10 Things you didn't know about chocolate!

1. Chocolate can be a mind-altering substance - but you'd have to eat more than 12kg at a sitting to get a pharmacological effect from the cannabinoids that it contains.

2. Each Australian eats 5.8kg of chocolate annually; the Swiss tip the scales at 10.18kg per person.

3. A 1987 British study showed chocolate eaters live an average of a year longer than abstainers. (As if we needed any further convincing).

4. Chocolate may not be all that bad for your teeth. US researchers beleive cocoa butter coats teeth and protects them from tooth decay.

5. The average bar of milk chocolate is 60 percent fat, 50 per cent of which is saturated. (Dark chocolate is lower in fat.) However, it also contains stearic acid, which is supposed to be good for heart health.

6. Royal Aztecs drank chocolate spiced with chilli peppers and vanilla to stimulate "lustful desires towards women"

7. The Spanish added cinnamon and sugar to chocolate and made it much more palatable.

8. Hot chocolate has 9mg of caffeine; tea has 40mg and coffee has 100mg.

9. King Louis XV's famed mistress, Madame Du Barry, sipped chocolate drinks with her lovers, but it wasn't until the late 19th century that it became the tipple of the masses.

10. Low-fat chocolate sales have soared since the introduction of the Flyte bar by Mars - the market in the UK alone increased 340 per cent between 1993 and 1997.