The Secrets of Real Chocolate

Chocolate begins in the jungle, hidden in the fruits of the cacao tree (Theobroma Cacao - Food of the Gods). The elongated cacao pods contain an unexpected treasure: cacao beans, the source of the chocolate flavor we love so much. Cacao (a Mayan word, pronounced kah-KOW) is native to Central America, where the ancient Maya and Olmec civilizations established the first plantations around three thousand years ago! Europeans, by contrast, didn't learn of chocolate's delights until 1519 in the court of Montezuma, the last Aztec emperor.
Cacao and chocolate were highly revered by the ancient Americans and were offered as tribute to Gods and rulers. According to Aztec legend, chocolate was a gift from Quetzalcoatl, the God, and formed a bridge between heaven and earth. One taste of Ah Cacao Real Chocolate and you will understand why!
Ah Cacao Real Chocolate is named after a great Maya ruler, "Ah Cacao", of the ancient city of Tikal who built its main pyramid and restored the city to glory - just as real chocolate is returning to prominence today.
Ah Cacao Real Chocolate lets you experience the true divine taste of chocolate. The main ingredient in Ah Cacao Real Chocolate is natural fine-flavored cacao, for a complex, long lasting, taste experience - not just a 'sugar buzz'. If your body starts to crave the fantastic taste of real chocolate it's because it's good for you. Ah Cacao Real Chocolate is rich in nutrients and antioxidants that stimulate both body and mind. We invite you to slowly savor each mouthful and enjoy the natural boost that follows. Ah Cacao Real Chocolate is not indulgent - it's a valuable part of a healthy lifestyle and enjoying life to the max. Eat without guilt and be energized!
Real chocolate is also good for the environment. Cacao is a tropical plant that grows best in the shelter of the rainforest. Environmentally sensitive cacao plantations represent a real alternative to clear-cutting and help preserve the habitat of beautiful jungle species like the quetzal bird and jaguar.
Finally, if you're worried about chocolate addiction, we have the perfect solution. Just follow Terry Moore's simple 12 step program: Never be more than 12 steps away from real chocolate!

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"Maya Chocolate and Precious Delights" at U of P Museum's Maya Weekend

By Dea Adria Mallin

How often do we muse about our continent before Christopher Columbus made landfall? For most people, the answer is, "Rarely." Yet the ancient world of the Maya was infinitely rich and complex, and the 23rd Annual Maya Weekend, one of the largest and oldest Maya studies meetings in the U.S., will take place from April 8 through 10 at the U of P Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. It will draw Maya enthusiasts from around the Americas and the world - armchair archaeologists, scholars, students, and the simply curious - for a unique opportunity to immerse in the dynamic world of the Maya.
Godly Foods and Earthly Power
More than twenty renowned ethnologists, archaeologists, hieroglyphic scholars and other Maya experts will share their latest discoveries, interpretations and theories in illustrated talks, workshops, and films, with a thematic focus on "Maya Chocolate and Precious Delights" - rich food for the intellect and the senses.
While the word "chocolate" today conjures up vast arrays of candy bars, commercial candy boxes, and imported handmade candies in white, milk, and dark, with more butterfat, corn syrup, and additives than we want to hear about, for the Maya it was a matter of cacao pods and a drink rigorously extracted and ceremonially poured for the social elite or in religious ritual as a food of the gods.

The first Mesoamerican discoverers of chocolate took an imaginative leap past the sweet, gooey, pulpy, white interior to the bitter cacao pod, dried it in the sun, roasted it on clay, ground it with stone slabs, combined it with vanilla, chile peppers, and sometimes honey, and turned the bitter bean to�chocolate. For 90% of its history, chocolate was a liquid drink, first used in Mayan royal and religious ceremonies. There were secrets in the preparation, and much importance in the trade routes.
Among the Weekend lecture subjects are the following: Penn's Simon Martin, Research Specialist in Maya Epigraphy and internationally renowned Maya hieroglyphics expert, will lecture on the symbolism of cacao in ancient Maya religion, specifically in the Popol Vuh, the Classic period creation story. Cameron L. McNeil of the City University of New York explores the multifaceted symbolism of cacao as seen in the iconography of Copan, Honduras, linking it to concepts of the "world tree," maize, ancestors, and the feminine. David Stuart of the University of Texas, Austin examines the decorations found on Maya pottery, focusing on Classic period plates and drinking vessels. Penn's Elin Danien looks at the narrative paintings on Chama vessels from the Museum's collections, two of which were recently found to contain cacao residue.
Dorie Reents-Budet of the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, will explain how these painted ceramics allowed the sponsors of ancient Maya feasting rites to communicate personal history, socio-economic power, and religious potency. And W. Jeffrey Hurst of the Hershey Foods Technical Center will present the science behind the symbolism with "Chocolate Covered Potpourri: The Analytical Chemistry of Cacao."
Among the other "precious delights" to be explored at the conference is jade and its symbolic meaning in Classic Maya religion as well as ceremonial grooming rituals examining the personal adornments recovered from the Sacred Cenote of Chichen Itza.
The weekend also includes hands-on hieroglyph workshops for the beginner, intermediate, and advanced epigrapher, a new Educators' Workshop on Maya culture and cuisine with Continuing Education credit, chocolate tastings, a visit to the Museum's collection of highland Guatemala Maya pottery and textiles, receptions to meet and share ideas, and a sumptuous optional dinner with Maya-influenced foods - and chocolate- and post-prandial speaker David Freidel (co-author of Maya Cosmos) of Southern Methodist University, sharing the latest findings from the recent investigations at the Classic Maya site of El Peru, Guatemala.
Also among the reports from Guatemala comes a presentation by Dr. Jonathan Kaplan (University of New Mexico) who wonders whether the classic Maya civilization, which died in discord, blood, and war, might have begun in sweetness. The sweetness of cacao, that is.
The site of Chocola, where the earliest Maya writing emerged and where Kaplan has spent two lengthy research seasons so far, has yielded archaeological intimations of a paradise lost. It sits just beneath volcanic ridges, says Kaplan, and is abundant with springs emanating from sacred caves, fast-flowing rivers, and a prodigious rainfall so reliable that the earth is deeply fertile. The townspeople say that anything will grow there; the ethnohistorian believes that the very best cacao grew there.
In 2003, Kaplan discovered massive subterranean stone water conduits, and in 2004, the hydraulic network was discovered to extend several kilometers and include canalitos delivering spring water to elite residences. Dr. Kaplan asks what natural wealth Chocola must have possessed to make it, so pristinely early, culturally sophisticated, economically powerful, and long-lived. And he hopes to find the answer in the inspirational form of the addictively exquisite flavor of cacao.
For those who are called by a desire to be right there, in the field, in order to understand and learn from the past, opportunity knocks with an Earthwatch Institute (800-776-0188) expedition to Chocola, Guatemala this summer, led by Dr. Kaplan and eminent Guatemalan archeologist Dr. Juan Antonio Valdes (University of San Carlos). Lay volunteers contributing their tax-deductible share of costs can join any of six teams in the field between May 24 and August 23 on a huge and intact complex of more than 100 mounds, exploring the social and cultural developments that led to the rise of the Classic Maya, with their sophisticated city-states, hieroglyphic literacy, exceptional ceramics, and the most advanced mathematics and astronomy on the New World. Two seasons of research at the site, with major monumental architecture and hydraulics discovered here, and thousands of ceramic artifacts, indicate that Chocola, perched between the coast and a chain of volcanoes, can rightfully be called a great lost Maya city.
Annual Maya Weekend, with continental breakfasts, refreshment breaks and receptions: $165; $130 for Museum Members & senior citizens (over 62) with ID; $65 for full-time students with ID. Banquet reservation:$60. For reservations, contact Special Events Office or 215-898-4890, or http://www.museum.upenn.edu. University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 3260 South St.

