Chocoholics unite! Latrobe is the home of the House of Anvers where we all know the most magnificent chocolate is made! So we in Latrobe are going to treat you to another day of chocolate delights! Eat chocolate; mould chocolate into a sculpture; shove chocolate in someone’s mouth; gorge on chocolate, decorate a cake with chocolate, drink chocolate; feast your eyes on chocolate and chocolate desserts, see a chef play with chocolate; catapult chocolate flour; putt an egg, make a chocolate fingerprint; salivate on Tasmanian desserts; have your face painted with chocolate.
Chocolate Winterfest, Latrobe has been indulging chocoholics since 2004 but this year we have concocted so much chocolate you may have to refrain for a few days after this year's chocolate-coated festivities!

There is no such thing as the chocolate tree! Chocolate is produced from the seed of the cacoa tree. The cacoa tree is native to lowland tropical South America and grows in the deep tropical region of the Americas. In fact only 20°N and 20°S of the equator. Pink flowers not unlike the banana passionfruit flower grow in clusters on the trunk and older branches and are pollinated by tiny flies called midges (Diptera). The fruit is the cocoa pod 15-30 cm long and 8-10 cm wide, weighs about 500g and ripens yellow to orange. This pod contains 20- 60 seeds called beans, which are surrounded by a white flesh. The scientific name Theobroma means “food of the gods”.

The Maya believed that the Kakaw (cocoa) was discovered by the gods in a mountain where there was other foods for them to eat! The Divine grandmother goddess Xmucane created humans by maize the plumed serpent gave cocoa to the Maya. The Aztecs believe that the god Quetzalcoatl, discovered cocoa in a mountain with other plant foods. The cocoa drink was only for men as it considered toxic to women and children! The Madrid Codex shows the offering of cocoa to their gods.

The cocoa tree has been growing for over three millennium and chocolate was first used around 1100BC. Mesoamerican peoples (i.e. indigenous people living in Mexico including the Aztecs and the Maya) made a chocolate beverage known as xocolatl, a Hahuatl word meaning “bitter water”.
In 1519 Cortez, a Spaniard, was introduced to the chocolate drink by the Aztec Emporer Montezuma. Emperor Montezuma’s attendants had to carefully and painstakingly whip the chocolate drink to make it frothy and were apparently kept very busy due to the Emperor’s vast consumption, believed to personally be 50 cups a day and approximately 2,000 cups were served daily in his court. The chocolate drink was taken back to Spain with other goods and in 1544 Dominican friars brought Kekchi Maya nobles to the Spanish court of Prince Philip. The chocolate beverage had been discovered by the western world! The culinary and medicinal uses of chocolate made the product so popular that the French planted cacao plantations in the Caribbean and the Spanish in the Phillipines.
As early as 1753 the word Theobroma cacoa became an official scientific name when the Swedish naturalist Linnaeus published his taxonomic binomial system. Hans Sloane, President of the College of Physicians visited Jamaica and couldn’t believe that people could drink this awful chocolate drink. He found it nauseating so he added milk. He took this back to England and the first Chocolate House was opened in 1657 which was used by apothecaries in 1689 but later sold by the Cadbury brothers! There are 3 main cultivar groups of cacao. The most expensive is criolla from the Maya which is less bitter and more aromatic 10% of chocolate, but difficult to grow however the Forastero tree is much hardier and produces 80% of our chocolate. The other 10 % is produced from the Trinitario - the hybrid of the two!

Various uses of cocoa mixtures include ceremonial, medicinal and culinary with the mixing with maize, chilli, vanilla, peanut butter and honey. Archaeologists have found residues of theobromine and caffeine in early formative vessels in Honduras and Belize and claim them as proof that they were extracting the chocolate with the vessels being containers for cocoa drinks. Cocoa is even named in a hieroglyphic text on one of these vessels.

Prior to 1840 you could still use cocoa beans as money! 80-100 beans could buy a piece of material, 100 cacao beans could buy a turkey and 3 beans would buy a fresh avocado. And of course counterfeits were not unheard of then either! It is reported that the Aztec Empire received 980 loads of cacoa, each load containing 8,000 beans.

The Aztecs and Mayas believed that chocolate fought fatigue. Does it keep you awake - probably true. That could be due to the theobromine content! Chocolate Milk according to a study published in 2006 (#) is now a must after intense athletic workouts. It aids the recovery and is probably due to the carbohydrate to protein ratio. Montezuma reportedly drank 50 cups of chocolate a day and a total of 2,000 cups of chocolate were drank in his court each day. He believed that it was an aphrodisiac! Chocolate contains alkaloids. They are theobromine, phenethylamine and anandamide, each having physical effects on our bodies!
Chocolate has been linked to serotonin. The BBC reported a study that chocolates’ effects are greater than a passionate kiss, last for 4 hours, and increase the heart rate and brain activity! Consuming large quantities of dark chocolate will not raise your serum LDL cholesterol levels and some say that it will definitely decrease them! It is claimed that chocolate can lower blood pressure, eaten of course in moderation!
Even though chocolate is meant to keep you awake new research claims that a hot chocolate before bed will make you sleep better! Just covering all bases! There are further claims that cocoa flavanoids (from dark chocolate) may possess anti carcinogenic properties!
Even though chocolate has uses to stave off cardiovascular diseases it is not possible to eat sufficient without putting on large quantities of weight that would negate its usefulness! Small and regular amounts of dark chocolate have however been shown to lower the chances of heart attack!
Because chocolate soothes and moistens your throat, Next time you have a cough, reach for the chocolate instead of the cough medicine. It soothes and moistens your throat with claims that it works better than codeine based cough medicines! Yep and now use it to treat diarrhoea. Scientists have proven that flavonoids inhibits the development of the liquids that cause diarrhoea! Tryptophan the amino acid that makes serotonin that regulates your moods is found in chocolate. So claims that chocolate makes you feel good are absolutely true. Yes it contains the “love chemical”, phenethylamine but unfortunately we absorb it so quickly it usually doesn’t have time to get to our brains! Yea chocolate has caffeine but you need to eat a dozen chocolate bars to get the same amount of caffeine in a cup of coffee.
Now if you are a horse and reading this - none of it applies to you! It is such a potent stimulant to horses that it has been banned in the racing industry! And if you suffer reflux, you might want to cool it on the chocolate because it relaxes the sphincter muscle and therefore acid leaks from the stomach to the oesophagus, causing the reflux! If you suffer from acne, you will know that milk is a confirmed suspect but not chocolate!
Children beware, chocolate contains lead and although we are not sure how much we absorb, lead does have nasty effects on children! The most pleasurable thing about chocolate is that it melts at a few degrees lower than our body temperature, hence it will melt in your fingers so pop it into your mouth! As soon as it hits your mouth it will start to melt and it is this melting that is so pleasurable, almost entirely sensual that has caused chocolate to be associated with love and pleasure! See if you can try it - savor the chocolate on the tongue before you swallow. Is it better?

Always remember though - enjoy chocolate in moderation. A glut one day of the year should be anyone’s maximum!