The internet is full of fabulous facts about everything from current events to the history basket weaving and bittersweet chocolate fun facts. As we research for our daily content on food trucks, food carts and street food, we stumble upon some items of knowledge that we just did not know.

We have decided when these fun facts pop up, that we would share them with our readers in our section titled “Did You Know?”

For today’s Did You Know we will look at Bittersweet Chocolate fun facts.

Bittersweet Chocolate Fun Facts: Ancient Mesoamericans used roasted, crushed cacao beans to treat sicknesses and even kidney stones. Due to dark chocolate’s health benefits, it was used to treat a wide variety of illnesses at the time. Even before scientists understood the specific health benefits, the wealthy in ancient times did. The few that could afford to have chocolate on a daily basis managed better than people who couldn’t afford to eat the delectable cacao.

  • January 10th is National Bittersweet Chocolate Day.
  • November 7th is National Bittersweet Chocolate with Almonds Day. (really)
  • In America, bittersweet chocolate starts around 70% or more of cacao. Higher percentages of cacao lower the amount of sugar in your chocolate, but usually raise the amount of cocoa butter used. This ratio of cacao to sugar determines if it is bittersweet, semi-sweet, or sweetened.  If you decide to add fine dark chocolate to your routine, make sure it’s true dark chocolate. Sometimes milk chocolate will have food coloring to make it look like dark chocolate. Checking the cacao percentage is probably best.
  • Chocolate syrup was used for blood in the famous 45 second shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s movie, “Psycho” which actually took 7 days to shoot.
  • There are about 5 to 10 milligrams of caffeine in one ounce of bittersweet chocolate, 5 milligrams in milk chocolate, and 10 milligrams in a six-ounce cup of cocoa; by contrast, there are 100 to 150 milligrams of caffeine in an eight-ounce cup of brewed coffee. You would have to eat more than a dozen chocolate bars, for example, to get the amount of caffeine in one cup of coffee.
  • A single chocolate chip provides sufficient food energy for an adult to walk 150 feet; hence, it would take about 35 chocolate chips to go a mile, or 875,000 for an around-the-world hike.
  • One click of a mouse burns 0.0000024 kcals of energy, so if you eat a chocolate bar, you’ll need to click your mouse 765,551,000 times to burn it off.

Check out this recipe for Beef And Bean Chili With Bittersweet Chocolate

Bittersweet Chocolate Fun Facts We May Have Missed

Feel free to let us know about the bittersweet chocolate fun facts we missed. We always love to add to these lists. If we can verify that the facts is just that, a fact, we will give the reader credit in the article.

Reference: Wikipedia facts about Chocolate