National Chocolate Day 2011: Happy National Chocolate Day

National Chocolate Day is Wednesday, Dec. 28, 2011 this year, according to the National Confectioners Association.

The NCA lists both December 28 and 29 as National Chocolate Day, which makes sense, since there are so many ways you can celebrate the holiday. There’s chocolate cake, chocolate ice cream, chocolate chip cookies, chocolate truffles…

Here are a few facts about chocolate that you can use to impress fellow foodies on this holiday, courtesy of thestoryofchocolate.com:

• Spanish royalty gave cakes of cacao in their dowries.
• Approximately 40 million to 50 million people around the world depend upon cocoa for their livelihood.
• Chocolate contains two doses of cocoa butter—the natural amount from the bean, plus an extra dollop to make it creamy.
• It takes two to four days to make a single-serving chocolate bar.
• Chocolate comes from a fruit tree and is made from a seed.
• The Aztec emperor Montezuma drank 50 cups of cacao a day from a golden chalice.
• It takes 400 cocoa beans to make one pound of chocolate.
• Studies have found that one of the major saturated fats in chocolate does not raise cholesterol like other hard fats
• Theobroma Cacao is the tree that produces cocoa beans, and it means “food of the gods.” Carolus Linnaeus, the father of plant taxonomy, named it.
• The average serving of milk chocolate has about the same amount of caffeine as a cup of decaf coffee.
• Because cacao trees are so delicate, farmers lose, on average, 30 percent of their crop each year.
• U.S. chocolate manufacturers use about 3.5 million pounds of whole milk every day to make milk chocolate.

As with all beautiful things, National Chocolate Day is not without controversy. Some say that the holiday was actually Oct. 28, 2011, while other say that the holiday is in July.

To err on the side of caution, one should celebrate by enjoying chocolate on all of the days in question.