Culture - Blood, Sex, and the Bitter Water, a Violently Erotic History of Chocolate

[Potter]

This is my written version of a lecture, there's some holes that still need to be filled, some transitions that could be worked out, and the foot notes don't want to transfer, but there's still a lot of good stuff here, hope you enjoy!

Blood and sex, when it comes down to it, everything has to do with blood and sex, but Theobroma cacao’s history is inseparable from human’s most basic passions. From Aztec sacrifices and orgies, to the Marquis de Sade, to 15 million slaves meeting their end in fields of sugar cane, to Valentines Day, few other plants have ever invoked such energies. It has been eaten by the gods, found in the rations of soldiers, served to the condemned. Today, next to roses and hearts, nothing says “I love you” like chocolate.


Cacao is a tropical plant native to the New World. They are found growing in the understory of rain forests, within 20 degrees of the equator. Trees growing upward of 25 feet are found in the wild, though cultivators keep them much shorter. Broad, alternating leaves grow to two feet in length and almost half that in width. It’s small flowers, (aprox. 1/3 inch) grow directly on the trunk and old branches, have a light pink color and are pollinated by tiny midge flies (Furcipimyia sp.) The pods grow directly out of meristematic cushions in the trunk and old branches, in a process called cauliflory. The fruits or pods are about six to eight inches long when ripe and then yellow, red, or maroon color. They weigh about one pound and have twenty five to forty seeds inside. Delicate when young, cacao trees need to start in heavy shade, but once established their large canopies provide ample shade of their own.

Part of the Sterculiaceae family, (coming from the Roman god of privies, a reference to their smell), Theobromo cacao is related to the kola tree, Cola nitida; the flavoring agent that swept the world in red lettered glass bottles. There are another 120 African species and in California, the flannel bush, a common ornamental. More closely related is T. bicolor, used to make pinolillo (pataxte "big pumpkin seed" in Nahautal) a traditional Nicaraguan beverage. There are three cultivars of T. caco. T. cacao var. criollo is used to make the traditional drink known in Mesoamerica and is considered the finest of the cacao plants. T. cacao var. forastero, is far inferior in quality, it originated in the northern and western Amazon basin. Cross breed to increase hardiness, the resulting T. Trinadado is hardier then the crillo, but doesn’t do justice to the flavor. T. cacao is believed to be a relatively new species, perhaps only 10,000 years old, probably the result of selective breeding of wild species.



Commercial farming of cacao trees, in large plantations, is an amazingly inefficient process. The trees must be started in greenhouses, transplanted only after they have reached a few feet in height. The midges they depend on for pollination require large quantities of rotting fruit for their lifecycle. It is rare to find them in large numbers in the well kept open fields of a cacao farm. The full grown trees still require individual attention; their thin bark is prone to injury, especially when harvesting the pods. Because they grow from meristem tissue, the pods removal is a reasonably delicate operation; rugged removal will rip the thin bark and leave a deep wound prone to fungal infections. The bark coupled with a shallow root system make the trees to delicate to climb, further complicating the process. In open air plantations, invading species are controlled with highly toxic herbicides, such as paraquat, and potent insecticides such as endosulfan. Runoff is an issue.

Cacao yields increase when it is grown in its natural habitat. Young plants are placed in the under story of established rain forest, shade trees including avocados, bananas, breadfruits, mangoes, oranges, and rubber trees. Once the cacao is established coffee trees prosper in their shade. This set up provides the rotting fruit so important to the life cycle of the midges that pollinate the cacao flowers. Snakes seem to thrive in cacao farms, and are held in high respect, as they are far more efficient at pest removal then any farmer could accomplish. The combination of a variety of crops provide the farmer with a continued source of food and revenue, provide ideal habitats for many animal species, and generally keep the land whole and functional as a rain forest.


Nitrogen, on its own is inert, yet in combination with other elements, produces some of the most reactive chemicals known to man. Alkaloids are nitrogenous compounds with pharmacological effects on kingdom Animalia; bridging the gap between the realm of plants and humans. Cacao is filled with alkaloids, to understand why people do what they have for chocolate; one must examine its contents and their effects on the brain.

Numbering around 300 identified volatile compounds, including stimulants and endogenous neurotransmitters, chocolates chemistry is a complex study of interactions.

Theobromine, occurring in quantities of 40-80mg per cup of cacao, is the purine that accounts for the majority of chocolates effects. Unlike caffeine, which differs from theobromine by only a single methyl group, it is much milder, long lasting stimulant. It elevates mood and is being discovered as one of the most potent chemicals to act on the smooth muscles. It is a diuretic, vasodilator, myocardial stimulant and has recently been found to be more effective antitussive then codeine, through suppression of the vagus nerve. Its excellence in relaxing the smooth muscles means it can cause acid reflux. It is theobromine that is toxic to dogs. Recently this drug was proven effective in preventing and treating apnea in premature infancy.

