10 Things You Didn't Know About Chocolate

          Yep, it’s that chocolatey time of year. Actually the entire year is chocolatey if think about it. There’s Halloween which we just had, then Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years' LOADED with goodies, then Valentine’s Day, then Easter, then Mother’s Day, weddings, birthdays, then chocolate ice cream all summer, and now we’re back at Halloween again.

          But did you know these 10 facts about chocolate?

1. When wanting to melt chocolate, most people use chocolate chips. But those were formulated not to melt, so they could maintain their shape when baked in cookies.

2. We've all heard that dark chocolate is heart-healthy, but I have inside info on this, from a friend of the man who led that study. Turns out they only tested dark chocolate. So milk chocolate is probably just as heart-healthy. Just not vegan.

3. Aztecs and Mayans used cacao beans as currency and yes, they had counterfeiters making cacao beans from clay. 

4. The earliest form of it was hot chocolate, and that stayed the case for hundreds of years. “Eating chocolate” came much later.

5. Africa is the main producer of cacao beans.

6. Hershey’s makes 70 million kisses a day (and so named because of the sound the machine makes).

7. White chocolate isn’t technically chocolate, but does contain cocoa butter. 8. The chocolate industry makes over $75 billion in annual worldwide sales.

9.   The blood in Psycho's famous shower scene was actually chocolate syrup. 10.The Snickers candy bar was named after the Mars family’s beloved horse.

Now that I have you salivating for chocolate, there’s one more fact that will give you some willpower: It's believed that people who are allergic to chocolate are actually allergic to cockroaches, as around eight insect parts are typically found in a bar of chocolate, according to the Food and Drug Administration (Google it). Yikes!

Thankfully, no insect parts are in any of my books, which make marvelous Christmas gifts.  You can find them all here, and the most recent one, A Little Christmas Prayer, is a timeless short story about how one boy raised a village. Only $3.49— perfect for those little gifts you need to buy in bulk.