Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2019 i Faces People, Places, and World Culture for Kids and Children

1. Mayans enjoyed the first chocolate drink. They prepared it with cold water. It was spicy, frothy, and usually bitter. When Spanish conquistadors took cacao home with them, the Spanish changed the drink up a bit. They served it hot, with sugar and cinnamon. 2. Cacao trees grow better in the shade. In many areas, the trees that once shaded the cacao trees have been cut down. Farmers in cacao-growing areas are planting trees that will not only provide shade but also remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. 3. Caffeine is one of 300 chemicals in cacao beans. Caffeine stimulates the brain. It makes you more alert and can improve your mood. But too much is a problem—it can cause anxiety and make it hard for you to fall asleep.…

An apple a day keeps the doctor away. What about a chocolate bar a day? Cacao beans, the primary ingredient in chocolate, are part of the fruit from a flowering tree, just like apples. Cacao beans are the seeds from the cacao fruit. Cacao beans have more than 300 chemicals, including a poison. Yet eating a chocolate bar doesn’t kill us—it makes us happy. CHEMICALS GALORE Let’s look at exactly what’s inside this tasty treat. Several compounds in the cacao bean belong to a group of chemical compounds called alkaloids. Alkaloids occur naturally in many flowering plants. (Alkaloids can be synthesized in labs, too.) An alkaloid structure can get pretty complicated, but alkaloid molecules always have a ring structure with at least one nitrogen atom. Nitrogen is an element that…

Wait, did you say, “Chocolate Hills?!” If you have mouth-watering images of mounds of chocolate ready to be munched, your taste buds will be sorely disappointed. The Chocolate Hills are mostly conical-shaped knolls, made of limestone, that contain skeletons of marine life—hardly edible! These hills number more than a thousand and can be found on the island of Bohol in the Philippines. They are spread over a 20-square mile area throughout the towns of Carmen, Batuan (bah-tooahn), and Sangbayan (saag-bye-ahn). When viewed from afar, the knolls appear almost symmetrical. They range in height from 98 to 400 feet. So why are they called Chocolate Hills when they are not made of chocolate? It’s because these lush, grass-covered knolls dry up and turn brown during the dry season (around March to…

Jumbled here you will find a quote from the classic children’s book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl. The letters are directly below the column in which they fit, but they are mixed up within the column. It is your job to determine where each letter goes. Answers to the right on this page. Picture Credits: 5 second Studio/Shutterstock.com: inside front cover; Africa Studio/Shutterstock.com: 2-3, 16; Siriporn Schwendener/Shutterstock.com: 6; 1981 Rustic Studio/Shutterstock.com: 7; canbedone/Shutterstock.com: 9; Shulevskyy Volodymyr: 10; stockphoto-graf/Shutterstock.com: 11; danjazzia/Shutterstock.com: 12; AP Photo/Fernando Llano: 13; Yakov Oskanov /Shutterstock.com: 14; noBorders - Brayden Howie/Shutterstock.com: 15 (top); Keith Homan/Shutterstock.com: 15 (bottom), 21 (top); PixieMe/Shutterstock.com: 17 (top); Kati Finell/Shutterstock.com: 17 (bottom); Ninotee/Shutterstock.com: 18; Just Life/Shutterstock.com: 19; Adriana Iacob/Shutterstock.com: 20 (top); calimedia/Shutterstock.com: 20 (center); emka74/Shutterstock.com: 20-21; Jennifer Wallace/Shutterstock.com: 21 (bottom); Sea…

Where in the world does chocolate come from? Take a look at this map and you’ll see the “chocolate belt”; it circles the globe between 20 degrees north and 20 degrees south of the equator. (Mmm, nice and warm!) This is where cacao trees grow. The beans that grow on cacao trees are the main ingredient in chocolate. Cacao beans are shipped outside this chocolate belt to companies all over the world. They buy the beans to make their chocolate. Carob, a substitute for chocolate, is grown around the Mediterranean Sea. Take a look at the map and locate the countries that produce the most carob. African countries produce more than 70 percent of the world’s cacao, but they sell most of it rather than consume it. Very little chocolate…

Baci® Perugina® ITALY When this beloved Italian chocolate was first introduced in Perugina, Italy, in 1922, it was named “the punch.” Its distinct shape—a ball with a knot on top (made by a whole hazelnut atop a soft chocolate center all covered in chocolate)—looked like the knuckle of a fist. Luckily, the company art director had the good sense to rename it a “kiss” (baci in Italian). Baci Chocolates are beloved for their decadent flavor and the love letters found inside each wrapper. Ibarra Mexican Chocolate MEXICO Ibarra Chocolate is sold as round chocolate discs divided into eight wedges. Two wedges blended with hot milk or water makes a rich Mexican-style hot chocolate, with hints of cinnamon. Some people add a dash of cayenne pepper for a spicy Aztec or…