Theobromine’s cousin, caffeine is present, but in much smaller quantities, 4-5mg per cup.

Xanthine

Ananadamide is an endogenous ligand, which interacts with the cannabinoid receptors. While the effects of these receptors are still relatively unknown, they seem to be involved with short term memory and stroke damage prevention in the central nervous system, and immunity response in the peripheral nervous system. Of course its name is derived from the Sanskrit word ananda, meaning ‘bliss’, THC triggers these same receptors, infer as you will. Cacao also has two other chemicals that prevent the degradation of ananadamide by the MAO inhibitors, so chocolate not only adds to your natural ananadamide, but helps build up the natural quantities already present.


Phenethylamine is the base for the catecholamine neurotransmitters; dopamine, norepinepherine, adrenaline, not to mention many of the compounds created by Alexander Shulgin, all share the common base of phenethylamine. There have been studies showing that “people suffering from un-requited love” have reduced levels of phenethylamine, and that eating chocolate is a legitimate form of self medication. MDMA, amphetamine, 2-CB, many of the chemicals in this family are forbidden to posses, their effects on the brain are potent, to say the least.

The very same dopamine pleasure circuits activated by opiates are triggered by some of the lipids found in chocolates. This reaction can be shut down with Nalaxone, a drug used to prevent addicts from deriving pleasure from opiates.

Chocolate is a fantastic source of the phenolic antioxidants that brought red wine into recent headlines. This class of potent chemicals helps combat heart disease; and a bar of dark chocolate can have almost twice the active flavonoids as a glass of wine. They also show antioxidant activity that can reduce the conversion of lipids to the low-density ‘bad cholesterols’, and may help arrest cancer’s growth cycle.

Cocoa butter, a byproduct of chocolate production, is used in dermatological preparations. It helps hear scars, moisten the skin, prevent infection, and is often used to coat pills and suppositories.

The outer husks, discarded in the production process, are now being sold as garden mulch, a sexier alternative to manure.



Cacao was most likely cultivated by the mysterious Olmec civilization between 1,500 and 1,000 BCE. Apart from their giant carved heads and contributions to maize processing , little is known of these people who all but vanished around 400 BCE. Mayans entering the old Olmec territory received the word cacao from the descendants of the Olmecs, and soon the food became intrinsic to their civilization.

During the classical period of the Mayan civilization 250-900 CE chocolate was the choice drink of the aristocratic class. Among the tombs of nobles, tall cylinders, used for different types of cacao beverages were found in abundance. Most notably was one of the earliest depictions of the foaming process, witnessed by the conquistadors almost 800 years later. Pictured on a jar with a woman pouring the contents of one jar into another, this would mix the ingredients and produce desirable foam. Most commonly the cacao powder was mixed with water, cornmeal, honey, or chili peppers. This would then be served hot. Compound glyph writing suggesting “chili” cacao, “fruity” cacao and others suggest it was often mixed with numerous other plants for flavor or effects.

Mayan mythology was filled with chocolate. The Madrid Codex shows a picture of four gods piercing their ears with obsidian blades, their blood falling upon the pods of cacao. Chocolate would forever be linked to blood. Ek-Chuah, a Mayan god of merchants and trade, started off as a war god. He is the patron of cacao.

The Aztec Empire developed around 1,111 CE, and the Mayans were more then eager to offer the cacao beans in trade.

Aztec society was heavily stratified and it was only the upper classes that were allowed to drink, what they called cacahuatl (caca-bitter, atl-water). Besides the nobility and veteran warriors, a group of long distance traders, the pochteca, an honorary warrior class, were allowed the favored drink. Commoners serving in the military in foreign lands or on calpulli duty working in the royal palaces would be allowed the bitter water as a show of gratitude. Chocolate has become a standard ration in modern militaries, during WWII, soldiers took another cue from the Aztecs, and it became a form of universal currency

Aztecs did not have a singular currency, rather quantity values of base goods used in trade. Cacao beans, feathers, stones, fabric were among items with standardized values. 100 beans of cacao could buy a “reasonably tolerable slave” or a large hare, eggs could be bought for 3 beans, a tamale for a single bean. This was in no way a secure system. It has been recently discovered that it had been flooded with counterfeit beans, made of compressed amaranth dough, wax, and pieces of avocado pits. So well crafted, that despite the millions of beans uncovered by archeologists over the past two centuries, no one noticed the thousands of counterfeit beans until the late seventies.

