Hey there! Do you like chocolate? We hope so, since you're reading this! But do you really know your favorite treat? We've put together 5 essential facts about chocolate to perfect your knowledge!
12 kilos per second. No, these are not the outlandish promises of a new diet but the quantity of chocolate consumed by the French! Does that seem like a lot? Just wait! That's 400,000 tons annually! And do you know what that's equivalent to? More than 8 times the weight of the Titanic... Gulp!
5, that's our rank in the world ranking of the biggest chocolate consumers. With 7.3 kg per year per inhabitant. The least we can say is that we're better at tasting chocolate than at math calculations: 24th in Europe, we're bad, Jack. Luckily, we can comfort ourselves with our favorite bar!
7% irreducible Gauls. We're talking about the percentage of French people who still resist the call of chocolate. Yes, 93% of French households buy chocolate, including 33% in bars and 19% in spreads. Naturally, my dear Watson, when you know that 98% of French people appreciate this confectionery. In other words, apart from your allergic aunt or that old hermit in the shed at the back of the garden, everyone buys chocolate. At the same time, it's so good!
30% of French people vote dark chocolate! This is the share it represents in our total chocolate consumption (and in our hearts)! It's not bad, but it's even better when we compare this figure with our neighbors: only 5% of the European population eats it. Everyone has their own little preferences: Germans mostly eat chocolate in pastries, while Belgians love pralines.
1615, does that ring a bell? This year marks the beginning of two great love stories. The first between Louis XIII and Anne of Austria, and the second between the French and chocolate! Anne of Austria, a great admirer of "drinking" chocolate, introduced it to France during her marriage to the king. It was love at first sight, and this new drink quickly became popular. So much so that when he reigned, Louis XIV had to regulate the consumption of chocolate by his court, so excessive it became!
63% of our chocolates leave their native France and are exported abroad. This is not surprising when you consider the talent of our artisan chocolatiers, who are in demand all over the world, especially in Japan. In the land of the rising sun, they are chocolate fans! And as an anecdote, women traditionally offer it to ALL the men in their entourage on Valentine's Day. Family, friends, or simple colleagues, everyone gets some! And, a month later, the men who received this gift must in turn offer chocolates... but in a quantity up to 3 times greater, every gourmet's dream!
Bonus: 2080 chocolate bars on a huge wall 5m high by 5m wide, that's the world record for the largest (and coolest) chocolate bar mosaic! And it was Le chocolat des Français who created it for the Salon du Chocolat in 2016, cacaorico!
And there you have it, you're now more than a gourmet, you're an expert gourmet! May the bean be with you, young cocoa tree!
