Fact: Chocolate farmers are basically slaves.
As we mentioned, many of us enjoy chocolate every day. Unfortunately, we are about to make you feel really guilty about it. Have you ever wondered where your chocolate comes from? Most of it comes from the labor of children, it is believed that in Africa alone, somewhere in the range of 56–72 million children work on chocolate farms. These children are often tricked into working or sold into slavery outright and end up living out their lives working on these farms for the profit of others. The children who have it better live on bananas and corn paste. The unlucky ones are regularly flogged like animals.
One child interviewed said that he was tricked into believing he would be earning money to help his family, but that the closest he gets to compensation are the days he is not beaten with a bicycle chain or the branch from a Cacao tree. The child has never even had occasion to try the food he spends his life slaving away to produce. Some would suggest that we buy Fair Trade, the problem is that Fair Trade does little if anything to help.
Fact: The biggest chocolate bar ever created weighed almost six tons.
In September, 2011, a chocolate bar was created that weighed close to twelve thousand pounds. The bar required roughly seventeen hundred pounds of cocoa butter and about fourteen hundred pounds of chocolate liquor. The bar is supposed to tour around the country in an effort to get kids to “think big” and “eat smart”. We aren’t sure exactly how a gigantic confection will help kids eat smart. More recently in England, the record was broken with an even bigger chocolate bar. The bar took more than fifty people to make and was inspired by the story of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Fortunately, all of that chocolate is not going to go to waste. This particular bar is slated to be broken up into pieces and sold, with the proceeds all going to charity.
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