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Happy National Chocolate Parfait Day!

Here are today’s five things to know about Chocolate: 

• Dark chocolate has more antioxidants than green tea and just as many as blueberries.
• White chocolate really isn’t chocolate. It’s made from cocoa butter, the substance you get by pressing cocoa beans. Cocoa butter is absent of the cocoa solids used to make chocolate.

• Chocolate was consumed by the ancient Aztecs as a frothy beverage, somewhat like hot chocolate we drink today.
• Chocolate comes from a plant, called Theobroma cacao, which translates “Food of the Gods”.
• Eating chocolate can also reduce the symptoms of stress.

Today’s Food History

• 1683 Supposedly, a patent for a system of extracting salt from sea water was granted in England.
• 1841 The first wagon train left Independence, Missouri for California.
• 1851 London’s Great Exhibition opened in Hyde Park. It was the first international exhibition ever to be held. The Exhibition was housed in the Crystal Palace.
• 1889 Bayer introduced aspirin powder in Germany.
• 1927 Imperial Airways became the first British airline to serve hot meals.
• 1931 Empire State Building opens. It was built on the site of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel
• 1971 ‘Brown Sugar’ by the Rolling Stones is released.
• 1991 Charles Elton died. Elton was an English biologist who first developed the idea of a ‘food chain.’
• 2001 Hindus in Seattle filled suit against McDonald’s restaurant chain for not disclosing the use of beef flavoring in its French Fries.
• 2005 A 9 foot, 640 pound freshwater catfish was caught by fishermen in northern Thailand on the Mekong River. According to many, this is the largest freshwater fish ever caught.