Chocolate: Sweet Science and Dark Secrets of the World's Favorite Treat

Picture this: you have in your hand a candy bar. It's a dark chocolate, sea salt Lindt bar, with smooth sweet chocolate with just a hint of bitter and a hint of salt. Perfection in a candy bar, right? But how did this bar get to be made? Where did the chocolate come from? That's the premise for Chocolate: Sweet Science & Dark Secrets of the World's Favorite Treat. In this relatively short nonfiction, Kay Frydenborg outlines the history of chocolate, from its Mesoamerican origins to its current snack status. She details the process by which chocolate is made and how technology has helped to shape the flavor of the chocolate we know today. She also explores the cacao market today and the steps that are being taken to ensure the future of chocolate.

Once we put the dust jacket on our copy, it doesn't look nearly as much like a candy bar as this image does.

This book, like most books, has its ups and downs. Frydenborg's prose is best whens she's exploring the lives of those connected with the chocolate industry. Her retelling of Hershey's rise and Lyndel Meinhardt's Amazon research trip were the highlights of the book. The personal tales flow and are relatable and interesting, unlike some of the chapters of facts and statistics which read like a textbook. I did learn a great deal about chocolate and about the history of chocolate from the text, but I was thankful that it was short. I do think that this might have been better written if it had focused on the faces behind the chocolate industry (much like a Scientists in the Field book ), not to mention if it had been more closely copy-edited. The text was riddled with errors - many letter hs were replaced with > and ek replaced with fi. It was distracting, and I hope that these are corrected in future printings. I would recommend this to tween and teen readers who grew up with Scientists in the Field and are looking for something more.