Everybody loves chocolate. You can safely say that the world is crazy about this dark brown confection. As a self-respecting chocolate lover, here are some facts and interesting tidbits that you should know about your favorite food.

Most Popular Confection. Chocolate wins hands down as the world's most favorite sweet. In fact, it dominates the world's candy market as one of the highest selling candy product. In the US alone, chocolate accounted for more than $13B (2001) in sales while other candy products came a poor second with total sales of more than $7B. And to think that Americans are just average consumers of chocolates. Chocolate is also one of the most famous flavor and ingredient in sweets, cakes and other confections. And of all the types of chocolate, milk chocolate is the most popular.

Popular Holiday Gift. Chocolate sales go significantly high during holidays, especially during Valentines, Easter and Christmas. It has become a widespread tradition to give gifts of chocolates to love ones during Valentines, to eat chocolate bunnies on Easter and to drink hot chocolate and send out presents of chocolates on the yuletide season.

Precious Food. Yep, chocolate is very precious. It is so precious the Mayans and Aztecs used cocoa beans as money or medium of exchange. In those times, you can swap a hundred cocoa beans for one turkey for dinner! It isn't called food for the gods for nothing.

Most Expensive Chocolate. Chocolate is worth its weight in gold and this is no exaggeration. A single pound of chocolate can sell for thousands of dollars. In fact, the most expensive chocolate to date is Chocopologie made by Knispschildt Chocolatier. A pound of Chocopologie is worth a whopping $2,600 while Noka's vintage collection chocolate costs $854 per pound. Both are the gourmet kind.

Top Chocolate Eaters. The Swiss are the world's no. 1 chocolate lovers in the world. They consume the most chocolate. The average Swiss eats around 22 pounds a year. The Europeans, in fact, eat more chocolate than the rest of the world, accounting for about 40% of the total world chocolate consumption. And the whole world is reported to eat 3 billion pounds of chocolate each year, mostly milk chocolate. But it is a sad fact that the countries (mostly the well-developed countries) that enjoy chocolate do not grow them.

Chocolate Producers. If you think, South America is the biggest producer of cocoa beans, think again. The largest grower of cocoa beans is West Africa, specifically the countries of Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana. Both countries are responsible for more than half of the total cocoa beans produced each year. Brazil is the 4th highest producer and claims only about 4% share of the producing market.

There is an ongoing controversy on the use of child labor and child slavery in cacao farms, especially in Côte d'Ivoire. Chocolate lovers concerned with this issue can help discourage such practice by only buying chocolate bars with the fair trade logo. The leading processors of cocoa is the Netherlands followed by the US.

Best Cocoa Bean. Criollo is said to be the best and most flavorful cocoa bean variety out there that it is considered a delicacy. It is also considered rarer as production of it is low. The two other main cacao varieties are Forastero and Trinitario.