Bitter water hits the big time

Chocolate, which has its origins in South America, is now part of a multi-million pound worldwide business. 
At Easter, British people spend over £230 million on chocolate. A massive eight per cent of all chocolate is bought at this time. 
Only at Christmas do people eat more of the cocoa-based foodstuffs. Although the large-scale industrial production of chocolate began in the last century, the cacao plant was first cultivated by the Aztec, Toltec and Mayan civilisations of Central America over three thousand years ago. 
The cacao tree is an evergreen, tropical plant which is found in Africa, South and Central America, the West Indies and South-East Asia. The fruit of this tree is melon-sized and contains 20-40 seeds. When dried they become cacao beans, which can be used to make chocolate. In English-speaking countries, they are often called cocoa beans. This is a misspelling from the 17th century when they were also called cacoa and cocao beans. 
The Aztecs used cocoa beans as money. They also used them to make a drink called xocoatl. This is from the word in the Aztec language, Nahuatl, meaning 'bitter water'. In Aztec times the chocolate drink was flavoured with spices and used on ceremonial occasions and for welcoming visitors. The Spanish found the drink more palatable mixed with cinnamon and sugar, but the recipe did not spread to the rest of Europe for another century. In the late 17th century, chocolate houses were set up in Europe's capital cities, where people gathered to drink chocolate. 
Until the last century, the chocolate drink was made from solid blocks of chocolate which had to be melted down in hot water. But in 1826, CJ van Houten of the Netherlands invented chocolate powder. This was made by extracting most of the cocoa butter from the crushed beans. 
The age of the chocolate bar as we know it began in 1847 when a Bristol company, Fry and Sons, combined cocoa butter with pure chocolate liquor and sugar to produce a solid block that you could eat. A Swiss company then introduced milk solids to the process which gave us milk chocolate. 
At the turn of the century, the British chocolate market was dominated by French companies. In 1879 the English company Cadbury even named their Birmingham factory Bournville (ville is the French word for town) in the hope that a little French glamour would rub off. But then came Cadbury's famous Dairy Milk bar which began life as Dairymaid in 1905. Clever advertising which associated it with the healthy qualities of milk from the English countryside quickly established the bar as a rival to the more decadent French brands. 
It seems that, for the time being at least, chocolate intake in Britain has stabilised at about four bars each week. This has forced manufacturers to look for new ways to attract customers.
The latest marketing trick is the so-called 'extended line'. This is when the humble chocolate bar becomes an ice cream, a soft drink or a dessert, to tempt chocoholics who have grown tired of conventional snacks. 
At the other end of the production process, cacao farmers are still feeling the effects of a crash in cocoa bean prices at the end of the 1980s. As most cacao farmers operate on a very small scale, many were forced out of business. Perhaps you could spare a thought for them as you munch your next chocolate bars.