Money Grows on Trees

February 20th, 2010

“Yes, money grows on trees.” So says Choco Guate Maya, a nonprofit NGO in Guatemala objective is to raise awareness about the Mayan origin of Theobroma Cacao.

Whether consumed as an esteemed drink or exchanged as money, cacao (Theobroma cacao) was one of the most important plant products of ancient Mesoamerica. The seeds derived from the pod of the cacao tree were widely used as currency and John Lloyd Stephens reported the use of cacao as currency as late as the mid-19th c. in Yucatan. When ground into powder, the seeds were mixed with water and flavoring agents to create a frothy beverage greatly favored by the native elite. Recent epigraphic research has established that the word cacao was fully presented among the Classic Maya; in fact, many of the fine Classic Maya polychrome vases are glyphically labeled as cacao drinking vessels. (An Ilustrated Dictionary of The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya by Mary Miller and Karl Taube)

The purpose of this NGO is three-fold:

  1. Bring awareness of the evidence indicating that the use of cacao (Theobroma Cacao Criollo)) originated in Central America, more precisely in the Mayan areas of Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras and Mexico.
  2. To encourage the small subsistence farmers to create co-operatives, and to oversee that the cacao stays organic for it to be desirable as a specialty item in the international market.
  3. Ultimately, assist in ensuring that the co-operatives receive fair trade prices for their cacao, based on US European markets.

    4. We seek to help cacao farmers in Guatemala by organizing co-operatives to produce organic cacao for an export market. The proposed solution has many layers including agricultural education. We plan to establish two different pilot projects in cacao growing areas in Guatemala.

Tags:
Posted in Cocoa Farming, Guatemala | No Comments »

Roasting Cacao

February 20th, 2010

A great little guide from ehow.com:

Cacao beans, or cocoa beans, are the base for chocolate and come from the cacao tree which is grown in tropical climates. According to Indiana Wesleyan University, Mayans and Aztecs used the cacao bean to create a drink called xocolatl, which later evolved to the word chocolate. Making chocolate at home can be a rewarding experience but before chocolate can be made, the cacao beans need to be roasted. Once the cacao beans are roasted, they can be ground up and added to milk, butter and sugar to create chocolate.

  • Preheat oven to 250 degrees.
  • Place the cacao beans in a strainer and rinse thoroughly to remove any dirt or stones.
  • Place the beans on a cookie sheet, making sure the beans are as spread out as possible and flat on the sheet.
  • Place the cookie sheet in the oven and set the oven timer for 20 minutes.
  • Watch the beans while they cook to make sure they don’t burn. The aromatic smell of chocolate is a good indication that the beans are done.
  • Remove the beans from the oven and let them cool until they can be easily handled.
  • Place the beans on a cutting board. Roll over the beans with a rolling pin to separate the nib (the inside of the bean) from the shell. You may need to roll a few times to ensure all the nibs are separated from their shells.
  • Brush the nibs from the cutting board into a bowl. It is OK if a few shells make it into the bowl as the next step will remove them.
  • Hold the bowl over a sink and lightly tap the sides of the bowl to shake the nibs. As the shells come to the surface, blow into the bowl to force the shells to fall into the sink. This process is called winnowing and only the nibs will be left in the bowl as they are heavier than the shells. Winnowing can also be done outside in a breeze.
  • The nibs are now ready to be ground up or liquefied.

Tips and Warnings

Posted in Production | 3 Comments »

Give Fair Trade Chocolate This Valentine’s Day

February 12th, 2010

As you show your love to that special someone this Valentine’s Day, why not give a gift that also shows your care for the farmers who cultivate your special gift – chocolate!

The following are some Fair Trade chocolate suppliers:

  • Equal Exchange: Equal Exchange has created Big Change since 1986. Our founders envisioned a food system that empowers farmers and consumers, supports small farmer co-ops, and uses sustainable farming methods. They started with fairly traded coffee from Nicaragua and didn’t look back.

