Newsletters: January - February 2008
Fair Trade Chocolate
Natural Times-January/February 2008
By Crystal Wakoa
Holidays and special events always stimulate memories of music from my childhood-old hymns, school songs, and TV commercials. Sometimes the words are still meaningful, sometimes shockingly inappropriate. If you're over a certain "respectable" age, you may remember the TV commercial that emanates from my vocal chords on many a Valentine's Day: "N-e-s-t-l-e-s, Nestle's makes the very best...chocolate." Except...they don't...not even close.
Any way you slice the bar, Nestle and other big chocolate-makers are far, far from the best. Beginning with the cocoa growers and ending with your taste buds, these companies rank last place in labor and ingredients. Many buy cocoa beans from Africa's Ivory Coast, which supplies nearly half of the world's cocoa partly by using child labor and slavery. Hardly a sweetheart deal for the hundreds of thousands of kids enmeshed into a corrupt system that brings us cheap candy containing genetically modified additives and way too much sugar.
So, this Valentine's Day, bypass that seductive red box and tie a red ribbon around a bar of your sweetheart's favorite flavor of chocolate that bears both the "Fair Trade" and "Certified Organic" labels. (You can find a great selection in front of the checkout counters at New Leaf Market.) You'll be supporting the cocoa farmers earning a fair wage for their sustainable farming practices and ensuring that their children are in school instead of working under dangerous conditions. And, the taste...ah, the true test of seduction will satisfy completely. If you're of that "respectable" age, you can even sing to your sweetheart: "O-R-G-A-N-I-C, Fair Trade is for you and me...Chocolate!"
