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Chocolate — Food of the GodsLesson 1 of 16

Chocolate, the Food of the Gods

Goal: After this lesson you can name the four lenses this episode uses and explain why chocolate started as something very different from a candy bar. Subject: Episode introduction | Run time: about 3 minutes

Welcome

Good morning. This is Anthony McDonald, and this is Better Vice Club, Episode 3. The cup so far has been coffee, then tea. Today it is chocolate, and chocolate has the wildest backstory of the three.

Why this matters

Start with the name. The scientist who classified the cacao tree called it Theobroma cacao, and Theobroma is Greek for "food of the gods" (Coe & Coe, 2013). To the Maya and the Aztec, that was close to literal. Chocolate was not a sweet. It was a bitter, spiced drink called xocolatl (shoh-KOH-lah-tul), which means "bitter water," and the beans it came from were money. In the Aztec world you could buy a turkey for about 100 cacao beans (Coe & Coe, 2013).

The idea

We read chocolate through the same four lenses as before. Geography asks where cacao can grow, which turns out to be a startlingly narrow band, and how a warming planet threatens it. Social studies asks how chocolate went from a sacred Mesoamerican drink to a global candy, and who pays the price now. Economics asks why the people who grow cacao earn so little of the 161 billion dollar chocolate market (International Cocoa Organization, 2023). Language asks what the words cacao, cocoa, and chocolate reveal, and how two cultures looked at the same bean and saw opposite things. Each lesson is short and ends with a quick question.

Remember this

Hold this. Chocolate began as a bitter, sacred drink at the center of Mesoamerican life, and cacao beans were currency. The sweet bar is a late, European invention. That gap between what chocolate was and what it became runs through the whole episode.

Quick check

Quick check. What did the Nahuatl word xocolatl, the root of "chocolate," originally describe? A bitter drink. The word means "bitter water" (Coe & Coe, 2013). The sugar came later, in Europe.

Key Takeaways

  • Theobroma cacao means "food of the gods," and to the Maya and Aztec chocolate was a sacred, bitter drink, not a sweet (Coe & Coe, 2013).
  • In the Aztec world cacao beans were money; a turkey cost about 100 beans (Coe & Coe, 2013).
  • The global chocolate market is about 161 billion dollars a year (International Cocoa Organization, 2023).
  • Better Vice Club reads chocolate through geography, social studies, economics, and English language arts.

Sources

  • Coe, S. D., & Coe, M. D. (2013). The true history of chocolate (3rd ed.). Thames and Hudson.
  • International Cocoa Organization. (2023). Quarterly bulletin of cocoa statistics (Vol. XLIX, No. 1). https://www.icco.org
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