Chocolate is a sweet food made from cacao beans, the seeds of cacao trees that grow in tropical regions near the equator. To make chocolate, workers harvest cacao pods, ferment and dry the beans inside, then roast and grind them into a thick paste. Mixed with sugar and often milk, this paste becomes the chocolate bars, chips, and candies we love.

The ancient Maya and Aztec peoples discovered chocolate over 3,000 years ago, drinking it as a bitter beverage flavored with spices. When Spanish explorers brought cacao to Europe in the 1500s, adding sugar transformed it into the sweet treat we know today. For centuries, chocolate remained expensive and rare, but innovations in manufacturing made it affordable for everyone.

Chocolate comes in several varieties: dark chocolate has little or no milk and tastes more bitter and intense, milk chocolate is sweeter and creamier, and white chocolate contains cocoa butter but no cocoa solids (which is why some people debate whether it's really chocolate at all). The word can also describe a rich brown color, like chocolate-brown shoes or paint.