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Chocolate Facts

CHOCOLATE FACTS

· About Cacao Trees
· Chocolate as food and medicine
· Who eats chocolate?
· Chocolate Quiz

About Cacao Trees

· The seed pods of the cacao tree grow not on branches but directly on the trunk.
· Each pod is about the size of a pineapple and holds thirty to fifty seeds – enough to make about seven milk chocolate or two dark chocolate bars.
· Cacao flowers are pollinated by midges, tiny flies that live in the rotting leaves and other debris that fall to the forest floor at the base of the tree. Those midges have the fastest wingbeats in the world: 1,000 times per second!
· Cacao trees today are endangered by natural threats, such as the witch’s broom fungus and other diseases and pests. Along with the rest of the rainforest, they’re also threatened by lumber companies, which harvest the taller trees that shelter the cacao and help maintain the population of midges.
· Cacao seeds are not sweet. They contain the chemicals caffeine and theobromine, which give them a bitter taste.
· The scientific genus name of the cacao tree, Theobroma, means "food of the gods."
· Cacao is not related to the coconut palm or to the coca plant, the source of cocaine.
· Africa now provides over half the world’s cacao, while Mexico now provides only 1.5%.

Chocolate as food and medicine

· It takes 4 cacao seeds to make 1 ounce of milk chocolate, and 12 seeds to make 1 ounce of dark chocolate.
· Although we tend to think of chocolate as a solid today, for 90% of its history it was consumed in liquid form.
· Some of the earliest European cocoa-makers were apothecaries seeking medicinal uses.
· Cacao seeds contain significant amounts of naturally occurring flavonoids, substances also found in red wine, green tea, and fruits and vegetables; flavonoids are connected with a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease and some cancers.
· On the other hand, chocolate carries a heavy load of saturated fats and calories; there are much healthier ways to get the same benefits.
· Chocolate contains two stimulants also found in coffee – caffeine and theobromine – but in relatively small amounts. Fifty M&Ms, for example, have about as much caffeine as a cup of decaffeinated coffee.

Who eats chocolate?

· Not Africans. A great deal of chocolate is grown in Africa, but mostly for export.
· Not a lot of Asians. Although chocolate’s popularity is growing in China and Japan, there’s still comparatively little chocolate culture in Asia. The Chinese, for example, eat only one bar of chocolate for every 1,000 eaten by the British.
· Mexicans consume chocolate more as a traditional drink and a spice than as a candy. They use it to make a wonderful sauce called mole, and offer chocolate drinks at wedding ceremonies and birthday parties.
· Americans for sure… an average of 12 pounds per person per year. In 1998, that came to a total of 3.3 billion pounds. (Americans spend $13 billion a year on chocolate.)
· Definitely Europeans! As far back as the late 1700s, the people of Madrid, Spain consumed nearly 12 million pounds of chocolate a year. Today, 15 of the 16 leading per-capita chocolate-consuming countries are in Europe, with Switzerland leading the pack. (The U.S., as of 1998, was #9.)
For the love of chocolate…the chocolate of love
· Does chocolate stimulate the libido? Chemists can’t prove it, but popular culture is reluctant to give up the belief…
· As far back as the 1000 CE, frothy chocolate drinks were exchanged at weddings in Mesoamerica (southern Mexico and parts of Central America).
· Casanova is said to have eaten chocolate to enhance his love-making.
· The Marquis de Sade also was passionate about chocolate, and had his wife send it to him in prison.
· Why else do Americans exchange chocolate on Valentine’s Day?

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