It’s Chocolate Week!

With the possible exception of Easter:- this is the one week of every year that chocolate lovers wait for. It’s Chocolate Week.

It’s a week of celebrating the lovely-sweet stuff and here at UKVending we’ve decided to give you a few interesting facts about chocolate that you may not know.

Happy Chocolate Week!

White Chocolate Is Not Chocolate. This is because it doesn’t contain cocoa solids or chocolate liquor, meaning it isn’t chocolate in the strict sense. But it does contain parts of the cacao bean‚ mainly cocoa butter.

The Aztecs loved and valued the cacao bean so highly that they used it as currency during the height of their civilisation.

A jewel thief made off with $28 million dollars of gems in 2007 because he was able to gain the trust of the guards working the bank in Antwerp, Belgium, by repeatedly offering them chocolate.

The blood in Psycho’s famous shower scene was actually chocolate syrup.

The scientific name for the tree that chocolate comes from, Theobroma cacao, means food of the gods.

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.

At one point the Nazis plotted to assassinate Winston Churchill with an exploding bar of chocolate.

There is a rare fourth kind of chocolate in addition to the classic milk, dark, and white varieties: blond chocolate.

The film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was financed by Quaker Oatsto promote its new Wonka Bar candy. This is also why the film is called Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory instead of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory like the book it’s based on.

The first chocolate bar was invented in 1847 by Joseph Fry.