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Food of the Gods!
3 min readMar 20, 2023
Theobroma Cacao
Everybody loves chocolate! So today, we talk about its origin and health benefits.
The tree!
The cacao tree is a small 20–39 ft tall evergreen tree in the family Malvaceae.
Cacao trees grow well as understory plants in humid forest ecosystems. A tree begins to bear when it is 4 -5 years old. A mature tree may have 6000 flowers yearly, yet only 20 pods.
Pods & seeds:
Forty pods or 1,200 seeds are required to produce 2.2 lbs. of cocoa paste.
Cocoa beans are grown by large agroindustrial plantations & small producers in the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Indonesia, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Brazil.
The generic name Theobroma is derived from Greek, meaning ‘food of the Gods.’
Its cacao bean seeds are used to make chocolate liquor, cocoa solids, cocoa butter, and chocolate.
