Today, chocolate is one of the most popular sweets in the entire world. Most people enjoy it as a sweet bar or as a warm drink on a cold day. However, chocolate has not always been sweet, and for most of its long history it was not even solid.
Chocolate comes from the seeds, or beans, of the cacao tree, which grows in the warm parts of Central and South America. More than two thousand years ago, peoples such as the Maya and later the Aztecs used these beans to make a special drink. They crushed the beans, mixed them with water, and often added chili peppers. The result was a bitter, spicy drink that was nothing like the chocolate we know today. To these peoples, cacao was so valuable that the beans were sometimes used as money.
In the sixteenth century, European visitors brought cacao back to Spain. At first, they did not enjoy its bitter taste, so they began adding sugar and honey to make it sweet. Sweet chocolate quickly became a favorite drink among the rich and powerful all across Europe. Because it was so expensive, however, ordinary people could almost never afford to enjoy it.
For a long time, chocolate remained only a drink. It was not until the nineteenth century that inventors in Europe discovered ways to make smooth, solid chocolate bars. New machines could mix and shape the chocolate cheaply and quickly, so more and more people were finally able to buy and enjoy it.
Since then, chocolate has spread to every corner of the world, and people now eat far more of it than ever before. From a bitter drink enjoyed by ancient peoples to the sweet bars sold in every shop today, chocolate has truly traveled a long and surprising road. These days, however, many people are also thinking about where their chocolate comes from. Most cacao is still grown by small farmers in warm countries, and these farmers do not always receive a fair price for their hard work. For this reason, some shoppers now choose chocolate that is made in a way that treats farmers fairly.
（1） 正解 2. It was not sweet and not even solid.
第1段落に「歴史の大半で甘くも固体でもなかった」とある。選択肢2。
（2） 正解 2. It was bitter and sometimes spicy.
第2段落に「苦くてスパイシーな飲み物」とある。選択肢2。
（3） 正解 2. Because it was very expensive.
第3段落に「高価だったので、ふつうの人はめったに楽しめなかった」とある。選択肢2。
（4） 正解 1. Inventors found ways to make solid chocolate bars.
第4段落に「19世紀に固形のチョコレートバーを作る方法が見つかった」とある。選択肢1。
（5） 正解 1. People eat far more of it than ever before.
第5段落に「今では以前よりずっと多く食べられている」とある。選択肢1。
crop：作物
a plant grown for food（食料として育てる植物）
indoors：屋内で
inside a building（建物の中で）
coral reef：サンゴ礁
a structure in the sea made by small sea animals（小さな海の生き物が作る海中の構造物）
pollution：汚染
harmful materials that damage air, water, or land（空気・水・土地を傷める有害な物質）
attach：取り付ける
to join one thing to another（ある物を別の物につなぐ）
bitter：苦い
having a sharp, unpleasant taste（強くて不快な味がする）
valuable：価値のある
worth a lot of money or very useful（とても高価、または役に立つ）
solid：固体の
hard and keeping its shape, not liquid（硬く形を保つ、液体でない）