Reporting from the rat's nest...
Forget for a few moments that sugar feeds cancer. Remind yourself that rebelling is a way to assert free will and make you feel like you have some control in a world where you have very little control. Now open wide.
Two steps back. Last year for work I researched/wrote an article about the chocolate industry for an upper-level textbook of which we were all really proud. Lots of good issues were explored in the various texts presented. Anyway, the things I learned about the level of child labor, including child slave labor, employed in the chocolate industry made me cry at my computer screen. The way chocolate is harvested and the distance of the fincas from urban centers means that work-related accidents often lead to death for these child workers. Around seventy percent of the chocolate produced worldwide is done in a way that should make us feel deeply ashamed to consume it. So I swore that I would only eat/buy fair trade chocolate from then on. I have been pretty good about this, not perfect. One exception is that I sometimes send my brother a certain wafery thing from here that reminds us of our childhoods. Not an excuse, though.
What does it mean to eat only fair trade chocolate? Deprivation and huge expense? Hardly. Think about it. How tasty is the waxy, hard, artificial, mass-produced rubbish used in supermarket chocolate? One bite of the good stuff is worth ten crummy candy bars.
Tonight K stopped by the fair trade store on Nikis Street and got me a chocolate bar with whole hazelnuts that is unbelievable. A rare treat that is all the more enjoyable because it is made carefully, responsibly, fairly. So when you're going to break the rules, do it right. Yummety yum.
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Really cool that you have a "fair trade store." Here, we just have Whole Foods (AKA Whole Paycheck) which may or not may not have what you are seeking.
Interesting about your chocolate research. I had heard just a bit about the problematic chocolate before, in addition to coffee, and cotton. What can we buy at the market/Target/department store that we SHOULDN'T feel ashamed of these days? Hm.
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