Chocolate has been a staple for societies in dozens of countries for centuries. The existence of chocolate can be traced back to the cacao bean utilized by the Olmec Indians. Chocolate went on a journey from pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, to Spain and the rest of Europe and eventually New World America. Although there is a countless amount of scholarship regarding chocolate, the research of Wilson, Dillinger (along with her associates), Lippi, Terrio and Norton have critical information pertaining to the topic of chocolate in Western Europe during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. All sources, with the exception of one of Norton’s sources, formulate a consensus from their research, that chocolate in Western Europe served multiple purposes …show more content…
A Cultural History of the Medicinal and Ritual Use of Chocolate.” Although, the biggest difference between those two sources is Wilson’s more specific analysis of fewer benefits and Dillinger’s less specified analysis of more benefits. Dillinger comes to the conclusion that chocolate improved the health of European society in the sixteenth century by discussing the health issues chocolate was used for. A few of the common health problems chocolate treated were fatigue, strengthening weak stomachs, and opening bowls. Some of the more serious treatments were for heart and breathing complications and curing colds and fevers. While chocolate helped patients in many ways, the chocolate had to be mixed with other ingredients. Chocolate all on it’s own could have caused constipation, drained menstruation, closed the urinary tracts, blocked the liver and spleen and led to more health problems rather than solutions. In order to prevent that and improve health issues, the cacao beans were processed and then mixed with other ingredients such as vanilla or atole. Dillinger’s greatest limitation is her abundance of information but lack of critical analysis. Dillinger may provide a lot of information regarding the health issues chocolate aided, but she lists so many that …show more content…
Lippi eventually reaches the conclusion that regardless the controversy about chocolate’s effects on people, it historically was useful for health issues and still is to this day. Developing her conclusion, Lippi describes how the cacao beans, when processed, helped with health issues. Cacao beans pressed into a powder alone had cold and dry properties which were good for “hot” illnesses such as fevers. On the other hand, when the beans were made into a beverage, it was given to thin patients to fatten them up. Once the cacao beans made a reputation for themselves, doctors, such as Henry Stubbe, started writing recipes, where certain ingredients were mixed with the beans to better improve illnesses and enhance flavor. A noticeable limitation, similar to Dillinger’s, is the lack of critical analysis and over abundance of facts. Lippi may provide a decent amount of analysis, but not enough to compensate for the amount of factual details that she depends on. Although, Lippi’s discussion of the medical benefits of chocolate, similar to Wilson and again Dillinger, contributes to the consensus between the sources because chocolate’s ability to improve the many health issues was one of chocolate’s purposes served to Western European
Zak, L. (2009, 04). Not all's fair in love of chocolate. Food Magazine, Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/198287549?accountid=12964
Chocolate is a food in the form of a paste or solid block made from roasted and ground cacao seeds. As suspected, its name is derived
Chocolate is made from the seeds of the tropical tree, Theobroma cacao. Theobroma is the Greek term for 'food of the gods.' In Aztec society chocolate was a food of the gods, reserved for priests, warriors and nobility. The Aztecs used cacao beans to make a hot, frothy and bitter beverage called chocolatl. Chocolatl was a sacred concoction that was associated with fertility and wisdom. It was also thought to have stimulating and restorative properties. The bitter drink was first introduced to Europe in 1528. However, it was not until 1876 that milk, cocoa powder and cocoa butter were combined to form what we now know as chocolate (1).
Hershey, Cocoa, and Child Labor. An everyday person, when asked to describe chocolate, would probably start by calling it "magic." The presence of chocolate in the everyday American life is an experience sought after, craved for, and bought for under two dollars at the corner convenience store. Indeed, chocolate is an edible ecstasy that is put in everything: coffee, ice cream, cereal, even the spicy sauce for Mexican mole. Chocolate has a cultural presence like no other food commodity; it is brought back to loved ones from the faraway places of Switzerland and Germany, it is given as a symbol of love, and moreover, it is the first thing everyone instinctually goes too when that love does not work out.
People have always had a sweet tooth. In the mid 17th century, the sugar cane was introduced to the New World by the Dutch, who, using slaves, seized this opportunity to make a profit in the British West Indies. Sugar, as well as slaves, played a vital role in the Atlantic Triangular Trade among the Americas, Europe and Africa. Slaves were the working force in this trade network because they harvested the cash crops that circulated around the Atlantic Ocean. A form of slavery very similar to those in the sugar plantations of the Caribbeans is child labor in the modern cocoa industry. Cocoa trees only thrive in humid regions near the equator, which is why two West African countries, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, supply well over half of the world’s total cocoa. In order to keep up with the demand for cocoa, farmers in Africa have employed some 15,000 boys ages 12 to 16 who have been sold into slave labor to harvest and process cocoa beans “under inhumane conditions and extreme abuse” (Chanthavong 1).
the trade of cocoa was booming to Spain. Chocolate would become a fond drink of the
Chocolate or cacao was first discovered by the Europeans as a New World plant, as the seed of the tropical Theobroma cacao tree. In Latin, Theobroma literally means: “food of the Gods” (Bugbee, Cacao and Chocolate: A Short History of Their Production and Use). Originally found and cultivated in Mexico, Central America and Northern South America, its earliest documented use is around 1100 BC. The majority of the Mesoamerican people made chocolate beverages, including the Aztecs, who made it into a beverage known as xocolātl, a Nahuatl word meaning “bitter water” (Grivetti; Howard-Yana, Chocolate: History, Culture, and Heritage). It was also a beverage in Mayan tradition that served a function as a ceremonial item. The cacao plant is g...