  • Alter Eco: Alter Eco’s chocolate bars are made in the pure Swiss tradition from Fair Trade and natural ingredients. For these mouthwatering, soul-quenching bars, Alter Eco has selected fair traded ingredients from distant corners of the world: Fair Trade cocoa from Ghana and Bolivia, unrefined organic Fair Trade sugar from the Philippines, as well as Fair Trade cashews, raisins, and fine Arabica coffee beans. Alter Eco chocolate bars are 100% natural and do not contain artificial flavors or sweeteners, chemical additives or emulsifiers.

  • Divine Chocolate: Choosing Divine as your chocolate treat is a delicious way of playing your part in a more equitable trading partnership. Divine is the only Fairtrade chocolate company which is 45% owned by the farmers. While Fairtrade ensures farmers receive a better deal for their cocoa and additional income to invest in their community, company ownership gives farmers a share of Divine’s profits and a stronger voice in the cocoa industry. Take their Valentine’s Day Chocolate quiz by clicking here.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Fairtrade, Gourmet Chocolate | No Comments »

Cacao Farming Saves Diminishing Rainforest

February 12th, 2010

Growing cacao means saving a depleting Rainforest in Brazil. In a 2007 NPR report Joanne Silberner illustrates How Chocolate Can Save the Planet through a farming method called cabruca. Farmers cut a small number of tall Rainforest trees, then plant mid-height cacao trees underneath. This helps prevent the rampant slash and burn techniques that have caused the loss of more than 90 percent of the native Mata Atlantica Rainforest.

There’s a lot less rainforest than there once was. There used to be 330 million acres of rainforest in eastern Brazil, called the Mata Atlantica. Settlers arrived hundreds of years ago and began destroying the forest for the wood, and to create fields for pasture and crops. Only 7 percent of the Mata Atlantica remains, and destruction is still going on. Every time a tree is burned, its stored carbon is released. As more carbon is released into the air, the planet gets warmer…

Everywhere you look, something is growing. Orchids nestle in the crooks of trees. There are hundreds of shades of green, and the forest is loud with birds and insects.

Some areas have been thinned out and planted with cacao trees — the source of chocolate. The pods contain the magical beans that Aztecs counted like gold. The cultivated cacao trees grow just a bit higher than a man can reach, and rainforest trees tower over them like something out of Dr. Seuss — some round like lollipops, some flat like a plate.

And here’s the climate connection. Rainforest trees and plants store massive amounts of carbon — keeping it from getting into the air as carbon dioxide.

That worries Dario Ahnert, a plant expert at the State University of Santa Cruz in Eastern Brazil. He says farmers need an incentive to save the remaining forest, and he hopes chocolate will be that incentive.

Chocolate used to be a huge industry here, but in the past two decades, plant disease and low prices in the world market for cocoa beans devastated the industry. Farmers turned to other ways of making a living, including logging trees or burning the forest for farmland or pasture. When the nutrients in the soil were used up, the land was abandoned.

Ahnert wants to persuade farmers to return to chocolate farming and preserve the forest. His friend, Joao Tavares, shows it can be done.

Cabruca Farming

Joao Tavares is a fourth-generation cocoa producer. Tavares, along with his brother and father, has 2,200 acres of rainforest planted with cacao trees. They grow cocoa using a method called cabruca — cutting down just a few of the tall rainforest trees, and planting the mid-height cacao trees underneath.

Inside Tavares’ cabruca forest, the ground is covered in a thick layer of composting leaves. It’s moist, shady and cool here in the cabruca. Football-shaped pods — striped in yellow and green and orange and brown — jut out from the trunks and branches of the cacao trees…

Read the entire article or listen to the broadcast of the story by clicking here.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Brazil, Cocoa Farming | 2 Comments »

Mom Mouths Off at Child Slave Practices of Chocolate Giants

February 9th, 2010

Convinced that moms can change the world, this wife-mother-advocate takes a bold stance against corporate chocolate makers who use child slave labor to produce their chocolate confections. Courtney wants the rest of the world to take action too:

Here’s a little history: There are roughly 280,000 children working on cocoa farms in west Africa, with about 200,000 of those working in The Ivory Coast. A substantial number of those children have been trafficked from other African countries. The work these children perform is categorized as “dangerous” and they are forced to work long hours while being denied an education. The cocoa industry became aware of this issue about 10 years ago and even ratified an agreement in 2001 promising to end the worst forms of child labor by 2005. They did not deliver on this promise, and were given an extension to follow through in 50% of the cocoa regions by 2008. Instead they altered the wording of the agreement to say they simply had to REPORT the problem…not actually do anything about it. (You can learn more about this issue at www.stopthetraffik.com or check out their Where Does Our Chocolate Come From Fact Sheet or FAQs.)