What comes to mind when you think about chocolate? A candy bar at Halloween? Ice cream on a hot day? You probably have your own favorites. But for Ibrahim, a 12-year-old boy from the west African country of Ghana, chocolate isn’t about sweet treats; it’s about bitter work. The labels on chocolate don’t tell his story, but if they did, we’d learn that Ibrahim spends his days growing and harvesting cacao, the plant that chocolate is made from. We’d also learn that he’s just one of more than two million children who perform this difficult labor instead of attending school. What if you could create change with every bite of candy? To understand, let’s look at chocolate’s hidden story. Chocolate comes from cacoa trees, 30-foot-tall plants that grow in the…

CHARACTERS: Narrator 1, Narrator 2, Narrator 3, Kukulkán (coo-cool-KAHN), Balam (BA-luhm), Nicte (NIKT), Night Jaguar, Chac (CHOK), and Ixchel (ICKS-chul) Narrator 1: A thousand years ago, in a jungle in present-day Mexico, there lived a king named Kukulkán who was also a god. He wore a cloak of colorful feathers like a bird’s, and his skin glistened in the sun like a jungle serpent’s. Each day, the god-king traveled all the way to Earth from his home in paradise. He often brought gifts to his people, the Maya. Nicte: Kukulkán has brought us maize (MAYZ, corn) to make tasty tortillas, books to read, and a calendar to keep track of the seasons and stars. How can we thank him? Balam: Kukulkán lives in paradise, but spends most of his time…

A large leaf-cutter ant has just cut a piece of fresh, new leaf from a cacao tree in Brazil. Hovering above, a humpbacked fly stalks the ant. The ant’s jaws are out of action while it carries the leaf, so the worker ant teams up with a smaller “minor worker.” The worker rides atop the cut leaf like a surfboard, acting as a bodyguard to defend its comrade from fly attacks. Sensing the perfect moment, the fly dive-bombs the ant. It pierces its hide and lays an egg inside its body. When the egg hatches, the larva travels to the ant’s head and begins feeding on the insect’s body fluid, muscle, and nervous system. After the larva has eaten the entire brain, the “zombie” ant is left to wander aimlessly…

Many people enjoy a steaming cup of hot chocolate on a snowy day or a gooey candy bar as an afternoon treat. So rumors predicting that chocolate would disappear from the planet by the mid-21st century sent chocoholics into a frenzy. Fortunately, those rumors are false. However, scientists agree that cocoa production faces other threats that are all too real. In fact, they are working on solutions to one of the most pressing concerns. Climate Change Imperils the Rain Forests All the chocolate we eat comes from the beans of cacao (kuh-COW) trees grown in rain forests located near the equator. The cacao tree is native to the Amazon region of Central and South America. However, more than 70 percent of cacao beans come from West Africa. Cacao trees have…

Aztecs believed that chocolate was the gift from a god, and most people today would probably agree that it is a heavenly treat. The ingredients of this exotic and ancient food gets its complex flavors from the fruit of cacao trees. In fact, it might be strange to think about, but chocolate is made from the seeds of this fruit, the cacao pod. It all starts with the harvesting of cacao beans. Cacao trees typically grow in areas just north or south of the equator, such as West Africa, Mexico, Indonesia, or South America. Being tropical trees, they love high humidity, plenty of rainfall, and a shady spot to grow. In fact, cacao trees are often grown in the shade of mango, banana, papaya, or rubber trees. New cacao trees…

Imagine you’re an astronaut on the International Space Station (ISS). It’s time for a snack, and you’re in the mood for something sweet. You float over to the food container. What do you think is inside? Would you be surprised to find brownies, chocolate pudding-cake, or colorful candy-coated chocolates? Chocolate has been a popular space food ever since it was launched into orbit with Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin in 1961. (Astronauts in the Soviet or Russian space programs are called “cosmonauts.”) Yuri was the first person in space. He dined on an in-flight meal of puréed meat and chocolate sauce, which also makes him the first person to eat chocolate in space. His food came in tubes, just like toothpaste. (Chocolate toothpaste? I’d brush my teeth with that!) Oodles of…

Milton Hershey was born in 1857 in a dairy farming town in Pennsylvania. Hershey’s first candy business was making caramels, not chocolates. Hershey learned from a candymaker in Denver who used fresh milk to make caramels creamier. He grew up speaking Pennsylvania Dutch, a dialect of German. He started his candy business in Pennsylvania to be close to the dairy farms there. Hershey started making chocolate in 1894. The chocolate business made him a millionaire. Milton and his wife Catherine had tickets to sail on the doomed H.M.S. Titanic, but a sudden emergency prevented them from boarding. The U.S. National Confectioners Association named September 13 International Chocolate Day—the same day as Hershey’s birthday. To cater to his workers’ needs, Hershey built an entire town around his chocolate factory. The town…