Chocolate: The Health Benefits Of Chocolate

Chocolate products are the most significant products of snack food that are popular among all people especially children and as a source of energy in addition to its high nutritional value. Chocolate is easily available and comes in varied flavors, shapes, and textures result from different recipes and methods that have evolved in different parts of the world. It is also a typically sweet and usually brown or white in colour. Chocolate has distinctive attractive taste (Chiva 1999) and good for health such as decreases ricks of stroke and heart problem, promotes good digestion, improves blood flow, cough and diarrhea relief, strengthens the brain and protects against blood inflammation (Heller 2012). Moreover, chocolate is also perceived as

This is generally made from the almond-like soft and pinkish, or purplish (History of cocoa 2015), cocoa beans grow inside cocoa pods on a tree with the botanical name Theobroma cocoa. This cocoa trees have been grown since centuries. The cacao tree is a native of the tropical regions of South and Central America. It requires a humid climate with regular rainfall, hence, it usually grows in river basins. It is an understory tree, doing best with overhead shade (Tohi 2013). It flowers twice a year, and from thousands of small delicate blossoms produces about 40 large, colourful pods. Each pod an oval shape, and changes from a yellowish colour to more of an orange when ripe, and weighs about a pound (Tohi 2013). Each pod actually contains 30 to 40 dark almond-sized seeds encased in a sweet pulp. When ripe, the pods are cut from the trees (Permalink 2011). After beans are being removed from the pods and undergo a series of process to become chocolate. Nowadays, cocoa tree is also cultivated in West African and Southeast Asian countries that have humid tropical climates and lie within 20 degrees of the equator (Freemantle

Spain is the first exporter of chocolate and opened the first chocolate factory in 1780 in Barcelona. It is then followed shortly thereafter by Germany and Switzerland in the inexorable, relentless march towards full industrialization of cocoa. The chocolate manufacturing process offers a unique sequence of chemical engineering unit operations in different condition such as specific pressure and temperature. These operations can be isolated to demonstrate different chemical engineering fundamentals. The raw material, cocoa beans after harvest, will undergo many diverse processing steps depending on the desired final products. Briefly, fermentation and drying of the cocoa beans will be done. Then, these is followed by some manufacturing processes include roasting, cracking, grinding, mixing, refining and conching to obtain a chocolate liquor which is 55 % cocoa butter. During manufacture, refining and conching will determine particle size and suspension consistency and viscosity. These are important to yield specific textural and sensory qualities (Afoakwa and others 2008). The next stage in chocolate manufacture involves tempering and cooling the liquid under controlled conditions to allow the fat, which holds all the solid sugar and cocoa particles together, to set in a crystalline form that has a smooth texture and appealing appearance. It is also known as chocolate moulding. Then, the process