Multiple Choice

Reading Passage

AChocolate begins with the cacao tree, which grows in the warm, wet forests of Central and South America. Long before Europeans arrived, the peoples of this region had learned to turn its bitter seeds into a drink. The Maya and, later, the Aztecs roasted and ground cacao beans and mixed them with water and spices such as chilli. The result was a strong, frothy and rather bitter drink, quite unlike the sweet chocolate we know today. So highly was cacao valued that its beans were even used as a form of money.

BWhen Spanish explorers reached the Americas in the sixteenth century, they carried cacao back across the Atlantic. At first Europeans found the bitter drink unpleasant, but once sugar was added it quickly became fashionable. For around two hundred years, however, chocolate remained a drink rather than a food, and its high price meant that only the wealthy could afford to enjoy it.

CThe chocolate we recognise today is surprisingly modern. It was only in the nineteenth century that manufacturers found a way to press cacao and combine it with sugar and extra cocoa butter to produce the first solid bars. A further breakthrough came in Switzerland, where one maker discovered how to add milk, creating milk chocolate, while another, Rodolphe Lindt, invented a process called conching that gave chocolate its now-familiar smooth texture.

DThese inventions changed chocolate from a luxury into an everyday treat. As factories grew and prices fell, chocolate spread from the tables of the rich to shops on ordinary streets. By the twentieth century it had become one of the most popular sweets in the world, sold in a growing variety of shapes, flavours and brands.

EYet the story of chocolate is not entirely sweet. Today most of the world’s cacao is grown not in the Americas but in West Africa, in countries such as Ivory Coast and Ghana. The farmers who produce the beans often earn very little, and rising demand has been linked to the clearing of tropical forests. As a result, many shoppers now look for products that promise a fairer deal for the people who grow cacao.