Weaving It Together

Weaving It Together

Connecting Reading and Writing

Chocolate

The  Aztecs of Mexico knew about chocolate a long time ago. They made it into a drink. Sometimes they put hot chill peppers with the chocolate. They called the drink xocoatl, which means “bitter juice.” This is where the word chocolate comes from.

        The Spanish went to Mexico and took the drink from the land of the Aztecs back to spain. The Spanish didn’t like peppers, so they added sugar. They drink became very popular in Europe. People added different things like eggs to the chocolate drink. But everybody’s favorite was chocolate in milk instead of water.

       There was still no hard chocolate until around 1850. Then the British made the first chocolate bar. Twenty-five years later, two men in Switzerland mixed milk with the hard chocolate. Milk chocolate soon become a favorite all over the world.

 Is chocolate good for you? For hundreds of year, people thought that chocolate was good for health. Doctors told people to have a chocolate drink for headaches and many other problems. Today, there is good news for chocolate lovers. Scientists think that a little bit of chocolate is good for you! It gives you energy and has vitamins to keep your body healthy.

        The Aztecs believed that chocolate made you intelligent. Today, we do not believe this. But chocolate has a special chemical called phenylethylamine. This is 

The same chemical the body makes when a person is in love. Which do you prefer—eating chocolate or being in love?