Chocolate Milk Was Invented in Jamaica
Chocolate milk is objectively delicious, whether cold, boxed, hot or
malted. The beverage has been a staple of American lunches for years
(thanks, in part, to the U.S. milk lobby). It has also been the center
of some controversy: parents can’t seem to decide if the beverage is a
hero (saving their children from drinking soda at lunch) or villain
(filling their children with empty calories). In New York City, about 60
percent of the milk cartons served at every school lunch are full of
chocolate milk. That’s 60 million cartons of chocolate milk consumed
every year in New York City lunchrooms alone.
But where did it come from? Who first thought to add chocolate and milk
together? According to the Natural History Museum in Britain, that
credit goes to Sir Hans Sloane, an Irish botanist. Sloane spent some
time in Jamaica in the early 1700s, where the local people gave him
cocoa to drink. “He found it 'nauseous' but by mixing it with milk made
it more palatable," the museum says. When he returned to England, Sloane
brought the milk and cocoa mixture with him, and for many years it was
sold as medicine.
But, as with most things, the European who gets credit for inventing
something probably did not actually invent it. According to Jame
Delbougo, a historian, the Jamaicans were brewing “a hot beverage brewed
from shavings of freshly harvested cacao, boiled with milk and
cinnamon” as far back as 1494. And chocolate has been known to humans as
far back as 350 B.C. It's hard to believe that no one before Sloane
thought to put milk in it.
Even Europeans had known about chocolate since 1502, when Columbus
brought it back from his conquests in the Americas—although it wasn’t
until Cortez pillaged the Aztecs in 1516 that Europeans actually figured
out what to do with cacao. In fact, Cortez had a similar reaction to
Sloan when served the bitter drink—he added spices and sugar to cut the
bite. (If you want to make that kind of hot chocolate, try this
Mesoamerican recipe.)
Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/chocolate-milk-was-invented-jamaica-180949734/#VzePRVeQpyCj6GJB.99
Give the gift of Smithsonian magazine for only $12! http://bit.ly/1cGUiGv
Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter
https://www.geezgo.com/sps/51465
Join Geezgo for free. Use Geezgo's end-to-end encrypted Chat with your Closenets (friends, relatives, colleague etc) in personalized ways.>>
No comments