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Grade 8 (A2) · Fact text · 205 words

From Bitter Drink to Sweet Bar

A fact text about the history of chocolate, from the bitter drink of the Maya and Aztecs to the first chocolate bar.

Tap any word to hear it · dotted words have a definition in the glossary

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1Today you can buy a chocolate bar in almost any shop, but for most of history chocolate was not something you ate. It was something you drank.

2Chocolate comes from the of the cacao tree, which grows only in hot, wet places near the . More than 3,000 years ago, people in Central America and southern Mexico learned to these and them into a paste. The Maya and later the Aztecs mixed the paste with water, chili and spices. The drink was , not sweet, and cacao were so valuable that the Aztecs used them as money.

3In the 1500s, Spanish brought cacao back to Europe. The Spanish added sugar and honey, and hot chocolate soon became a drink for rich people.

4The chocolate bar came much later. In 1847, a British company, J. S. Fry & Sons, found a way to mix cocoa powder, sugar and cocoa butter into a paste that could be pressed into a mold. Milk chocolate followed in Switzerland in the 1870s.

5Today most cacao is grown in West Africa, especially in Ivory Coast and Ghana. Some of the farmers who grow it have never tasted the chocolate that is made from their .

📘 Glossary

seeds - the small parts of a plant from which new plants grow
equator - the imaginary line around the middle of the Earth
roast - to cook with dry heat
crush - to press something until it breaks into small pieces
bitter - having a sharp, not sweet, taste
explorers - people who travel to find new places
fashionable - liked by many people at a certain time
crops - plants that farmers grow for food

Questions

Finding details
1. According to paragraph 1, for most of history chocolate was…
Finding details
2. Where does the cacao tree grow?
Finding details
3. What did the Maya and the Aztecs mix the cacao paste with? Give TWO things.
Making inferences
4. What does the fact that the Aztecs used cacao seeds as money tell us?
Reference words
5. In paragraph 2, the word "them" in "used them as money" refers to…
Finding details
6. What did the Spanish add to the chocolate drink?
Finding details
7. Complete: The first chocolate bar was made in the year ______ by a ______ company.
Word meaning
8. In paragraph 3, the word "fashionable" is closest in meaning to…
Making inferences
9. Why is the last sentence of the text surprising?

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