Ten things you didn't know about chocolate

• Top 10 chocolate recipes

Chocolate is made from dried seeds found in pods on the cacao tree and it's loved everywhere from Townsville to Timbuktu to Texas. But you probably knew that. Here are facts you might not.

1. Obligatory chocolate

In the west, it's men who give chocolates to women on Valentine's Day – usually in the form of a six-pack of Ferrero Rochers from the servo. In Japan, however, tradition dictates that women gift chocolates to blokes on February 14, either in the form of "giri (obligation) choco" for co-workers where there's no romantic attachment or "honmei (true feeling) choco" for husbands, boyfriends and prospective dates.

2. Chocolate as a cure-all

Chocolate has been consumed in liquid form for about 90 per cent of its history. The first instance of chocolate being sold in London was in 1657 by a French chap advertising it as "an excellent West India drink [which] cures and preserves the body of many diseases". Obesity-prevention specialists might argue otherwise.

3. The bloody truth

American chocolate syrup Bosco is more than a just an ice-cream topping and George Costanza's ATM code in Seinfeld – it also makes a great substitute for blood in black-and-white films. Alfred Hitchcock's makeup artist Jack Barron proved this when he decided standard Hollywood stage blood was too thin and unconvincing for the Psycho shower scene and used Bosco instead.

4. The dark side of the white side

White chocolate, which unlike dark and milk chocolate, doesn't contain any cocoa solids, is also often higher in kilojoules than its counterparts as it contains more sugar. It also lacks the potential cardiovascular benefits provided by cocoa's antioxidants.

5. The magical land of chocolate

The Swiss are the highest consumers of chocolate per capita in the world, which isn't surprising given the country is home to both Lindt and Nestle. The average Swiss citizen ate nine kilograms of the stuff in 2014 – that's almost two Gold Bunnies a week.

6. Delicious wartime 'potato' chocolate

Chocolate was included in WWII US Army rations to provide energy to the troops and was designed to taste just a little better than a boiled potato so soldiers wouldn't eat it all at once.

7. River of dreams

Back in the old days, before CGI, Hollywood used to make real sets out of real things. This meant the chocolate river in 1971's Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory actually existed. It also contained cream which spoilt quickly and, according to the cast and crew, emitted a particularly ungodly odour.

8. Chocolate chips

Chocolate is objectively delicious and so are potato chips. In 2013, American crisp company Lay's had the misguided epiphany to combine the two, which is objectively gross. Milk chocolate-dipped potato chips made it into stores and someone must have purchased them because they were popular enough to cross the border into Canadian shops two years later.

9. Blumenthal knows best

White chocolate and caviar seem like strange bedfellows, but the combination of the two is fantastic and often features at Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck restaurant. Blumenthal discovered the taste sensation while investigating the ability of salt to bring out the flavour in sweet foods, first pairing white chocolate with ham, anchovies and cured duck before having a eureka moment with caviar. Next time you have a $5000 tin of Beluga lying around the house, do yourself a favour and whack it on a Milkybar.

10. Too much chocolate

Is there such a thing as too much chocolate? Well, perhaps. It seems chocolate can be harmful to humans if an awful lot of it is eaten in one sitting. Chocolate contains high levels of theobromine, a stimulant of the central nervous system. Wired magazine says too much choccie can make you twitchy. And according to the book The Noticeably Stouter QI Book of General Ignorance, an overdose of theobromine can cause seizures, heart failure and acute kidney damage. Still, there are probably worse ways to go than stuffing a mountain of chocolate in your gob.