It’s important to learn about where things come from, especially things you really like. I’m a huge fan of chocolate, so I decided to find out what it looks like before it’s roasted, melted and finally turned into the delicious dessert we all enjoy so much.
The cacao tree is pretty small, but its fruits are big! They are about the size of a mango with a hard shell on the outside and sweet, fleshy fruit with lots of hard cacao beans on the inside. When they’re ripe, some special trees produce green fruits, but most of the time they’re yellow, orange or red.
I was so surprised when I first saw the fruit that becomes chocolate! I had never seen a cacao fruit before, and I imagined they were just little brown things -- almost like chocolate chips. I had no idea that chocolate comes from such a beautifully vibrant fruit.
Cacao grows best in tropical areas where it rains most of the year. Cacao plants thrive in places roughly a thousand miles north or south the Equator, an area also known as the “Chocolate Belt.” Ghana, Colombia, Jamaica, and, of course, Vietnam are all located within the Chocolate Belt. All of these countries produce delicious cacao fruits!
