Read, translate and retell the text.

Chocolate – like falling in love …

Do you know that …

1) Chocolate first came from Central America.

2) The word “chocolate” comes from the Aztec language and is the only Aztec word we use regularly in English. The Aztecs made a greasy, bitter drink called “Xocoatl”, from cocoa beansmixed with cold water, spices and cornmeal.

3) The Aztecs used the cocoa bean as a form of money. According to HH Bancroft, who was a historian, “four beans bought some vegetables; ten beans bought a woman and a slave costed 100.”

4) The explorer Cortes was the first person to bring chocolate to Europe. He presented it to the Spanish Royal Court in Madrid and served it with herbs and pepper. Soon it became very fashionable to drink it mixed with sugar and vanilla and drunk warm.

5) Conrad van Houten, who was Dutch, was the first person to extract the cocoa butter from the cocoa bean in 1827.

6) In 1847, Joseph Fry, who lived in England, mixed the cocoa butter with other ingredients to make a solid chocolate bar.

7) Daniel Peter, who was a confectioner in Switzerland, invented milk chocolate in the 1870s. Henri Nestlé developed the process.

8) The cocoa tree originally comes from the Amazon forests. Brazil, West Africa and Ecuador now produce most of the 1.5mln. ton world cocoa crop.

9) The Mexicans put chocolate in savory dishes. They serve mole, which is a kind of chocolate sauce, with roast chicken.

10) It takes all the beans from one cocoa tree to make 500gr.of chocolate.

11) In Britain people spend an average of 98p. a week on chocolate. Women, who buy more than two-thirds of the chocolate, eat less than 40 per cent.

12) An average British person eats between 8.5–9.5kg. a year, except the Scots, who eat 30 per cent more.

13) Chocolate contains small amounts of the chemicals phenyl ethylamine, which is also naturally present in the brain, and which gives us the same feeling as when we fall in love.

14) The world’s largest chocolate model was a 10m. by 5m. representation of the Olympic Centre in Barcelona.

15) In 1980 the Swiss police arrested a young couple because they were trying to sell chocolate secrets to foreign powers. They offered the recipes for 40 different chocolates to the Soviet and Chinese embassies.

A. Are the sentences true or false? Correct the false sentences.

a) Chocolate first came from India.

b) The cocoa tree originally comes from Taiwan.

c) Chocolate contains small amounts or the chemicals phenyl ethylamine.

d) The Aztecs used the cocoa bean as a form of money.

e) Conrad van Houten was the first person to bring chocolate to Europe.

f) “Chocolate” is the only Aztec word we use regularly in English.

g) In 1830, Joseph Fry, mixed the cocoa butter with other ingredients to make a solid chocolate bar.

h) It takes all the beans from one cocoa tree to make 500gr. of chocolate.