Aztecs prepared their beverages much like the Mayans, though they preferred theirs to be cooled. Along with tobacco, chocolate was served at the end of a meal. Common admixtures included allspice, vanilla, chilies, seeds of the ceiba tree and nixtamilla. Sahagún reported strong psychoactive effects on the people drinking cacahuatl;

"This cacao, when much is drunk, when much is consumed, especially that which is green, which is tender, makes one drunk, takes effect on one, makes one dizzy, confuses one, makes one sick, deranges one. When an ordinary amount is drunk, it gladdens one, refreshes one, consoles one, invigorates one. Thus it is said: "I take cacao. I wet my lips. I refresh myself.'"

Jonthan Ott believes it is easier to account this due to admixtures such as Datura and Psilocybe, as it is difficult to consume enough chocolate to feel these types of effects. Motecezuma II was said to drink up to 50 servings of chocolate a day, often before retiring to his harem, so it is hard to really say. Even today, it is not unusual for modern members of the cult of the sacred mushroom, teonanacatl, to mix their sacrament with chocolate and even chilies.

Yollotl-eztli, literally “heart, blood” is a poetic term for chocolate, links it to the sacrificial ceremonies. The cacao pod became a metaphor for the heart torn out of the priests sacrifice. The Spanish would continue this tradition, serving chocolate at auto-de-fé giving it to both the attendants and to those being tortured.

It is not known if Cortés brought chocolate back directly, though the pods were certainly included with his treasures. Our first reference to a cacahuatl beverage in Spain dates to 1544, when a group of Mayan dignitaries presented it to Prince Philip of Spain. In an interesting mirror of the Aztec class restrictions, the Spanish Royal Court kept the drink a secret for many years. It would remain exclusive to the Royalty for almost a quarter century when the first commercial shipment of cacao beans from Veracruz arrived in Seville in 1585.

The etymology of the modern word, chocolate, arose several generations after the fall of Tenochtitlan. Michael Coe believes the Spaniards coined the term from the Mayan word choral, “hot” and replacing the Mayan suffix -ha, “water, for the Nahuatl (the name of the Aztec language) word of the same meaning, -atl. The Mayan word chokola'j, “drinking chocolate together”, may also be a factor into the linguistic history of the word. Linnaeus would classify the chocolate plant as Theobroma cacao, food of the gods, giving due respect to the Mayan creation story, the Popol Vuh.


As with tobacco and coffee, chocolate’s medicinal properties sparked its spread from Spain to Italy, and by the 17th century, France and the rest of Europe. The Cardinal of Lyon, probably the first Frenchman to use chocolate claimed it “moderated the vapors of his spleen.” In 1664 Francesco Maria Brancaccio, an Italian wrote that chocolate “restores natural heat, generates pure blood, enlivens the heart, conserves the natural faculties.”

Like the other alkaloid rich plants from the New World, there was much religious debate as to what chocolate was; food, drink, medicine, or inebriant, and how it fit into fasts. The Jesuits felt it was simply a drink and could be consumed during Lent, while the Benedictines felt it was not appropriate for days of fasting. Two centuries and seven popes would pass before this debate would be settled in favor of the Jesuits. Despite a papal decree by Pope Gregory XII, there would still be short and highly unsuccessful attempts to ban the immensely popular drink. When a bishop in San Cristobal prohibited ladies from drinking chocolate during mass, the ladies went to the nunnery down the street, where chocolate was still in favor. The bishop seems to have been poisoned soon after.

The Spaniards would add their own admixtures to chocolate. In The Natural History of Chocolate, “Sometimes, china (quinine) and assa (foetida?); and sometimes steel and rhubarb, may be added for young and green ladies.” Musk (sexual attractant from minks) and ambergris (whale vomit) were also favored.

Given the bloody and sexual history of chocolate, it isn’t surprising that the Marquis de Sade was Europe’s first chocoholic. He organized at least one orgy where chocolate, was served, apocryphally mixed with spanish fly, to all the prostitutes and guests. It was a smashing success and he would later be arrested for his activities involving his sister-in-law that night. When ever de Sade wrote to his wife (from jail), he always asked her to send some chocolate.

Briefly we digress, to other movers in the plant world, and their impact on civilization. From the last half of the 17th century through the end of the next, English sugar consumption doubled every 10 years. This rise mirrors the importation of tea, and counting the amount consumed in the making of chocolate, almost half of the sugar is accounted for. Europe got almost all of its sugar from the New World, after Columbus introduced sugar cane (Saccharum officinarum) in his earliest expeditions. The cane farm required back breaking work, certainly not suitable for a white man. A slave picking cotton would live twice as long as a slave harvesting sugar. In his book, Seeds of Change, Henery Hobhouse calculates that each teaspoon of processed sugar equaled six days of a slave’s life. The English used some fifteen million slaves in its pursuit of sugar. If the English could have purchased their slaves from the Mayans, the total cost would have been 15 billion cacao beans, drastically reducing the amount of sugar needed. Of course, this does not take into account the slaves on the cacao farms.


