Chocolate is the greatest gift the Earth has given us. The dessert table would be a sad sight without it . Its so beloved, so appreciated, that the Swedish scientist who named the cocoa plant that gives us chocolate called it Theobroma cacao, which means food of the gods .

Anyone who loves chocolate knows this is absolutely fitting, mostly because it is the most delicious stuff on earth, but also because of the incredible process and long journey it has to undergo to become the sweet confection we adore.

Chocolate starts off as cocoa pods growing in the tropics, typically in a belt around the equator , long before showing up at a local grocery store near you. Here it is in its humble beginnings as a pod on the tree: