When chocolate was brought to the Old World, the people of Spain added sugar and spices to it, creating a wonderful drink which we would recognize today as hot chocolate.
So desirable did the women of Spain and of New Spain find this drink that they had their maids bring cups of hot chocolate to them during mass. They couldn't do without chocolate even for the length of a sermon.
There were official objections to this perhaps excessive devotion to chocolate. Nonetheless, the church decided that chocolate was not a food, and therefore could be consumed on fast days -- just not in church.
