Chocolate was first used as a drink over 3,500 years ago in Central America. It was very popular with the Mayans and the Aztecs. In fact, cocoa beans were very important to people there. That was they were used as money. In the beginning, cocoa (plant) in Ecuador, which was, for a long time, the world's number-one producer of cocoa beans. It is still one of the top (producer) of the beans, but nowadays more than 70 per cent of cocoa beans come from West Africa.
