A tasty treat for breakfast or as an afternoon pick-me-up, chocolate milk offers some nutritional benefits that drinks with empty calories don’t. Plus, it offers some nostalgia from childhood! So grab a glass and get ready to celebrate National Chocolate Milk Day!
- 1900 BC – The Olmec, one of the earliest civilizations in Latin America, turns the cacao plant into chocolate.
- 1494 – According to some historians, the Jamaicans were brewing “a hot beverage brewed from shavings of freshly harvested cacao, boiled with milk and cinnamon” as far back as 1494.
- 1502 – Europeans had known about chocolate since 1502 when Columbus brought it back from his conquests in the Americas — although it wasn’t until Cortez pillaged the Aztecs in 1516 that Europeans actually figured out what to do with cacao.
- 1689 – An Irish physician named Sir Hans Sloane is the inventor of chocolate milk. Doctor and collector Sir Hans Sloane created the concoction back in 1687. Sloane brought back his chocolate milk recipe with him back to England from Jamaica, where it was manufactured and sold as medicine.
- 1700s – When Sloane returns to Ireland, he sells the mixture of cocoa and milk as medicinal
- 1828 – The Van Houten company in Amsterdam invents the cocoa pressing method to produce a light, fluffy chocolate powder that can be easily dissolved in water or milk.
- 1847 – The England-based Fry’s company made the very first chocolate bar.
- 1900s – The brothers behind the Cadbury company market drinking chocolate in a tin. John Cadbury, and sons George and Richard, purchased Sloane’s milk chocolate.
- 1904 – The Van Houten company in Amsterdam invents the cocoa pressing method to produce a light, fluffy chocolate powder that can be easily dissolved in water or milk.
- 1926 – Hershey’s chocolate syrup is first produced for commercial use.
- 1948 – Nesquik makes it easy to drink chocolate milk at home with chocolate powder.
- 1960s – Two actors who got a big career boost from chocolate milk: Adam West and Peter Billingsley. The former starred as a spy mascot named Captain Quik in the early 1960s advertisements for Nestle Quik chocolate milk mix. That got the attention of producers of a new Batman TV series.
- Chocolate milk can boost calcium and vitamin D, which research shows are important for preserving cartilage and joint health.
- Research has found that cacao contains antibacterial agents that fight tooth decay.
- Drinking one large glass of chocolate milk after you work out will boost muscle growth and speed recovery.
- There are 5 milligrams of caffeine in each mini carton of chocolate milk.
- Do people think chocolate milk comes from brown cows? According to a study, 7% of Americans think this is true.
- One study in 49 elementary schools found that total milk consumption dropped an average of 35 percent when flavored milk was eliminated. Consumption dropped because fewer students were selecting milk at all, and more of the white milk that was selected was discarded.
- Another smaller study in 11 elementary schools found when chocolate milk was banned from the cafeteria, milk sales declined by almost 10 percent, 30 percent of the white milk was thrown away, and 7 percent fewer students chose to eat school lunches!
- About two decades later, Billingsley, best known for A Christmas Story, was all over TV as Hershey’s Syrup commercial character “Messy Marvin.”
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