History of Chocolate as a Drink

History of Chocolate as a Drink
The first known cocoa plantations were established by the Maya in the lowlands of south Yucatan about 600 AD.

Cocoa trees were being grown by Aztecs of Mexico and the Incas of Peru when the Europeans discovered central America.

The bean were highly prized and used as money as well as to produce a drink known as chocolatl.

The beans were roasted in earthenware pots and crushed between stones, sometimes using decorated heated tables ad mill stones.

They could then be kneaded into cakes, which could be mixed with cold water to make a drink.

Vanilla, spices or honey were often added and the drink whipped to make it frothy. The Aztec Emperor Montezeuma was said to have drink 50 jars of this beverage per day.

Christopher Columbus bought back some coca beans to Europe as a curiosity, but it was only after the Spaniard conquered Mexico that Don Cortez introduced the drink to Spain in the 1520s.

Here sugar was added to overcome some of the bitter, astringent flavors, but the drinks remained virtually unknown in the rest of Europe for almost a hundred years, coming to Italy in 1606 and France in 1627.

It was very expensive and being a drink for the aristocracy, its spread was often connected to connections between powerful families.

For example the Spanish princess, Anna of Austria, introduced it to her husband King Louis XIII of France and the French court in about 1615. Here Cardinal Richelieu enjoyed it both as a drink to aid his digestion.

Its flavors was not liked by every one and one pope in fact declared that it could be drunk during fast, because it taste was so bad.

The first chocolate drinking houses were established in London in 1657 and it was mentioned in Pepys’s Diary of 1664 where he wrote that ‘jocolatte’ was ‘very good’.

In 1727 milk was added to the drink. This invention is generally attributed to Nicholas Sanders.

During the 18th century White’s Chocolate House became the fashionable place for young Londoners, while politicians of the day went to the Cocoa Tree Chocolate House.

One problem with the chocolate drink was that it was very fatty. Over half of the cocoa bean is made up of cocoa butter. This was melt in hot water making the cocoa particles hard to disperse as well as looking unpleasant because of fat coming to the surface.

The Dutch, however, found a way of improving the drink by removing part of this fat. In 1828 Van Houten developed the cocoa press.

This was quite remarkable, as his entire factory was manually operated at the time. The cocoa bean cotyledons (known as cocoa nibs) were pressed to produce a hard ‘cake’ with about half the fat removed.

This was milled into a powder, which could be used to produce a much less fatty drink. In order to make this powder disperse better in the hot water or milk, the Dutch treated the cocoa beans during the roasting process with an alkali liquid.

This has subsequently become known as the Dutching process. By changing the type of alkalizing agent, it also became possible to adjust the color of the cocoa powder.
History of Chocolate as a Drink

History of Food Safety

History of Food Safety
Before manufacturing traditional, farming practices and preserving techniques were used to ensure safe food.

During industrial revolution, food began to be processed and packaged. Lacking regulation, manufacturers were free to add whatever they liked to their products. Sweeping from the floor were included in pepper, lead salts were added to candy and cheese, textile inks were used as coloring agents, bricks dust was added to cocoa, and copper salts were added to peas and pickles.

In the 1880s, women started organizing groups to protest the conditions at slaughterhouses in New York City and adulterated foods in other parts of the country.

In 1883, Harvey W. Wiley, chief chemist of the U.S Agricultural Department’s Bureau of Chemistry, began experimenting with food and drug adulteration.

Meanwhile, Upton Sinclair spent several weeks in a meat packing plant investigating labor conditions and turned his discoveries into a book, The Jungle, published in 1906. Although the focus of that book was the conditions immigrants experienced in the early twentieth century, there were graphic descriptions of the filth and poor hygiene in packing plants. It caught the public attention.

People began complaining to Congress and to President Theodore Roosevelt. Pressure was also mounting from foreign governments that wanted some assures that food imported from United States was pure and wholesome.

Two acts were passed in 1906, the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Beef Inspection Act, to improve food safety conditions.

In 1927, U.S Food, Drug and Insecticide Administration (shortened to Food and Drug Administration) or FDA was created to enforce the Pure Food and Drug act.


