Chocolate – The Clean Process
Chocolate. Milk, semi-sweet or dark. Even white. With peanuts, almonds, raisins or plain. Or as a hot beverage after tromping through the snow to find the perfect Christmas tree. The very mention of this delectable treat conjures up memories of a recent indulgence or maybe of grandma’s chocolate chip cookies that you’d snatch every time you went to visit. While there are a few who actually do not prefer chocolate (I personally cannot see their point of view), many find it just the right touch for an afternoon treat or an after-dinner must-have.
In all our eating of chocolate, have we ever given much thought as to how it is made? Or what exactly IS chocolate. My husband and I lived in Costa Rica for about 8 months and my very first view of cocoa was on our long bus ride trip to the Pacific Coast. There were these rather large yellow pods hanging from well-foliaged trees, in a grove – very picturesque. When I heard that they were coca fruit, I was shocked. Being a city girl chocolate came in neatly wrapped packages with names like Snickers, Mars, M & M, even See’s. To see my favorite treat growing on a tree had me quite fascinated. We were able to see the fruit cut open with large seeds that had gooey stuff around them. Being able to taste the seeds was a unique experience as the texture is like an inside-out grape. Yes, they tasted just like the chocolate I knew and love. I was secretly pondering how I could smuggle a few seeds back to the US so I could grow my own tree. But I thought of fruit inspectors, immigration and jail, I decided it was best to enjoy the moment.
A quick tutorial on how chocolate goes from that pod to a bar is in order: Cocoa beans grow in a pod that sprout off the sides of the coca tree. The pods are about the size of a football and are green when immature but will ripen to orange. Each pod is manually and gently cut off the tree with a machete in the forest. Machine harvesting is not done because it could damage the clusters of flowers and fruit, so harvesters do it by hand. In the processing house the pods are split open to reveal 50 or so beans, then made ready for fermentation – the beans are placed on large shallow heated trays or covered in banana leaves and heated by the sun if the climate is right. Periodically workers will come by to stir the beans so they ferment equally. It is during the fermentation process that the beans turn brown, and this part of the processing takes about 8 days.
After fermentation the cocoa seeds must be dried before they are sent to chocolate manufacturers. Depending on the type of tree in which the beans were grown the manufacturing process can differ. One of the first steps at this stage is roasting the beans which develop color and flavor. The outer shell of the bean is removed and the inner meat is broken into small pieces called – you guessed it – cocoa nibs.
Grinding of the nibs is next, in which they turn into cocoa liquor and is mixed with cocoa butter and sugar. (I don’t know about you, but I am ready for a little snack. Something chocolatey is calling my name. I just can’t take all this talk about chocolate and not having any next to me to nibble on.) If the mass will be milk chocolate, then dry milk powder or sweetened condensed milk is added.
Basically, all three types of chocolate have cocoa powder, cocoa liquor, cocoa butter, sugar, milk or dry milk, lecithin and vanilla – depending on whether it’s milk, white or dark, will determine the quantity of sugar, and in the case of dark chocolate no milk products are used.
Having that one bite of chocolate means that much work went into making it from the coca tree pod to what is wrapped in a cute package. It is a labor- intensive process that requires many, many people. A question may come to your mind about fair trade. “Fair trade is a trading partnership, based on dialogue, transparency and respect, that seeks greater equity in international trade. It contributes to sustainable development by offering better trading conditions to, and securing the rights of, marginalized producers and workers – especially in the South” (Definition of Fair Trade, fairtrade-advocacy.org).
In buying fair trade products, we support the rights of the overlooked – especially children, who oft times are forced to work in unhealthy environments and are not given the opportunity to receive an education. Using the app Sweat & Toil: Child Labor, Forced Labor, and Human Trafficking Around the World, developed by the U.S. Department of Labor, one can identify goods that use child labor, forced child labor, forced labor as well as wage theft around the world. Many times packaging on products will identify that the product is fair trade as well. Doing a quick search on companies will reveal whether they are being fully transparent, or greenwashing.
In looking specifically at chocolate there are charts which identify which brands of chocolate are indeed fair trade. You might be surprised, as I was, which brands have a good rating and which ones are best avoided. (Show chart if possible). It is true that fair trade products tend to be a bit more expensive, and chocolate is no exception, but knowing that children were not part of the process in making my chocolate bar, gives me great satisfaction to support companies that look out for the underprivileged in our world.
Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for the orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you. James 1:27 NLT
Not all the children in forced labor situations are orphans, neither are all the women widows, but many are. God wants us to look out for those that society tends to overlook and care for them. By purchasing fair trade, we can put our monies to helping adults have a good, fair job with a fair wage, opportunities for education, good working conditions, transparency and accountability without children being forced to work. We can still have those delectable treats and protect the under-noticed at the same time. Now, that’s truly a sweet treat.
(Much of the information for this article about the process of chocolate making was derived from The World Atlas of Chocolate at sfu.ca)
