a money tree: cacao

the food of the gods

            The importance of the Coe work is not a simple biography of a commodity. There are several purvues in this work that clarify the complexity of markets, social history and cuisine. What may have been a monumental task, a four thousand year history, the Coes have clarified and made compact and truthful history.
            From the intertwining histories of what is now Mexico, and Latin and South Americas comes an easily digestible and rectifying history of people often misunderstood and rarely mentioned in US texts. Half of the volume is a history of people through the botany and use of cocoa, the remainder of the volume is how cocoa was found and transformed by the Western world. Without the deep historical renderings of the deep research and clarity of writing about the ancient use and people in which cocoa was such an important facet, the story would be nullified.
          Recently an article was published in Science magazine, "The chocolate habit in North America by archaeologist Michael Bawaya (also editor of American Archaeology) gives a one page summary of cocoa and its origins. I was a bit miffed that he did not mention the Coe book. However, I was happy to say to myself, oh, I know all that, I read Coe's True History.
          The ancient history, or rather the history of cocoa until the 18th century, which is compiled and aptly presented by the Coe's was much more influential to me than the second half of the book. In order to understand the complete and true history of chocolate, the entire history of course had to be written. This history of the Mesoamericans and other peoples who saw cocoa as part of their history, made it more than an economic entity to be studied.
          If Michael Coe had decided to make a two volume history of cocoa, I believe I would enjoy reading the extension of the value of the research. The integration of using a commodity to tell North American history from the ancient until the modern is spelling binding with the inclusion of myth debunking to writing a very complete history that incorporates as much as possible in such a wide history. Kudos to Coe.
          For thousands of years chocolate was honored and thought of a medicine. The arduous labor needed, as well as the specific plant habitat developed chocolate into a sought after commodity, as well as one that evolved into different forms.
           The complexity of chocolate from its habitat to the different forms of product makes chocolate more than a long lasting taste. Chocolate continues to be a part of a desired world commodity. Although the plant itself is not adaptable, humans have managed to produce various states of the plant to meet the needs of consumer.
           The three states (p. 253), that are mass produced with combinations of milk, sugar and other ameliorations has become a substance of much of the world's diet. Especially in Europe. It appears that as chocolate becomes reaches into a bigger global market, it may yet undergo another transition.
           In the meantime, like fine wines and coffee connoisseurs, chocolate may again become a more specialized commodity as with the ancient Mesoamericans as well as produced for the masses without the fine legacy of the criollo beans such as Valrhona. As the commodity of chocolate evolves, I am a happy consumer at my local Trader Joe's.