Many people enjoy chocolate in one form or another. There are a few choices when you are choosing your favorite form too. You can have liquid or powder chocolate to mix with your drinks, or a chocolate bar, or chocolate on your ice cream or pastries, or chocolate frosting. Chocolate has come a long way since it first became popular. Did you know that chocolate was first used only as a drink, and it was bittersweet due to the use of chili peppers? Thank goodness chili peppers were replaced with sugar to make sweet chocolate.

When chocolate was being made in the United States plantation owners were mistreating their workers. Slavery was already ended by this time, but the workers were still not being treated fairly, they were forced into slave labor. Soon factory owners joined together and started boycotting these plantations that used slave labor. Soon after, there was a formal ban made by Congress that did not allow the use of cocoa that was produced by slave labor. Independent growers now grow Cocoa and is hand grown and harvested.

Today machines are used in most factories to make chocolate. Some places do have handmade chocolate, but this is not very cost effective. With machines you can make a lot more chocolate in a lot less time. There are different machines for all different kinds of chocolate. There are machines that make the candy bars, and there are machines that fill the hollowed chocolate shells. It only takes one person to run these machines instead of many to make the same piece of chocolate. This is why companies can sell their chocolate at a lower price than those who make handmade chocolate.

Chocolate is believed to be good for more than just eating in many cultures. Some cultures use chocolate as a form of currency, religious and medical purposes. One study was just done on the effects of dark chocolate on high blood pressure. If you eat dark chocolate it can help in lowering your high blood pressure. Cocoa butter is another way it is used in modern medicine. Did you know that pills are coated in cocoa butter to make them easier to swallow? Cocoa butter also helps soothe a sun burn. It is even being used in beauty products. Cocoa butter is a rich formula that is great at moistening and softening the skin. Lotions are now adding this to help keep skin soft and moist. Cocoa butter is even said to help with stretch marks on the skin. This is the ingredient in the lotions that is supposed to help reduce and prevent stretch marks.

As you can see chocolate really is good for more than just eating. Most of us didn't need another reason to love chocolate though, I know I didn't.