Discover the real origins of chocolate at the Academy of Natural Sciences

The birth of your cup of hot cocoa, according to a newly opened exhibition at the Academy of Natural Sciences, isn’t as tasty as you thought.

“A healthy mix of dead plants and animals rotting on the forest floor supports a lively growth of fungi,” a sign in the exhibit’s introduction reads, and those nice fungi help the cacao (that’s “kah KOW”) tree’s roots absorb the nutrients it needs.

And don’t forget the midges, tiny bugs the size of pinheads, who boast the world’s fastest wingbeats at 1,000 times per second. The hummingbird (50-70 beats per second) is a slowpoke in comparison. These little midges pollinate the trees, so the bugs are the key to cacao bean production.

“Chocolate: the Exhibition” is on a national tour, and it’s in Philly through January 24, 2015.

In quick and simple bilingual signs and displays (English and Spanish), “Chocolate” explains the science, history, and culture behind the cacao tree’s precious seeds, from the first Mayan rulers to make a spicy, frothy cocoa drink, to the Aztec traders who delivered the treat throughout Central America, to the European advent of chocolate as we know it today. The show includes a range of stunning 18th-century porcelain, which the rich used to sip their morning chocolate with all the pomp of Mayan kings.

It’s hardly a sweet journey. The show touches on the epidemics and slavery that underpinned Europeans’ demand for chocolate and the sugar that sweetened it, and alludes to today’s concern over illegal child labor on West African farms, where most of the world’s cacao beans are now grown.

The “complexities of the cacao trade” mean it’s impossible to know whether or not child labor produced any given chocolate bar or mug of cocoa, the exhibit claims: “More needs to be done to remedy the situation.”

But cacao farming, which is still accomplished by hand and not by machines, has interesting implications for sustainable farming. Since the cacao tree likes the shade, it’s grown under other types of trees that provide other crops, creating a more economically and ecologically sustainable model than many of the world’s other harvesting practices.

A few interactive stops in the exhibit will test your knowledge of chocolate facts. Who do you think eats more chocolate: men or women?

“Chocolate: the Exhibition” ($5 for nonmembers with the regular admission price) is at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, 1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia, through January 24, 2015. For more information, call 215-299-1000 or visit the show online.

At right: original 18th-century European porcelain that held nobles' morning cocoa.