OK, we’ll admit it: Sometimes we create new scavenger hunts just to eat more chocolate. We just finished updating our SoHo Chocolatey Scavenger Hunt in New York, in time for Mother’s Day weekend. But really it was just an excuse to stop in all of the shops featured on the hunt and sample amazing gelato, cupcakes, cookies, rice pudding, exotic handmade chocolates, and much more.
See—and taste—for yourself: Join us this weekend in Soho, or in Chicago for the Munch Around Lincoln Park Scavenger Hunt, or in Boston for the Munch Around the North End Scavenger Hunt. Bring along your favorite mom while you’re at it. We also offer chocolate-flecked munch hunts in San Francisco, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.
To whet your appetite, or at least your curiosity, here are those eight mind-blowing, earth-shaking factoids. Read this at your peril.
1. Eating Chocolate Is Like Falling in Love
Both increase the production of serotonin in the brain. That leads to elevated states of euphoria. But chocolate seldom leads to a walk of shame the next morning.
2. Chocolate Can Fight Cavities
Naturally occurring chemicals in cocoa beans can fight bacteria, which is great for battling gum disease and tooth decay. So go ahead, dip your floss in chocolate.
3. Chocolate Was So Money
The Aztecs and Mayans carried cocoa beans instead of coins. Soldiers during the Revolutionary War were also sometimes paid in chocolate. Now you probably know why George Washington needed dentures.
4. Chocolate Grabs Your Nuts
Producers of chocolate hog a fifth of the world’s peanut harvest and 40 percent of the almonds. Our next blog post is going to blow the lid off the Nougat Cartel.
5. Chocolate Chip Cookies Were a Total Accident
One day in 1930, Ruth Wakefield ran out of baking chocolate, so she mixed some Nestle chocolate into her cookie dough instead. (Yet you never hear about the woman who invented mint chocolate chip ice cream when she ran out of cream and substituted Crest.)
6. Countries that Eat Chocolate Are Smarter
There is a correlation between the number of Nobel Laureates a country has and the amount of chocolate its people consume. There’s also a correlation between winning a Nobel and not thinking chocolate will make you smarter.
7. Chocolate Started Out as a Drink
Chocolate has been consumed as a liquid for 90 percent of its history. In fact, Thomas Jefferson brought it to America from France as a dessert drink. He also brought back two slaves. Just sayin’.
8. Hot Chocolate Was Way Cool
Just check out that song. It’s how you’ll feel at the end of your next scavenger hunt with us.
Learn More and Get in the Game!
Join a Munch Hunt, or any hunt, by checking out the public hunt calendar. For more information on private scavenger hunts anywhere—contact us online or call us at 877-946-4868, extension 111.
And while you’re at it, check us out on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and Instagram (@watsonhunts)!