The Pure food Act was later superseded in 1938 by Pure Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act. This act prohibited any food or drug that is dangerous to health to be sold in interstate commerce.

In 1958, concern over cancer led to the adoption of the Delaney Amendments, which expanded the FDA’s regulatory powers to set limits on pesticides and additives. Manufacturers had to prove that additives and pesticides were safe before they could be used.

The Fair Packaging and Labeling Act of 1966 standardized the labels of products and required that labels provide honest information.

The next major act was the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996. It set new regulations requiring implementation of Hazard Analysis and Critical Control points (HACCPs) for most food processor.

The Food quality Protection Act also changed the way acceptable pesticide levels are calculated. Now total exposure for all sources must be calculated.
History of Food Safety

History of Breakfast Cereal

Breakfast cereal, a food made from grain, commonly eaten in the morning. The oldest type of cereal, known as porridge or gruel, requires cooking in water or milk.

They are called processed foods because they go through several processes to turn them into breakfast cereal.

During the American Civil War, Union soldiers were glad to get a hot breakfast cereals, especially when they were in the march or cut off from supply trains.

Cooks used foodstuff on hand to make, panada, a hot breakfast gruel affectionately known as ‘bully soup,’ which the main ingredients were watery corn meal and crumbled hardtack, both of which were standard issue.

The original motivation for the development of precooked breakfast foods seems to have been the desire of some vegetarian to add more variety to their diets.

Health food movement emerged in the nineteenth century United States, in a particular among followers of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church which emphasized a vegetarian lifestyle.

At that time most Americans did not consume enough dietary fiber and many suffered from digestive disorders as a result.

The early history of cereal breakfast originated out of the an interest in health foods that can be traced to the 1830s, and specifically to the experiments carried out from the the 1860s by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, the pioneer nutritionist, at the sanitarium at Battle Creek, Michigan.

The modern breakfast cereals, however, are entirely precooked and eaten in cold milk. The first precooked cereal was probably invented in 1863 by Dr. James C. Jackson at Dansville, New York.

Jackson’s health food as made by rolling a coarse whole meal dough into thin sheets which were baked until they were hard and brittle loaves.

He broke up hardened loaves of unleavened whole grain bread into little pieces and served it for breakfast after soaking the brittle chunks overnight in milk. Jackson named this mixture granula.

Ganula, was the first cold breakfast cereal. It consisted id a twice baked wholemeal biscuit ground into crumbs, which had to be soaked on milk or water to make it even vaguely palatable.

In 1877, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg created a similar cereal called granola, but not until his invention of corn flakes in 1902 did cereal become a commercial success. At first, most cereals were marketed as pure, whole-grain foods.

In 1894 Kellogg created the first flaked cereal, Granose and in 1898, the corn flake.

Eventually, however, competition resulted in the addition of sugar and other food additives and in marketing campaigns directed at children, such as the inclusion of a premium or toy in the box.

By late 1905, the corn flake business was booming and other cereal manufacturers had gotten into this line. In January 1906, Post Cereals introduced a new version of the corn flakes.

It was C. W Post, the founder of Post Cereals who first clearly comprehend that convenience and flavor were more forceful and more widely appreciated advantages than were the healthfulness and vegetable origin previously relied upon as selling points by producers of these foods.

In the 1970s, as cereals came under attack for their lack of nutritive value, many manufacturers began adding nutrients. Unlike most other grain products, breakfast cereals have shown a steady increase in per capita consumption in the United States throughout the 20th cent.

In the early first twenty century, cereal manufacturers came under scrutiny for their marketing practices. The tendency to aim advertisements for high sugar, low nutrient cereals directly at young children was particular criticized.

In response, in 2007 major corporations such as Kellogg’s and General Mills agreed to stop creating child-focused advertising for products that do not meet US dietary standards.

Apart from breads, cereal is the most common form in which Americans consume grain.

Now over 75% of breakfast cereals are ready to eat type made from wheat, corn, or oats .
History of Breakfast Cereal