Cacao Pods from Guatemala

Chocolate is created from the cocoa bean that come from cacao pods as seen here. Chocolate is quite possibly the most popular flavour in the world.

The origins of chocolate, however, can be very controversial. It is been claimed that the Olmecs were the first people of Mesoamerica to drink chocolate, or sometime around 1750 BC. There is proof that Maya were already drinking chocolate around 460–480 AD. Cacao beens were even used as money in the pre-Columbian Mesoamerica; 100 cacao beans for a turkey, 3 cacao bean for an avocado. You can read so much more about chocolate at the Wikipedia entry, but the comment below by Guy Howard sums up the current state of chocolate in Guatemala.

Guy: There’s a modern day marketing push behind positioning Guatemala as the traditional home of chocolate anyway. The San Juan del Obispo bunch act as if they have been making the stuff for centuries. The reality is that Guatemala hardly produces much chocolate at all these days – some 1000 tonnes pa, which is roughly a 1000x less than the Ivory Coast. The global prices have improved though and now the local growers association (Anakakaw!) wants back in…

Aahh, but who cares for quantity, here we go for the quality.

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