The Olmecs of Mexico were the first civilisation to use the cocoa beans which grew wild in Central America as far back as 1500BC. That’s over 3,500 years ago!

The Mayans were the first real chocolate lovers. They roasted and ground the cocoa beans, then mixed in vanilla, chilli and spices to make a cold bitter drink with the consistency of gruel. It tasted nothing like the hot chocolate drink that we so love today.

Cocoa beans were brought back to Spain in the sixteenth century. It remained the preserve of royalty and the aristocracy well into the eighteenth century and was drunk in bed at breakfast time.

Chocolate houses sprang up in London in the seventeenth century and were frequented by the upper classes. By 1700 there were 2,000 in London. Samuel Pepys referred to a visit he took to a chocolate house: "went out with Mr Creed to drink our morning draught, which he did give me in chocolate to settle my stomach".

It has only been in the last 200 years that chocolate turned into the chocolate bars that fill our shelves today.

A number of the big names in chocolate today (Cadburys, Fry’s, Terry’s, Rowntree’s) were founded with money from Quaker families who were keen for chocolate to take the place of alcohol. They saw the consumption of alcohol as a sin, whereas chocolate consumption was merely a minor vice.

Fuelled by their desire for its delicious taste, the rulers of Europe established plantations in other equatorial countries where the cocoa tree thrives.