As a little note of hope…things are slowly changing. Due to advocacy work by the amazing organization Stop The Traffik, Cadbury has recently launched a line of fair trade certified chocolate in the UK and Ireland and Mars has recently promised to make their Galaxy bars certified fair trade by the end of this year. They have also promised to make the rest of their chocolate products fair trade by 2020. (You can read more about these changes in Stop The Traffik’s News Section)

Nestle is the only major US chocolate company refusing to make any real changes in this area. They have recently promised (kind of randomly) to make their 4 piece Kit Kat bars fair trade, but none of their other products (including the 2 piece Kit Kats) will be. This seems to imply that they have only made this change so that they can say they offer fair trade chocolate. But Nestle has clearly missed the point. So we’re going to target them. I’ve decided that simply boycotting their slave tainted products is not enough…that we need to actually advocate for the rights enslaved children who live a horrific life simply because it increases Nestle’s profit margin.

View the five easy yet direct ways consumers can show Nestle that ending child slavery on cacao farms is important to them by clicking here.

You can also read an ealier post Courtney wrote tackling this very same issue by clicking here.

Tags:
Posted in Africa, Cadbury, Child Slavery, Cocoa Farming, Fairtrade, Hershey, Ivory Coast, Mars, Nestle | 1 Comment »

Hot Cacao Can Ease High Blood Pressure

February 8th, 2010

Great news: Drinking hot cacao is no longer a rich treat to enjoy on a brisk day, it can also help fight high blood pressure and hypertension. Blood.doodig.com reports that hot chocolate can be used as a home remedy for lowering your blood pressure.

The idea was actually borrowed from the citizens in Central America, in particular the Kuna Indians live on islands off the coast of Panama. The Kuna Indians are free from high blood pressure and no deaths have contributed much less to each other that can become a heart attack, stroke or kidney disease.

Furthermore, by the time the Islanders reach the age of 60, the average blood pressure is an astounding 110/70. According to the Harvard Institute researchers, the hot cocoa has become a prominent home remedy for the Kuna Indians to lower blood pressure despite subsidiary unhealthy lifestyle factors such as obesity, smoking, and lack of physical activity or alcohol consumption.

Recent studies suggest that it has been since the 18th century that hot cocoa was to fight as a resource for cardiovascular disease. Kuna Indians drink about five cups of cocoa a day. This is particularly significant because the cocoa contains chemicals called Flavan-3-ols, which not only lowers blood pressure but also improves the overall functioning of the cells of blood vessels. Well it works, the production of the body to promote nitric oxide. The blood thinner hot cocoa actually allows an increase in blood flow to his heart, brain and other relevant institutions.

Read more by clicking here.

Posted in Health | 3 Comments »

Additive-Free Handmade Chocolate

February 4th, 2010

Every wonder why the ancient Mayans drank chocolate instead of eating it? Hot chocolate, or cocoa rather, existed before chocolate truffles because it is a considerably difficult process to get the chocolate to solidify. But the Phoenix New Times reports that one choclatier, Sam Filicetti, has perfected the process without using additives.

In ancient times, Mayans drank cacao concoctions to achieve an altered consciousness believed to bring them close to a god-like state. It was this promise of elevated awareness and an interest in Divine Metaphysics that initially attracted Sam Filicetti, an electrical engineer, to chocolate-making.

The Mayans drank the chocolate, but we prefer to bite into it and getting the cacao mixture to the perfect state is where the modern magic happens. The process of getting chocolate to solidify and form a shiny coating is tricky.

