Chocolate comes from cacao beans, so why is it not a vegetable like other beans?

Maybe it IS a vegetable and tonight I can eat a whole block to make me healthy?
It is grown on a plant and is a bean, and other beans are healthy vegetables, so I vote chocolate also become a vegetable -hope all the chocolate lovers agree!

by Finy

I do !

Heh. Well the cocoa has anti-oxidants, and being happy is good for you, so I'd say that makes it healthy.

I guessing because we can't eat it cocoa without some sort of refinement.

by DamienR

And a crapload of sugar.

I like your theory Finy!

by thriftyfrugalfun

Chocolate is a processed food made from cocoa beans (using the powdered cocoa and cocoa fat). The beans by themselves would taste very different. That would be like saying that nachos is a vegetable because it has beans in it. I do love my chocolate though.

by Jennifer Muirhead

can be said for Coffee Beans!!! I actually have a coffee tree which gives a very decent crop each year. The beans are NOT really Beans per se,but very hard SEEDS which are covered in a sweet fruit-like substance which is now used as a super food beverage when juiced separate from the 'beans' which need to be roasted and ground. I am thinking that the same must be done for the Cacao for us to be able to enjoy the chocolate which we know today.This is very different to the Chocolate which was enjoyed in the earliest times.As with coffee,it was a beverage and also used in savoury rather than sweet recipes.

by Jules

I just saw that half the beginning to my reply was deleted.My darling huge dog Georgie tried to butt in and get some attention with her big paw!!!
So sorry about that.......
Cacao beans,from which chocolate is a 'far-off'
product, is a seed which is roasted and ground into COCOA!! This is the same process which we know the Coffee Bean undergoes. The rest of my reply is actually what was published earlier,so please follow on from here.......

by Jules

Maybe if we ate the cocoa bean raw - don't think it would taste the same unfortunately

by AJ

It's a good argument and one my husband tries to make all the time - he doesn't like eating real vegetables and fruit and tries to argue that chocolate and wine count towards his five a day..... even pasta according to him is made from wheat which grows in a field so must be a vegetable.....
Personally I am happy to scoff as much chocolate as I want without feeling any need to justify my consumption with anyone else. The fact that it is not entirely healthy or good for me just makes it taste nicer I think :)

by VerityG

I knew...this was your question Miss Finy!
wow, you like the yummy stuff.

Lets make it officially a veg just for you...LOL

by jonaja

Just for you, jonaj, chocolate veges!
http://blog.thenibble.com/2010/03/31/easter-eat-your-chocolate-vegetables/

Botany?

by donjo

Pffft. Nobody's heard of it these days :(((((