We all know chocolate is made from cocoa beans. If you don't know this, then you must not have seen the 2005 version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory...
View this video on YouTube
Anyway, cocoa beans are found inside cacao pods, which grow on trees.
This brings me to a viral TikTok — by user @nick.digiovanni — showing exactly what the cocoa beans look like when a cacao pod is freshly opened:
In the video, he cuts open the cacao pod to reveal what resembles white corn on the cob:
As someone with trypophobia, the look of this is extremely unsettling!!!
The beans — or you could call them seeds, I guess — are covered in a white, mucus-like coating that tastes sweet. In the video, it is explained as tasting like a mix between a Jolly Rancher and a lychee fruit. Who knew?!
And, when you cut one open, there is a really cool swirl design:
So, why do we all have this vision of a fresh cocoa bean being brown in our heads? Well, that's because we've seen the beans after the fermentation process — where they turn brown — and are ready to be made into chocolate.
To summarize, cocoa beans go from being slimy and white to dry and brown before being made into chocolate.
And that's your fun fact of the day. Next time you take a bite of chocolate, appreciate the whole process it took to get to its current state!
