Chocolate Commentary

I may have written on this topic previously, but my attention was brought again to this topic today and I feel compelled to reiterate. If you've heard it before, I give you permission to skip this post, and read The Oatmeal instead. But you should probably be doing that anyway.

I have come to the conclusion that some things just should not be cheap. Ever.

In a country that is based on the economic theory that supply and demand dictates survival of the most economically fit, we the purchasing public find ourselves unwittingly awash in ethical dilemmas. Most notably this surrounds the diamond trade, the meat and dairy supply, and yes, even chocolate.

I'm about to ruin chocolate for you, just so you're prepared. But this is information that you should not ignore.

True, Hershey's is a remarkable company. When it was founded, it brought chocolate to the masses for the first time in [American] history, and made it cheap. How? By cutting the cacao with lots of butter and milk. Hershey invented the concept of milk chocolate, taking the cacao concentration down to about 14%. Later on, Hershey and other chocolatiers took to stripping the cocoa butter out of the cacao to sell to cosmetics companies, and replacing the needed fats with hydrogenated oils--that's why a Hershey bar has almost a dull rainbow-ish sheen to it. But good for him. He did quite well at all this, and children all across the country have good Halloweens and Easters (this child included).

But the public fails to remember that cacao is a remarkably rare substance. A number of South American cultures once used it as currency. It can only grow between 15º-20º either side of the equator, and only does so in a functional way in a handful of countries. So, places like the Ivory Coast make their living on the chocolate trade. Some people get very rich.

At the expense of others.

If the chocolate that you eat is not explicitly labeled as Fair Trade, be severely cautious. Even if it is labeled as Fair Trade, exercise your due diligence and find out if that company buys all of their cacao from Fair Trade plantations. Otherwise, you can count on the cacao used in that product to have been harvested by slaves. There is a tremendous human trafficking problem in the world--Africa especially--to meet the slavery demands on the cacao plantations. Sometimes people (especially children) are bought and sold, sometimes they are just stolen. In fact, slavery across the world, not just in the chocolate business, is at a higher rate now than it was before Emancipation in the US.

Be aware of what you consume.

I know what you're thinking ("Like hell I'm going to buy Theo when I can buy Dove for half the price!"). But when you think about how rare chocolate is, and how extensive the process is of converting it from a bean to a bar, maybe it should cost $7. Especially if buying a $7 bar means Costa Rican cacao farmers can keep, feed and educate their kids. Make the choice to buy Fair Trade. Even in America, you shouldn't always be able to buy everything for a dollar. And chocolate should still be a rare treat.

I highly recommend the tour at Theo Chocolate factory in Seattle, WA for more education in the Fair Trade bean-to-bar process.

Thanks for reading.