The People's Treat

20th and 21st Centuries 

America perfected the mass production of chocolate with the introduction of the HERSHEY’S Milk Chocolate Bar. Soon all sorts of chocolate candies became widely available, truly making chocolate the people’s treat. By the end of the 20th century, chocolate manufacturers began to return to chocolate’s roots, introducing artisan-style chocolate of dark and intense quality. This era also included the rediscovery of the cacao bean’s health benefits.

American Ingenuity: The Hershey Bar

Despite chocolate’s popularity in America, American manufacturing standards were not as advanced as those in Europe. Milton Hershey brought European-style chocolate-making methods to the U.S., combined them with some American inventiveness, and launched a new era in chocolate. The Hershey Chocolate Company would soon become the biggest chocolate company in the world, producing approximately 50,000 pounds of cocoa a day by the late 1920’s.

At the time Milton Hershey purchased the German chocolate-making machinery he saw at the Chicago Columbian Exposition of 1893, he already ran the nation’s leading caramel company. He bought the equipment to make chocolate coatings for his caramel sweets but ended up selling that company for one million dollars and buying land in dairy-rich Derry Township, Pennsylvania, where he would go into the milk chocolate business full steam.

Hershey began producing milk chocolate in bars, wafers and other shapes in 1900, Hershey’s system of mass-production made it possible to lower the per-unit cost and make milk chocolate, once a luxury item for the wealthy, affordable to all. Much of Hershey’s success lay in his ability to introduce new things that were revolutionary at the time, like being the first to put nuts into candy bars and developing special heat-resistant chocolate that allowed wartime troops to carry chocolate bars that wouldn’t melt into warm climates.

Many of Hershey’s Quaker English counterparts had created model towns and were major philanthropists. Hershey, Pennsylvania, became a model town that included five churches, a free library, men and women’s clubs, Hershey Park with lush gardens, a zoo, and fine hotel. He and his wife Catherine established a school for orphan boys in 1909. Today, the school controls 79% of The Hershey Company’s voting stock.

Chocolate goes to War

America’s love of chocolate was truly heartfelt during the two World Wars.  During World War I, 20-40 pound blocks of American chocolate were shipped overseas to field bases.  These blocks were chopped and chipped into small pieces for the doughboys in Europe. These soldiers came to love chocolate even more, and demand increased when they returned home after the war.

During World War II, the U.S. Army had more specific requirements for its chocolate bar rations.  The bars needed to be about four ounces, could not melt at high temperatures, with high food value but little taste so soldiers would only eat them in an emergency. It turned out that Hershey’s was able to meet all the conditions, and “Field Ration D” was created. Some soldiers credited it with saving their lives when they were out of food and far from help. More than a billion of these Ration D bars were produced. Unique, new technology that kept chocolate from melting at high temperatures was employed to create the chocolate supplied to the troops for Desert Storm in 1991.

All Kinds of Chocolate

Manufacturing technologies now made all sorts of chocolate dreams possible: chocolate- covered nougats, chocolate-covered peanut butter, chocolate in tiny drops and in five-pound bars; chocolate embedded with every kind of nut imaginable. Molded chocolates in the shapes of bunnies, eggs, Santas, some hollow, some solid and some filled with delicious ganaches, fondants and creams. Truffles in elegant mosaic designs with new “designer” flavors like green tea, red bean and even garlic. 

While the 20th century saw chocolate poured into molds, whipped into bars and combined with a myriad of other flavors a new trend is emerging: the flavor of cacao itself. About 15 years ago, artisan chocolate makers started producing top-quality chocolates from choice beans using refined techniques, some of which mirror early production methods (like using the melangeur) The penetrating taste and smell of wondrous cacao beans reappeared for the American palate. Consumers yearned for darker and darker chocolate as they became better educated about its deep, intense flavors and the health value of higher-percentage cacao chocolates.

Antioxidants Abounding

The health and science worlds became abuzz about chocolate’s antioxidants which support good health. All plant foods contain antioxidants, some more than others. Cacao is especially rich in them, and antioxidants can be found in abundance in dark chocolate and natural cocoa. As more health studies come out, there seem to be more and more reasons why the Mayans, Aztecs and early physicians were right in believing in the health value of chocolate.

The Next Steps in Chocolate

The not-so-far-future might bring us totally new kinds of foods that use the antioxidant power of cacao, like energy drinks, and, possibly, even health supplements that tap into the healthy qualities of the bean. Chocolate is no longer just a sweet treat. You conceivably could see package labeling that says “contains cacao” the same way you see other healthy ingredients added to some of your favorite foods.