If you knew the piece of chocolate you were about to put into your mouth was made at the hands of a young child, who had been illegally trafficked to a cocoa plantation to work as a slave and harvest cocoa, what would you do?
Would you still eat it?
If you knew the piece of chocolate you were about to put into your mouth was made at the hands of a farmer who had their cocoa stolen from them by corporations who, after receiving the cocoa four years ago, still hadn't paid the farmers for it, what would you do?
Would you still eat it?
After watching Rotten: Season 2, Episode 4 on Netflix, I vowed that I would never eat chocolate again, unless it was ethically made.
[Rotten is a documentary that exposes exploitation, corruption, violence, fraud and waste that takes place in the food industry.]
If you have spare time somewhere in your day or anywhere in your week, I urge you to watch the two seasons.
All of the episodes were informative, and all of them left a lasting and haunting feeling of, 'I really need to find out and understand where it is my food is coming from,' and I felt this way especially with the episodes that focused on avocados and chocolate.
I used to pick up bars of KitKat, Crunchie, Twirl and Daim without a second thought as to where it came from; all I cared about was where it was going: in my mouth.
But over the last year or so, as my journey into holistic living began, I became extremely interested in natural, organic and ethical foods (which only increased with me going vegetarian on 1st January this year). Alongside only buying from ethical fashion brands, I became intentional in only purchasing food that was natural, organic (which is very hard as some brands say they are when they're not) and ethically made. And this was fuelled after watching this particular episode of Rotten in which I learned about how my love of chocolate, which is an affordable luxury for me, is being made at the cost of farmers who are being exploited by companies.
One farmer in the documentary explained how some of them who had sold their cocoa three or four years ago, still, as of last year, hadn't been paid for it, whereas the corporations who had their cocoa were selling it to us. There are children in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana (the two countries that are cocoa powerhouses) who instead of playing outside and creating memories for them to look back on when they're older, have been trafficked and used to farm cocoa pods with no pay. One farmer, who overall, appeared so tired, explained that he harvested cocoa beans to make chocolate, but he himself has never tasted chocolate — what a saddening paradox. And he's never tasted chocolate because he can't afford it, and he can't afford it because he's not being paid for the cocoa he's growing; the companies who are demanding the cocoa aren't paying him for it.
Not knowing this beforehand, made it easy for me to pick up any chocolate bar and eat it because I didn't know the journey from its inception to shop shelf. There was a lack of connection between myself and the origin of the food and it was mainly because I forgot that food was actually being made at the hands of someone else; it was as though I thought the food grew on the shop shelf and it was just there for the picking. So it was easy for me to just pick whatever I wanted and go ahead with the rest of my day.
How could I possibly enjoy eating chocolate knowing I was putting money into the pockets of companies like Nestlé who were exposed for using trafficked children as slaves at cocoa plantations to harvest cocoa, and knew FULL well about it?
How could I possibly enjoy eating chocolate knowing that I was eating cocoa beans that had been harvested by farmers who hadn't been paid for their produce, and, as a result, were living in poverty because they had no money to support their family?
The answer was, I couldn't.
So, after finishing the episode and wanting to scream the house down in anger, I researched a few companies that were highlighted in the one-hour programme who were tackling this problem of slavery in the food industry. One of the brands? Tony's Chocolonely.
The company, wanting to eradicate slavery in the cocoa industry, have a group of farmers they do business with, and use each cocoa bean that's been physically made by those farmers in their chocolate, and pay them a high price for it, making sure that the farmers, out of sheer human fairness, get an income they can live on. Once you open the wrapper, you'll find a jagged chocolate bar - it's a reminder of how unequally divided the chocolate industry is.
This is why it's so imperative that we know where our food comes from; I'm sure if we were all aware that food we were eating was at the detriment of someone else's wellbeing and livelihood, we would be more scrupulous about the food we buy.
I bought this particular bar for the first time yesterday, but having tried their other flavours — the milk caramel sea-salt one is my Achilles heel as I finished it within fifteen minutes — I'm sure that this one will be a delight to eat, too; knowing that it's possible for me to enjoy food that hasn't been made on the back of slavery, corruption, fraud or thievery is what fuels me to eat ethically, and makes every bite taste that much better.
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