1. Half of Americans choose what chocolate they eat by the shape of the piece.

2. American chocolate manufacturers use about 1.5 billion pounds of milk—only surpassed by the cheese and ice cream industries.

3. On his fourth voyage to the New World, in 1502, Christopher Columbus was the first European to taste chocolate.

4. In soda fountain slang, a “bucket of mud” is a bowl of chocolate ice cream

5. In a recent survey, 70 percent of female respondents said they would rather have chocolate than sex.

6. Chocolate first appeared on film when Jean Harlow ate candy in the 1933 comedy Dinner at Eight.

7. Sixty-three percent of Americans say they can’t resist buying a chocolate for themselves when buying chocolates for someone else.

8. The average American eats about 10 pounds of chocolate a year. The Swiss average 20 pounds a year.

9. It takes 400 cacao beans to make one pound of chocolate.

10. Nabisco uses more than 37 million pounds of chocolate a year to make Chips Ahoy cookies.

1. You would have to eat more than a dozen Hershey Bars, for example, to get the amount of caffeine in one cup of coffee.

2. Chocolate has long been heralded for its value as an energy source. A single chocolate chip provides sufficient food energy for an adult to walk 150 feet; hence, it would take about 35 chocolate chips to go a mile, or 875,000 for an around-the-world hike.

3. Although chocolate is not an aphrodisiac, as the ancient Aztecs believed, chocolate contains phenylethylamine (PEA), a natural substance that is reputed to stimulate the same reaction in the body as falling in love. Hence, heartbreak and loneliness are great excuses for chocolate overindulgence.

4. A favorite dish of the Aztecs was roast turkey with chocolate gravy.

5. It is reported that Napoleon carried chocolate with him on his military campaigns, and always ate it when he needed quick energy.

6. While solid chocolate certainly is high in fat, just over half the calories in bittersweet, semisweet, and milk chocolate come from fat. And even though the cocoa butter in chocolate is mostly saturated fat, studies have shown that it doesn’t appear to raise blood cholesterol.

7. It’s a common myth that chocolate aggravates acne. Professional dermatologists today do not link acne with chocolate.

8. Ten percent of U.S. Recommended Daily Allowance of iron is found in one ounce of baking chocolate or cocoa.

9. Chocolate can be lethal to dogs. Theobromine, an ingredient that stimulates the cardiac muscle and the central nervous system, causes chocolate’s toxicity. About two ounces of milk chocolate can be poisonous for a 10-lb puppy.

10. Consumers spend more than $7 billion a year on chocolate.

11. US consumers eat 2.8 billion pounds of chocolate annually, representing nearly half of the world’s supply.

12. The best selling candy bar in the U.S is Snickers.

13. Annual per capita consumption of chocolate is 12 pounds per person.

14. American chocolate manufacturers use about 1.5 billion pounds of milk — only surpassed by the cheese and ice cream industries.

15. Most Americans prefer milk chocolate, approximately 92 percent, but dark chocolate’s popularity is growing rapidly.

16. Chocolate syrup was used for blood in the famous 45 second shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s movie, “Psycho” which actually took 7 days to shoot.

17. Chocolate has over 500 flavor components, more than twice the amount found in strawberry and vanilla.

18. Chocolate manufacturers currently use 40 percent of the world’s almonds and 20 percent of the world’s peanuts.

19. Chocolate syrup was used for blood in the famous shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s movie, Psycho

20. White chocolate contains no caffeine.

Since 1000 BC the nations of the region Meso-America, Central America and northern South America have consumed chocolate. At that time, as they drink similar to hot or cold cake as normal as we know at this time. They add the drink with spices such as cinnamon, vanilla, annatto, chili powder, and others.

Nation proved that they are the first nation that found the secret of chocolate drink and how the processing of cocoa seeds. Then, Aztec people duplicated it when they controlled the region Meso-America. They gave the name of this drink with xocoãtl (chocoatl), which means bitter water.

In fact, more like the Maya people drink hot chocolate, while the Aztecs prefer cold ingredients. Aztec and Maya tribes in Mexico believe that the Deity of Agriculture has sent the chocolate came from heaven to them. More than just a drink, they also use cacao seeds as a means of exchange or currency.

