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Chocolate - In the Raw
In the Raw
We slip through a crude wood-post and wire gate. Sunlight softly filters through a latticework of giant, feathery ferns. A tiny splash of red announces the presence of a poison arrow tree frog.

Cacao Fruit Pods

Welcome to La Tirimbina, a 740-acre research preserve tucked in the Costa Rican rainforest. Although we're just 45 miles from the San Jose airport, the last bit of the trip is a bone-jolting ride best taken in sturdy four-wheel drive.

Allen Young hangs insect trap on cacao tree

Tropical biologist Allen Young points to a tree that would be like any other rainforest shrub except for one thing. It's a cacao tree -- one of the few species with flowers and fruits that grow directly out of the trunk and lower branches of the tree. Young hacks off a red-brown fruit about the shape and size of a kid's toy football, ridged and bumpy. He slices it open with his machete and offers a taste of the flesh -- lemony and a little less dense than an apple. A seed squirts out of his hand.

Open Fruit with Seeds "That's the strategy of this tree," he says. "The tree seems to want birds and other animals to come by, eat this great-tasting fruit and distribute the seeds around the forest." In fact wild cacao fruits don't ever get the chance to fall off the tree. He slices open the slippery white seed. The purplish bean inside is the raw ingredient of your favorite chocolate bar, but it still has a long way to go.



L I K E  F O R E S T S  F O R  C H O C O L A T E

In the
Raw		 No More
Chocolate?		 Disaster Cacao
Comeback		 Chocolate
Quiz



Pictures: Robert McClintock/PhotoAssist (top) | Allen Young |
Copyright © 1997 Discovery Communications, Inc.

Chocolate Unwrapped

Central American Indians were probably the first to grind cacao seeds and mix the paste with water, chili peppers, vanilla, other spices and cornmeal to make a bitter drink. The Aztecs called the cacao tree cacvaqualhitl, the pods cacvacentli, the cacao beans cachotal, and the prepared beverage chocolatl.

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See how cacao becomes a confection on the Hershey's Tour