Chocolate is the world’s most popular flavour

The proprietor of Ganong’s chocolate company in St. Stephen, New Brunswick, said he ate a pound of chocolate a day. That amounts to 2,214 calories before food, but it doesn’t seem to discourage chocoholics, who have an insatiable appetite for the world’s most popular flavour.

Chocolate is head and shoulders above other confections, like sponge toffee, licorice, barley candy and peppermint, and the industry denies charges that it contributes to obesity while citing chocolate’s many health-giving properties. It is a $50 billion business, and holds its own through economic recessions and changing fads.

Two things bring chocolate to mind at this moment. One is the unhappy closure of the Moir’s chocolate company, once of Halifax and more recently of Dartmouth, and a new book about chocolate, Chocolate, the Sweet History, by Beth Kimmerle.

The flavour of chocolate and its many uses is threaded throughout thousands of years of history, and some of that history is our own. The Ganong company was once the largest producer of chocolate candies in Canada. And for many years the Yeaton trademark was seen on quality candy, including chocolates, from their manufactory in Hantsport.

I once worked in a grocery store in Wolfville where a large showcase was filled with bulk Moir’s chocolates. Although they sold for 35 cents a pound, I had free access to them and gorged myself until finally I was no longer interested in them.

In the old days, chocolate producers had familiar family names – Cowan, Rountree, Fry, Cadbury, Hershey’s, Nestlé and Neilson – many of them lost through the mergers over the years. Chocolate bars with names like O’Henry, Sweet Marie and Mars were popular. Laura Secord chocolates were a high class confection, wrapped in classy boxes as gifts on special days like Valentine’s, Easter, Christmas and special dates.

Drank 50 cups of chocolate – a day!

Cocoa powder and chocolate are from the tropical tree called “cacao.” It is a native of Central and South America, grows as high as 40 feet and has pod-like fruit resembling cucumbers. A full-grown coca tree produces annually about 6,000 pink blossoms directly on the trunk. About 40 per cent of these mature, and the average yield per tree is about two pounds of cured beans.

Montezuma, the last emperor of Mexico in the early 16th century, drank 50 cups of chocolate a day (milk and sugar were added over time to enhance the taste of the cocoa). The bean was also used as a currency by the Aztecs, as American Indians used strings of polished shells as money.

It was Columbus, on his fourth voyage to the New World, who took cocoa beans back to Spain, where chocolate first became an important European commodity.

In London, a man opened a shop in 1657 where he sold solid chocolate, which only the wealthy could afford. Before the American declaration of independence, chocolates under the brand name “Baker’s” was being milled in Massachusetts. (I always thought Baker’s chocolate was the dark substance cooks used to make cakes and chocolate chip cookies, but the name actually derived from Dr. James Baker who, in 1794, befriended an Irish immigrant named John Hannon, who was a chocolate-maker. Dr. Baker set Hannon up as the first chocolate-maker in America. Many years later, the Baker firm was bought by General Foods and still later by Kraft).

Joseph Fry, an English physician, set up a company promoting the healthy properties of chocolate, and this company later merged with Cadbury’s. Cadbury’s were the sole supplier of chocolate to Queen Victoria.

In 1899, she sent half a million pounds of chocolate to the troops in South Africa during the Boer War. (After World War II ended, American troops in the American occupation forces became ambassadors of goodwill by handing out chocolate bars and gum to grateful children of liberated countries.)

In 1923, Frank Mars created the Milky Way bar, with a nougat centre. Mars is now a $14 billion company.

US largest producer, consumer now

The United States is the largest producer of chocolate products, and the largest consumer. Big names like Hershey and Lowney are known internationally. Milton Hershey offered chocolate bars for the masses for five cents, as Henry Ford had offered an automobile for every man who had a job.

In England, Rountree’s was a big name in chocolate even before the war, and while it was hard to get a chocolate bar during food rationing – sugar was scarce – air force crews were furnished with a Rountree dark chocolate bar whenever they flew on long missions. It was a great source of energy and the airmen appreciated the candy, although the chocolate often froze in the unheated aircraft, making it difficult to eat it.

In 1988, Rountree’s, in York City, was bought out by Nestlé’s. Henri Nestlé was born in Germany in 1814. He was known for Nestlé’s baby food and Nestlé’s condensed milk. The Nestlé company is today the world’s largest producer of chocolate products.