (kah KOW) tree. These plants contain pulp-covered seeds, and were discovered 2,000 years ago in the tropical rainforests of the Americas. Once fermented and dried, the seeds are processed into that creamy tasty treat we know as chocolate.
However, recent research suggests the invention of chocolate may be even older – back three or even four millennia – to pre-Columbian cultures of Mesoamerica, such as the Olmec. The origin of the word “chocolate” has been traced back to the Aztec word “xocoatl,” which referred to a bitter drink brewed from cacao beans.
