by Roelien Steenkamp

Created on: March 26, 2010   Last Updated: March 28, 2010

Chocolate’s True Nature

Chocolate. The one word that tastes as good as it sounds and that’ll make women sacrifice an hour of television in order to burn off those extra calories. It’s abundant. It’s wrapped in attention-drawing plastics and comes in a variety of mouth-watering flavours and intricate designs, as if the word by itself was not enough. It’s taken from the earth and bombarded with additives and causes obesity if over-consumed, yet it releases endorphins beyond belief. Simply put, chocolate is deliciously sinful. Sadly, the majority of society has forgotten the divine origins and super-healing abilities of this sacred food. Chocolate, or more precisely ‘cocoa’, goes beyond the product packed in rows along the pay-counters. It goes back to a time when it was seen as ‘the food of the gods’.

When travelling in Mexico, it is obvious that chocolate had its dark and decadent beginnings there. Stores and markets are lined with it. The native Aztecs believed chocolate to be divine and served it as an aphrodisiac to kings and the male elite. It was believed that emperor Montezuma drank it from a golden goblet at least fifty times a day. The Aztecs created the traditional drink by combing pure cocoa with hot water, honey and vanilla. The drink was so intoxicatingly delicious that when the Spanish Conquistadors arrived in 1520, Montezuma, thinking they were gods, served them this xocoitl (meaning ‘bitter water’ in the Nahuatl language). Archaeological evidence suggests that chocolate dates back to 1400 BC amongst the people of the Honduras. Both the Aztecs and the Mayans used chocolate as currency for trade. In Mexico, you are bound to end up at a restaurant serving the famous ‘mole’, a dish whose recipe every chef will hesitate to reveal. It usually consists of chocolate sauce with a mixture of nuts, seeds and spices, especially chili, served over chicken and rice. Yet in the back of our minds, we can’t help but ask, “Was Montezuma, after fifty cups each day, not obese?” Taking this question into consideration and the fact that the cocoa bean was first and foremost a fruit from the Theobrama cacao tree, why do we feel guilty when we consume it today?

The answer lies in Montezuma’s goblet. His drink was one of pure cocoa sweetened only with vanilla (the actual pod and not the artificial flavourant) and raw honey. All the ingredients were organic, flourishing

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