Chocolate has changed to new recipes in the last 15 century. Hernan Cortez led the expedition to the Aztec in the year 1519. Seven years later he returned to Spain with cocoa seeds as raw materials and the creation of a prescription beverage. Those drinks were popular in Europe, after a few modifications. All spices are moved away, except vanilla. Moreover, milk and sugar into Cortez’s recipe.

Since the chocolate become popular, not only United States that love chocolate, but it also spread to France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland to begin exploring the seeds of cocoa.

Demand for cocoa in Europe started high, and people saw it as a new business. They began to plant cocoa in their colonies. Spain brought cocoa to the Philippines, France to Ivory Coast, and Netherlands to Indonesia, Malaysia and English.

So, it’s the history chocolate so it can spread to the whole world.

- The term “Coffee” comes from the Latin, Coffea, a member of the Rubiaceae family, including more than 500 genera and 6000 species of the tropical tree or shrub.

- One shot of espresso uses approximately 45 coffee beans.

- Coffee trees take three to four years to mature and bare fruit but they will produce for 20 to 30 years.

- Most coffee is transported by ships. Currently there are approximately 2,200 ships involved in transporting the beans each year.

- The first coffee tree in the Western Hemisphere was brought from France to the Island of Martinique in the 1720’s.

- The Japanese bathe in coffee grounds mixed with fermented pineapple pulp to reduce wrinkles and improve skin tone.

- In parts of Africa, coffee beans are soaked in water and spices, and chewed like candy.

- Storing green coffee is greatly simplified by the fact that insects are naturally repelled by caffeine.

- 27% of U.S. coffee drinkers and 43% of German drinkers add a sweetener to their coffee.

- October 1st is the official Coffee Day in Japan.

For most of the coffee lover may not be more foreign how to enjoy coffee with wholeheartedly. It is the belief that not only drink coffee that has a normal sense of strange, but it is a symbol of high taste and style of modern living.

About any history, coffee has a value of no less withdraw. History of coffee begins from the story of a shepherd from Abessynia (region of Ethiopia) who find coffee plants, to become the noblemen’s drink in Europe. Even by Beethoven count to 60 coffee beans for every cup of coffee that he drank.

Since the discovery of coffee plants, Ali Bin Omar from Yemen, made by boiling coffee as a skin disease drugs and medicines other. So at that time to get coffee honorable place among the community there. From savor the coffee finally bring prosperity for owners of coffee plantations, the coffee shop, coffee traders, exporters of coffee, and the government in various parts of the world’s plant is typical drink heavily planted.

The great number of property derived from coffee, so spreading rapidly, particularly in continental Europe. In Salerno, Italy, coffee has been known in the tenth century. After that continues with the opening of coffee shops called Botega Delcafe in the year 1645 and then became a central meeting intellectual pizza in the country.

In London, the first coffee house opened in George Yard in Lombat Sreet and in Paris, coffee shop opened in 1671 in the Saint Germain Fair. While in the United States, coffee as the national drink in the United States and become the main menu on breakfast. Despite the rapid growth of coffee in the centuries but the Arab people have a monopoly as the first plant, and they only have to export coffee fried
Travel coffee is not it become one of the beverage world that groove. In Italy, the pastor-curate prohibits drinking his coffee and drink coffee that is the Muslim Sultans to replace the wine. Not only prohibit but also to punish those who drink coffee.

In fact, the year 1656, Wazir and Kofri, Usmaniyah Kingdom, issued a ban on open stalls coffee. Not only prohibit coffee, but to punish those who drink coffee with the scourge of punishment on the first offense. But many years later, a ban on drinking coffee in the Middle East slow-slow to disappear, so that if a husband forbade his wife to drink coffee, the wife can use this reason to ask for divorce.

In Sweden, perhaps the King Gustaff II had imposed penalties against twin brothers. The one only allowed drink coffee and the other one only allowed drink tea. Who died first, and then he is guilty in a criminal action against them to be that. In fact, the first death is the tea drinker at the age of 83 years.

Since then, people turn to become Sweden’s most fanatical coffee drinker in the world, so until now Scandinavian countries coffee drinker now the highest per capita in the world. Each person can spend more than 12 kg per year compared with that in Indonesia, only 0.6 kg per year

(from various sources)