Fifty Shades of Chocolate

For over 3500 years you've enjoyed me as a drink. 

I was domesticated in the South American Amazon basin.

Every day I was mixed with water to produce the drink you have come to love. 

The women in the village would stir me until a thick layer of highly prized foam topple my head. 

They measure their own status against the amount of foam I can produce. 

I was promised to be a worthy trade for my Mayan master.  

The Aztecs used me for currency, yet unknown to the rest of the world, and on his fourth voyage to the New World, Christopher Columbus assumed I was an almond.

But soon thereafter, I became the drink of choice for the privileged and working class.  

England captured the Caribbean Islands and I arrived bare in London for the first time.

I made a welcoming entrance at the marriage of Louis XIII of France to Anne of Austria. 

Carl von Linne names me Thoebromo Cacao, "food of the gods."  

Benjamin Franklin sends me to support the British soldiers during the French and Indian war.  

I rapidly became a hot commodity in the colonies and changed from a bitter sweet drink to a silky, smooth bar within a few seasons. 

I was the romance on menu for the Titanic and during the Brazilian jungle expedition, Theodore Roosevelt rationed 16 ounces of me for five men per week.

To appease the gods on Mt. Everest, Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Norgay buries me on its summit.

Meriwether Lewis swore that I improved his health during the Lewis and Clark Expedition.  

Helena Viola Sachse published a book about me: “How to cook for the Sick and Convalescent”  

Research from the Flaviola Consortium unveils that I can keep hearts healthy. 

Sadly, in a desperately plea for variety, white chocolate became official, annotating my cocoa genome.