What we consider “chocolate” wouldn’t come into being until the mid 1800’s. Conrad Van Houten invented a press to extract the cocoa butter from the roasted nibs in 1827. The result, mixed with carbonate salts, forms the cocoa powder that is the basis for all modern chocolate. Removal of the cocoa butter allowed for the first hard chocolates.

Milk chocolate was invented when dried milk solids were added to the mixture by the Swiss in the year 1876. Chocolate production really hasn’t changed much since then. Machines have replaced slaves, most of the time, but the process is essentially the same.

Ronald Dahl’s, struwwelpeter book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory would once again link chocolate to its bloody past. People eating chocolate before their punishments, didn’t that come up before? It is probably better not to consider the Oompah-Loompas, stolen from their homeland and forced to produce chocolate, lest one be reminded of the Ivory Coast, a land rich with cacao farms, and slavery.

While the triangle trade of slaves across the Atlantic was officially abolished in the 1800’s, there is growing concern over the use of slaves to harvest cacao in the Ivory Coast. Cadbury was the first company to stop purchasing cacao from that region; American companies said they would look in to it, don’t hold your breath. Thankfully, there are now numerous small chocolate companies specializing in organic, fair trade candy. Fair trade means that ingredients have been purchased at high cost from local farmers. Market value is below the poverty line for many food products, slave wages. Fair trade allows for sustainable agriculture and rewards farmers for ecological conservation and is often associated with organic farming.


Champaign, aged cheese, Kobe beef, mushroom truffles, fugu sushi, saffron, beluga caviar; when it comes to the finest food and drink, the prices are extraordinary. Some of these dishes can start at a thousand dollars, but not chocolate. Ten dollars and you can buy the very best in the world, at least a few ounces. (R. Caine) Of course early this year a Japanese company made a map Africa out of chocolate and diamonds. This royal treat will set you back over 5 million dollars.


During my own, intense, field research into chocolate, I came across a bar produced by Chocolove, whose wrapper (combined with the wrappers of the rest of their line) contained the whole of the balcony scene, from Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet. I suspect that Motecazuma and de Sade would have been delighted to read the Bard’s, famous, tragic love story while eating chocolate.



Bibliography

An Aztec Herbal: the classic codex of 1552. Translated by William Gates. Ontario Canada: General Publishing Company 2000.

Coe, Sophia D. and Michael D. Coe. 1996. The History of Chocolate. Thanes and Hudson

Dahl, Ronald. 1964. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Puffin Books.
de Sahagún, Bernard. 1600 C. General de las Cosas de Nueva España (Florentine Codex).

Erowid, E and Erowid, F. "The Origins of Chocolate." Erowid Extracts. Nov 2004; 7:4-8.

Hobhouse, Henery. 1987. Seeds of Change: Five Plants that Transformed Mankind. Perennial.

Leon-Portilla, Miguel. 1992. The Broken Spears: the Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico. Beacon Press.

Pendell, Dale. 2002. PharmakoDynamis. Mercury House.

Sahagun, Fray Bernardino de. 1950?1963. The Florentine Codex. General History of the Things of New Spain. Translated by Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble. Santa Fe, New Mexico: The School of American Research and the University of Utah.

Usmani OS, Belvis MG, Patel HJ, Crispino N, Birrell MA, Korbontis M, Korbonits D, Barnes PJ, “Theobromine inhibits sensory nerve activation and cough.” FASEB J. 2005;19:231-3
Internet Resources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cacao and many others

http://www.exploratorium.edu/explori...te/choc_3.html

http://www.mythinglinks.org/ip~cacao.html

http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/programs/fo...04/mg0604.html

http://www.turnto10.com/news/6435686/detail.html

http://vetyle.pair.com/users/pyramid...xicaplants.htm
Entheogenic Plant Use Among the Indigenous Peoples of the Mexica Region by Frater 0=2 My own paper

The Food of the Gods A popular Account of Cocoa by Brandon Head
E-text at http://www.gutenburg.org/files/16035/

Reputation Comments on this post:

great addition, thanks for taking the time to share this

[theshiftyshaman]

fascinating,thank you, theobromine is awesome

[Jatelka]

On a vaguely related note, there is a wonderful paper (I think) in the archive

Chocolate, Sex and Disorderly Women

[Alfa]

This should be a blog entry.