Chocolate and Health

Its no wonder that there are between 40 and 50 million people worldwide who depend on cocoa to support themselves and their families because it is estimated that 3 million tons of cocoa are produced annually to support the chocolate industry.
The top five chocolate consuming countries in the world are: Switzerland, Austria, Ireland, Germany and Norway in that order. Switzerland topping the poll with a staggering 10.5 kilograms of chocolate consumed annually. Europeans consume approximately 40% of the world's cocoa each year, 85% of which is sourced in West Africa.
During August 2011 a report was published in the British medical journal BMJ to do with the beneficial effects of chocolate on your health. The study conducted tests on 100,000 people and the results showed that a high consumption of chocolate was linked to lower blood pressure and a lower risk of stroke. However Dr Oscar H Franco assured everyone that "Chocolate may be beneficial, but it should be eaten in a moderate way, not in large quantities and not in binges. If it is consumed in large quantities, any beneficial effect is going to disappear." The full report can be found here.

Fair trade chocolate

Have you ever thought about where the chocolate you're eating has come from? Have you ever thought about the people who grew the beans to make it and how much money they're getting for their labour?
Many of the largest chocolate manufacturers are sourcing there beans from farms where child labour is happening.   But these companies claim that they cannot trace where the cacao beans come from so they are not to blame. An estimated 15,000 children and working as slaves for the chocolate industry. They have to work extremely long hours in blistering heat and get very little food. These children are stolen from their parents when they are as young as five or six years old. They are smuggled across borders and sold into the slave trade.
Lately more research has been made into the growing problem of child slavery in the chocolate industry. The BBC even produced a program about it, which involved a journalist going undercover to pretend to be a person interested in buying slaves for their 'company'. The first part of this program can be seen here and you can watch the rest of the parts if you wish.
Although we cant stop the child labour we can stop funding it by buying chocolate that has the Fair Trade symbol on it (which can be seen below). This means that the farmer who produced this chocolate didn't use unpaid children in the production of the cocoa beans. The Fair Trade chocolate is more expensive than chocolate that isn't Fair Trade but I think it's worth it.

This is a video of how chocolate is made. The man who made this video is Jacques Torres who grew up in France but moved to Brooklyn, New York to open up a chocolate shop. He now owns seven shops, which includes two chocolate factories. 

The history of chocolate

The first record of chocolate was more then fifteen hundred years ago. The Aztecs got the cocoa from the Mayans and on pieces of Mayan pottery that has been found, there are images of the cocoa pods because they believed that the cacao symbolised life and fertility. The records of the European conquistadors tell us that the Aztecs used to make a spicy, bitter drink from the fruit of the Cacao tree. The toasted, ground beans were mixed with boiling hot water to create the beverage, they gave it the name Xocoatl. One of the Spanish explorers although we do not know who it was, brought the cacao back to Spain and there in the 1500s they began to add flavourings such as vanilla, cinnamon and cane sugar to sweeten the chocolate.  But the popularity of chocolate greatly increased in 1569 when Pope Pius V decided that drinking chocolate did not count as breaking the fast.
By the 1600s chocolate houses had been set up all over Europe and they became a place for the higher, richer classes to get together and socialise. Chocolate was not extremely common at the time and so it was very expensive which separated the rich from the poor.
By 1704 a tax had been imposed on chocolate in Germany, everyone had to pay two 'thallers' for a permit to wear chocolate. Chocolate reaches America in 1755. Solid chocolate was developed in 1830 by J.S. Fry and Sons, who were British chocolatiers. Just before the production of solid chocolate the cocoa press was invented in 1828 which made the chocolate taste better and decreased the price.

How chocolate is made

Chocolate is made from cocoa beans which are found on the cocoa tree which needs very fertile soil, consistent rain and very hot weather for it to grow. The trees are grown in places like Ghana, Brazil, Ecuador, Togo, Papa New Guinea and Nigeria. The biggest exporter of cocoa beans Côte d'Ivoire, a country in West Africa which produces approximately 1.4 million tonnes of cocoa beans annually. The three main types of cocoa are Forastero, Criollo and Trinitario. The cocoa pods are harvested during October, November and December. There are two methods of fermenting the beans which gives them their chocolatey flavour. The heap method is when the beans are piled up on top of a layer of banana leaves and then banana leaves are put on top as well, they are then left there to dry for about five days. When the beans are dried they are collected and sold by the farmers. The beans are then transported to the factory where they are cleaned and broken up in to small pieces, this process is called kibbling and the pieces are called 'nibs'. The pieces are ground by steel rollers until it becomes 'cocoa liquor'. This liqour is then cooled and molded ijto blocks and is known as unsweetened baking chocolate or bitter chocolate.
 This is a picture of cocoa beans.

Introduction

Hi, my name is Robyn and I'm doing my blog on chocolate for my geography class. I'm chose this topic because I like chocolate and I thought it would be interesting to learn more about it and to share what I learn with everyone else who looks at my blog. Hopefully I'm going to cover how chocolate is made, where its made, the history of chocolate and some other topics. Hope you enjoy.