This morning as I was blearily scrolling through my good 'ol Facebook feed for an interesting article to start off my day, this I was instantly drawn to this video.
My abridged summary of the complex and varied iterations of the cocoa bean throughout history did not justly emphasize the involvement and the controversy behind one of privileged society's favorite indulgences. Chocolate is not inherently good or bad but our blind consumption and under-appreciation of the hands behind it can have dire global consequences.
And so now with a more nuanced report of this informative exhibit, hopefully you can learn a little bit more about the long journey through history and labor that your piece of chocolate has taken to get to your mouth and with that, make more conscious choices that may just make the treat taste a little bit sweeter:
I remember years ago when I first got offered the taste of a Cacao bean. I knew that word, cacao. It was filed away in a mouthwatering category, making my sweet tooth chatter. I gladly accepted an offer to taste one and subsequently hid my shocked befuddlement while the astringent taste of the raw plant penetrated the pores of my tongue.
We tend to look at chocolate as an ingredient, forgetting that it is a complex man-made concoction. Kids may often find themselves wishing that chocolate grew on trees but if most of us were to pass by a Cacao plant, we probably wouldn't even stop to take a second glance. The nib itself, that eventually makes what we eat is not even visible in its plant form. encased in a giant pod, the "golden ticket" is probably at least 1/75th of the entire pod. And to produce that pod takes work! Cacao plants are picky, needing the shady, humid and windless climates of Central and South America. It is a collaborative effort between climate and various birds, mammals and midges (their primary pollinator and in my book, the only reason that hell-demon exists) that spread the seeds, nutrify the seeds and make the magic happen.
In ancient time, the natural world was all that needed to do the work. Before sweetened chocolate came into existence, the Cacao bean was a thing of decadence all on it's own. As early as 250 AD, the Mayans coveted chocolate as a symbolic gift fit only for gods. Stored in elaborate vessels with personalized symbols carved into it, the liquid mud was left as an offering, never to be enjoyed by laymen. in the 1400's, the Aztecs held it to similarly high esteem but it's usage as a drinkable was slightly more attainable, extending to rulers, priests and decorated warriors. However, taste was not what it was known for. Cacao nibs became the upmost form of currency and one of the various ways that citizens could pay taxes and tribute to the elite. It would be over another century before chocolate began to make it's way into the hands and stomachs of a cross cultural crowd.
In 1519, Cortez set sail to look for gold in the Americas. Instead, he found chocolate. Defeating the Aztecs in 1521, Spain quietly began gathering the crop as product via forced labor (officially banned in 1542 yet carried out for decade to come). It was not until the 1600's that the product became more widely introduced to Europe. For the next 200 years, Germany, France, England, Holland and Spain would be in heated competition to colonize regions for cacao and other foods prolific in the trade industry. Coincidentally around this time, the proliferation of enslaved labor also went up.
While opposing voices in the 1900's began to quell the unregulated labor, the age of the Industrial Revolution was sparking innovative ideas in chocolate such as molds for the modern chocolate bar with Fry & Sons creating the first bar in 1847. Still, with its modern shape, the taste was still for want. In 1815, chemist Coenrrad Van Houten had discovered how to extract cocoa butter and get a creamier effect to chocolate but it was not until 1875 that Nestle finally invented the addition of milk to chocolate to get its modern, creamy finish.
Product near perfection, the marketing picked up ten-fold. highly stylized cans were designed for powdered drinking cocoa, Nestle went to schools to promote the product and the military even received earmarked chocolate rations during WWII (albeit, they were modified to be less, er....desirable so as to make them last).
Far from the instant mortar and pestle method of the ancient cultures, the broader demand for chocolate now demanded a far more rigorous process to reach such desirability, going through over half a dozen involved stages in the factory to become a neatly packaged bar.
Thanks to the industrial revolution, there is are machines that takes care of the following steps:
Cleaning and sorting: All of the beans are filtered through a conveyor/sorting contraption which cleans and sorts them into a roaster set between 400-500 degrees where the cacao gets a flavor-aroma makeover.
Winnowing: more cleaning occurs as the shells are cracked off, skin is removed and the tiny tiny nibs are moved on to be ground.
Grinding: This is where the nibs become that ingredient you so often see and perhaps has made you wonder "is my chocolate alcoholic?" Chocolate Liquor simply refers to the pure cocoa once it is ground into liquid form.
Mixing: Time to fold in all the goodies! Milk and sugar go into the vats and create a pool of yum.
Refining and Conching: both processes eliminate any remaining chunkiness
Tampering: the chocolate is cooled and then warmed just enough to pound into bar molds.
Voila!
And then there are the hands that get it to the factory to begin with.
In just as involved a process, anonymous hands replace the untiring machines that we have the luxury to use in the chocolate-making process.
Twice a year, cacao beans are harvested from the plant using machetes and collecting the cumbersome pods in big satchels. Each pod then needs to be split, the seeds put under the shade of banana leaves or baskets to ferment for about a week which alters their taste and produces the chocolatey color. The beans then need to dry so that they do not mold during shipping. Farmers use every avenue they can, from spreading on roofs to tables or finding large mats to use. Some can afford a simple machine. Finally, the farmers pack the beans into burlap and send them off, usually without any knowledge of where or why they are going where they are going. Currently, the Ivory Coast is the world's leading Cocoa capital and with that, one of the top areas in the volume of child labor, the people that make up a large percentage of who is doing this work.
With complex trade processes, it is nearly impossible to have a 100% traceable source of ethically farmed cacao but many companies and organizations are teaming together to not only figure out how to avoid supporting such undocumented and cruel labor but also how to provide education programs to farmers and their families that enable them to be self-sufficient, make fair pay, learn to be the best of their trade and overall enrich their family's livelihood.
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