10 FASCINATING CHOCOLATE FACTS

Here are a few tidbits of information for you to enjoy along with your Tangle Chocolate Thins.

1. The largest chocolate bar ever created weighed a shocking 12,846 pounds! This whopping confectionary was created in 2011 by Thorntons, a chocolate firm in the UK, to celebrate their centenary anniversary. It took over 50 people to construct this bar, which measured over 13 feet long.
2. Cacao was once used as money. This plant was valued so highly by the Aztecs that they used the cacao bean as currency during part of their civilization.
3. Cacao trees can live to be 200 years old! Unfortunately for us, they only produce beans for about 25 years of their life, but this is an impressive feat nonetheless.
4. The scientific name for chocolate, Theobroma cacao, literally translates to “food of the gods.”
5. The average Swiss person eats 20.1 pounds of chocolate each year, making Switzerland the biggest chocolate consuming country in the world. In comparison, Americans eat around 9.6 pounds a year. Rounding out the top 3 are Austria and Germany, who tie in second place with an average consumption of 17.6 pounds per person.
6. It takes approximately 500 cacao beans to make one pound of dark chocolate. Each cacao pod contains around 40 beans, so each tree can produce 2 pounds of chocolate a harvest.
7. Chocolate can be a part of a balanced diet because of its high concentration of antioxidants. Without all the added ingredients found in mass-produced chocolate, eating chocolate can help prevent heart disease. At Tangle Chocolate, we use just 2 ingredients in our chocolate— organic cacao beans and organic cane sugar.
8. Sometimes white chocolate isn’t chocolate at all! Most white chocolates found in the U.S. market today don’t contain any ingredients that come from a cacao tree, but instead consist mainly of sugar, palm kernel oil, and milk powder. Real white chocolate doesn’t contain cocoa solids, the main ingredient in chocolate and what gives it the most flavor and color, but it does have plenty of cocoa butter, the fat that is pressed out of cocoa beans. 
9. Chocolate has a unique melting point at around 93°F which is below the human body temperature. This is why the tasty treat can melt so easily in your mouth.
10. Chocolate was the first type of candy taken into space when M&Ms were taken on the NASA space shuttle Columbia in 1981.

Additional Facts (sources):

 -https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/57507/20-things-you-never-knew-about-chocolate

-https://www.cnbc.com/2015/07/23/americans-eat-how-much-chocolate.html 

-http://justfunfacts.com/interesting-facts-about-chocolate/

-https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-derbyshire-15273355#:~:text=The%20largest%20chocolate%20bar%20in,Chicago%20chocolate%20maker%20in%20September.

-https://www.cargill.com/food-beverage/na/from-bean-to-bar#:~:text=Approximately%20400%20beans%20are%20required,pods%20on%20the%20higher%20boughs.