International Chocolate Day: Why is it celebrated on Sept. 13?
The choice of this date is related to two famous chocolate lovers: Milton S. Hershey and Roald Dahl. While it is of the most popular foods on the planet, it also impacts the economy and has health benefits.
International Chocolate Day
Every Sept. 13 is celebrated as International Chocolate Day, but few people know why this date was chosen to honor one of the world's most popular foods.
The choice of this date is related to two famous chocolate lovers who were born on Sept. 13: American entrepreneur Milton S. Hershey, founder of the iconic Hershey chocolate company, and Roald Dahl, the British writer, aviator and screenwriter who wrote the famous novel "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory."
Hershey, born in Pennsylvania in 1857, was responsible for popularizing chocolate and making it an affordable delicacy for all palates.
Dahl, born in Cardiff, Wales, in 1916, published "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" in 1964. It is a masterpiece that enamored millions of people around the world, and even hit the big screen for the first time in 1971, and years later, in 2005 and 2023, two more adaptations of the novel were shown in theaters.
Chocolate and its impact on the economy
Chocolate was part of ancient Mesoamerican civilizations, which used cocoa as a ceremonial drink and currency. This popular food comes from the cacao tree, more precisely from its seed.
In addition, chocolate has a highly relevant impact on the global economy, since many cocoa-producing countries, such as the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Indonesia, Nigeria and Cameroon, among others, depend heavily on the export of this fruit.
Likewise, the main companies in the industry invest large sums of money for the creation of new products related to this industry in order to reach more markets.
What are the health benefits of chocolate?
According to experts, contrary to popular belief, chocolate is highly nutritious, if it is largely composed of pure cocoa. In addition, it improves blood flow, regulates blood pressure, raises good cholesterol, improves brain function, reduces migraines and prevents the excess of free radicals, molecules that are produced every day in our body as a result of biological reactions that occur in cells.
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