Filicetti, who calls his company ib2, explains that many large chocolate producers use a small amount of paraffin to guarantee the glossy finish and this addition can give the finished product a slightly waxy taste.

Read the entire article by clicking here.

Tags: ,
Posted in Gourmet Chocolate, Production | No Comments »

Peru Farmers Ditch Coca for Cacao

February 2nd, 2010

Farmers in Peru are rethinking their industries. Time reports that many farmers in Tocache are starting to see more value in chocolate than in cocaine:

The certificate was only one of several that emerged from the prestigious Salon du Chocolat in Paris, the annual summit of the world’s master chocolatiers. But it may be enough to start a revolution in Peru. In October 2009, chocolate produced from the cacao beans of a small agricultural cooperative deep in one of the country’s rain forests was named the most aromatic in the world by the Salon. “We used to be known for making cocaine paste, but now we are known for chocolate,” says Elena Rios, 52, secretary of the Tocache Agroindustrial Cooperative. Rios herself gave up growing coca leaves 10 years ago, opting to take part in a program to replace her plants with cacao. “There were only 12 of us when we started; now we have hundreds. Our success is contagious. No one wants to grow coca in Tocache. Everyone is thinking about chocolate.”

Read the entire article by clicking here.

Tags: ,
Posted in Cocoa Farming, Peru, Production | No Comments »

Become a Gourmet Chocolate Guru

January 31st, 2010

Wish you had a delicate palate that could taste the subtle differences in fine chocolate? Experience Chocolate is an organization that teaches chocolate aficionados how to become chocolate experts:

Experience: CHOCOLATE, LLC is dedicated to acquainting discerning chocolate lovers with premium chocolate brands and the factors that influence their taste. We conduct fun, informational, hands-on chocolate tasting parties that enable participants to Experience the many nuances of chocolate flavor. You provide the guests, we provide everything else you’ll need to host an enjoyable and entertaining chocolate tasting event.

Experience: CHOCOLATE, LLC believes that consuming good chocolate has a positive effect on one’s mood or psyche. Whether you prefer white, milk, or dark chocolate, we’ve developed different chocolate Tasting Experiences™ using a variety of packaged gourmet chocolates from around the world. Our chocolate tasting collections consider the origin of the cocoa beans, cocoa content of the selection, and the manufacturing process to provide the best in exceptional chocolate Tasting Experiences™.

Tags:
Posted in Gourmet Chocolate | No Comments »

Vegan Chocolate

January 30th, 2010

In essence, vegan chocolate shouldn’t be hard to find. Yet, it can be since milk is often an additive of chocolate. About.com explains when chocolate loses its vegan status and how you can find the vegan versions:

Chocolate itself comes from a plant, making it vegan, yes, but in the process of going from the tree to the grocery store, a variety of additives are added, including sugar and milk or milkfat. A good quality chocolate, however, will have a higher chocolate content, pure ingredients and no additives. The ingredients will be simple: cocoa, cocoa butter, lecithin, sugar and sometimes vanilla. And that’s it. Lesser quality chocolates have a long ingredients list, which, along with cheap fillers such as food starch and artificial flavorings, will often contain milk, milk solids or milk fat.

So while most chocolate is not vegan simply due to the additives, the good news is that there are plenty of vegan chocolate options available.

  • Chocolove Dark Chocolate and Orange Peel
  • Trader Joe’s brand chocolate chips
  • Newman’s Own Chocolate Bars: Sweet Dark Espresso and Sweet Dark Orange, regular and organic)
  • Ritter Sport – Chocolate Mint (the light blue ones) and Marzipan (the red one)
  • Green and Blacks Organic Chocolate – Dark Chocolate
  • Organic Equal Exchange Chocolate All flavors except for milk chocolate

  • Here are a few brands of vegan chocolate that are specifically made to be vegan and are marketed and labeled as such. Most of these vegan chocolate brands are organic and fair-trade as well.

    • Tags:
    Posted in Gourmet Chocolate, Health | 1 Comment »

    « Older Entries