10 things you didn't know about chocolate

Did you know, a chocolate rive did once exist? Well, it was made for Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory back in 1971, but it was real! Here, we look at 10 facts that you didn't know about chocolate, the weird, wacky and the wonderful...

1. The chocolate river created for Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory contained 15,000 gallons of water mixed with chocolate and cream! It's not all good news though, the cream caused the river to spoil and the case revealed that it left a horrible stench...

2. White chocolate isn't REAL chocolate! What has the world come to (I know my partner will not be happy about this one - he loves a Milkybar...) Instead of cocoa solids, it contains cocoa butter but it is allowed to be called chocolate because it has no more than 55% sugar content

3. The world's largest chocolate bar was created by Thorntons to celebrate its 100th birthday - it weighed a record breaking 5,792.5kg!

4. The chocolate chip cookie was created in the 1930s by Ruth Wakefield - but did you know it was an accident? The baker ran out of baker's chocolate and instead mixed broken pieces of Nestle chocolate into her cookie dough, expecting it to be absorbed and create chocolate cookies. Little did she know, she had created a new masterpiece that would be enjoyed by millions for year's to come

5. Lay's (known as Walkers in the UK) sells crisps dipped in milk chocolate...they apparently have a 'salty-sweet combination, along with the texture contrast of warm melted chocolate and a crunchy chip', not sure how I feel about that

6. BREAKING NEWS: You can die if you eat too much chocolate! Morbid, I know. But chocolate contains high levels of a powerful stimulant 'theobromine' - which can cause heart failure, seizures, acute kidney damage and dehydration! Take this with a pinch of salt though - you have to eat about 22lbs of chocolate for this to happen, in one sitting! That's 40 Dairy Milk bars

7. That chocolate bar that you are tucking into right now - it contains around eight insect parts! That's right - it's infested. Apparently, the FDA say that this is safe for consumption. Anything with more than 60 insect pieces per 100g of chocolate is rejected by the FDA. Have I put you off yet?

8. Chocolate was once used as money. In Mayan times, the cocoa bean was used as currency as it was considered to be worth more than gold

9. GOOD NEWS! Chocolate is actually a vegetable - kind of...Milk and dark chocolate come from the cacao bean. The cacao bean grows on trees, an evergreen. This makes the most important ingredient of chocolate a VEGETABLE! Bonus!

10. Cocoa and Cacao are the same thing. The words are interchangeable - it's all one bean