Western peoples consume enormous per capita quantities of refined sugar because, to most people, very sweet foods taste very good. The existence of the human sweet tooth can be explained, ultimately, as an adaptation of ancestral populations to favor the ripest-and hence the sweetest-fruit. In other words, the selective pressures of times past are most strikingly revealed by the artificial, supernormal stimulus of refined sugar, despite the evidence that eating refined sugar is maladaptive.
But, I reasoned with myself, you want a taste…one cookie won’t sabotage your diet. And just one excuse later, I had become a goner. I frantically ripped open the blue, crinkly package of Betty Crocker’s Chocolate Chip Cookie and proceeded to take an enormous bite. The mouthwatering aroma that flooded my nostrils, the chew of the buttery dough against my teeth, the rich melt of the chocolate chips on my tongue: this was pure, unadulterated happiness that I could hold in my hands. However, in three seconds, this fleeting and unfulfilling happiness
Probably one of the most delicious ingredient in every special occasion. Have you imagined a birthday party without a cake? Kids enjoy specially in their birthdays eating cake with spectaculars movie characters; this is a mommy and grandma tradition. A typical multi-floor cake after high school graduation, it is very exciting after completing four years long. The faces of the groom and wife after having bitten the fist price of chocolate mousse cake are priceless. That mother day, when little kids decide to make a descent mother cake filled with ice cream and almonds. Also, San Valentine’s Day without pinky and red cake made of cupcakes are obvious. There is a strange fact that it is enjoyable, but when people realized the effects of it, the concepts of eating that cake as a tradition change the way we used to consume sugar. The consequences are not pleasant at all; many health problems come together with the most joyful event.
Fryer, Peter, and Kerstin Pinschower. "The Material Science of Chocolate." Mrs Bulletin December 2000: 1-5.
Considering the facts of basing the traditional home values of their mother’s ingredients, Joe and Ellis Cook began a business venture. Throughout this process they collected the sufficient statistics of the ingredients and brought them altogether and produced an amount of health conscious cookies. DEC stayed with the agreement of not adding any preservatives or any additives which made them so unique in flavor thereby with these special ingredients of sugar, flour, eggs, water, and flavorings, these ingredients were automatically sent to the giant mixing machines where all of the constituents were combined (Stevenson, 2009, p. 64). After lo...
For a moment, imagine you are a very health conscious person. You start the mornings off with a brewed cup of coffee, a newspaper, and your favorite cereal. As you eat, you are comforted in seeing the bold print on the packaging that reads, “Loaded with vitamins and minerals.” However, you become curious and decide to investigate the back panel of ingredients to see if it is as wholesome as it leads you to believe. The number one ingredient is enriched wheat flour. You are content as you swallow the next to last spoonful of your shredded richness. The second ingredient is honey, another that reinforces your feelings of responsible eating. Ingredients three, four, and five are foreign to you. They read soy lecithin, niacin, and high fructose corn syrup. Now the first two you have a good feeling about. Soy is a good source of protein in place of many meats and niacin must be one of those vitamins or minerals the food tycoon General Mills boasted about on the box. However, the latter of the three is what prompts you to do some research on your computer. The results yield studies and illustrations which surprise you. “From crackers to raisins, cans of soda to cans of soup, high fructose corn syrup is in virtually every list of ingredients. Even for consumers that are vigilant about steering clear of it, it’s hard not to avoid” (Mangano). As you finish your last bite of cereal it does not seem as satisfying as the first. Uncertainty is the lingering taste and you wonder what high fructose corn syrup really is, why it is in all of the foods you eat, and if it could affect your health negatively.
The Theobroma cacao tree is where it all started. Olmecs, Aztecs, and Mayans were the original consumers of cocoa: they would form it into a drink and ingest it for medicinal reasons (Allen Par. 7). The Spanish then brought it back to Europe and continued to treat a variety of ailments with it (Allen Par. 7). In the last 40 years people have started to question the health benefits of chocolate, but new research is starting to prove that the Olmecs, Aztecs, Mayans and Spaniards were not too far off. Now, the pods from the tree containing cocoa beans are collected, and the cocoa beans are taken out of the pod (Healing Foods Pyramid Par. 15). The beans are then fermented, dried, roasted, then ground to make cocoa liquor (Healing Foods Pyramid Par. 15). The cocoa liquor is then combined with sugar, vanilla, and cocoa butter to make what is now known as chocolate (Healing Foods Pyramid Par. 15). Controversy over the health benefits and detriments of chocolate is slowly subsiding, but there are many things that a lot of people still do not know about how chocolate can affect ones health. Chocolate is misunderstood.
This increase in production caused a change at the consumption end. When sugar was first being produced it was seen as a luxury product only accessible to the rich, but then as its production increased and there was a surge amount in the market place its uses changed. It went from being a specialized product used for medicinal, ritual, or for display purposes to a common everyday food substitute. Now the working class people began more than ever to consume large quantities of sugar as a substitute to their calorie lacking diet. The production of sugar in the British West Indies was not able to keep pace with the demands from the mother country. When the supply from the British West Indies increased so did England’s demand for the crop. It seemed like from the middle of the eighteen century onward the islands were never able to produce more sugar than what was consumed by the people in the mother country. “English sugar consumption increased about four-fold in the last four decades of the eighteenth century, 1700-40, and more than doubled again from 1741-45 to 1771-75 (Mintz 1985) . As the English began to incorporate more amounts of sugar into their daily diets they began to find multiple uses of the commodity. Sugar soon developed into a stable product in the lives of people. With the increased use of sugar in multiple forms of consumption it changed from its previous classification as a spice to its own separate category. The use of this newly popular commodity did not lose any popularity as the years passed. Britain became a leading exporter of sugar crops into the world market, with majority of the supply going to feed their own peoples ravenous appetite. In 1800 British consumption of sugar had increased some 2,500 percent in...