Cacao, called The Food Of The Gods, is Theobroma cacao in Latin.

The cacao plant is actually a small evergreen tree that grows natively on the low eastern slopes of the Andes Mountains in South America.

Cacao is the only natural source of cocoa and, therefore, chocolate. many people say they get a "rush" from the confection.

Cacao grows in shady locations in very low elevations between 20 Degrees North and South Latitudes, a span of 40 degrees wide around the Equator.

The average temperature is about 70 degrees F throughout this region overall, considering cooler temperatures in mountainous regions. The cacao plants requires at least three to nine feet of rain every year. Cacao is also cultivated through adequate irrigation systems in the absence of enough rainfall.

Theobroma is the Greek word literally for the food of the gods. Theobroma is a psychoactive drug and if taken in very large amounts can cause hallucinations, irritability, and headaches. Taken during pregnancy, it can cause low birth weight babies with all the complications that they endure, including underdeveloped lungs.

The vulgate names of cacao in everyday local languages are derived from original Aztec and Mayan languages indigenous to the cacao region in South America.

Aztecs pronounced cacao to be their people's rightful gift from their god of the air above their heads (heaven), Quetzalcoatl.

The Aztecs pounded cacao seeds into a drink and added annato, maize (corn or zea) and vanilla or a mole sauce that contained maize and hot chili peppers. Maize-based drinks are still popular in the region. The drink was used during religious ceremonies and was said to bring on visions, depending how strong the drink was made.

On Christopher Columbus made his fourth voyage to the New World and found a canoe at sea with a cargo of cacao beans, but did not understand what it was. Later, Cortez took cacao seeds to Spain with him and showed the royal court and other wealthy people how to make a cocoa drink by mixing the bitter cacao powder with ground corn, vanilla, and sugar. Not much sugar was consumed in Spain before this, but cocoa spurred its heightened use. Spaniards next took cacao to Trinidad and Venezuela and spread its growth and usage, turning it into a business.

Cacao found its way to West Africa, then to Portugal about 1879. A Mr. Cadbury (of chocolate candy fame) was a Quaker who aided the Portuguese in their cacao trade.

The many seed pods on each cacao evergreen hold 20-50 beans or seeds and the pod growth and matures over a four-month period. The seeds are broken out of a ripe pod and fermented for about a week in a sweatbox, turning from a cream white to a purple-brown. Next, the cacao beans are dried, then stored or shipped abroad from Africa and South America.

To make cocoa powder, the seeds are powdered and the fatty part, cocoa butter, is removed; however, cocoa butter is added back in to make chocolate. Sugar and vanilla moderate the bitter taste of the alkaloids, caffeine, and theobromine of cacao. Half of each seed is cocoa butter and white chocolate is really cocoa butter (fat), vanilla and sugar.

Massachusetts Colony. Dr. Jim Baker bought it in 1780 after the Revolutionary War and began producing the still popular Bakers Chocolate - it is used for baking, but his name was also Baker.

Milton Hershey began making candy after he discovered that the Swiss were mixing condensed milk with chocolate to make milk chocolate, After the Civil War, Hershey began business in Pennsylvania.

Hershey purchased a German chocolate machine at the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition and The Hershey Chocolate Company began making chocolate covered caramels and milk chocolate candy bars when it opened in1894. Milk chocolate sold so fast and so much that in 1905, a separate facility opened just to produce it. Now they also sell Cadbury Bars, among others.

It may be a luxury to some and a food for some gods, but it can adversely affect the health of other people and affect still others as a drug. So choose judicially and have a good chocolate attack!