The Not-So-Sweet Side of Chocolate

The ethics of food is something that I've become very interested in lately. I think it's both fascinating (at times horrifying) when you start to understand the series of events and string of people that bring your tomato to your grocery store, or the chocolate in your grande non-fat mocha to Starbucks.

I first heard about the child labor abuses surrounding the cocoa trade not too long ago and made a conscious effort to curb any random chocolate binges and try and do a little research. I stumbled across this article and think it's a very important issue to become aware of. Basically the industry leaders in chocolate production (think Nestle & Hershey's) have dominated the market and driven the price of cocoa in West Africa down so significantly that cocoa farmers are using child slave labor to work the farms.

If you read the article and want to speak out, you can send U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack an email urging the Department of Agriculture to use it's influence to stop the practice.The bright side is there are companies who are trying to make a difference, check them out here at the 2009 chocolate score card. One of the companies listed you can feel good about (for more than just chocolate) is Equal Exchange.

Here's to organic, fair trade chocolate bunnies in all of our futures!

Do-right dairy

I love a little milk in my coffee in the morning, yogurt for breakfast and occasionally I like to buy a good cheese. I buy cheese from Spring Hill Cheese Company at the Sunday Santa Monica Farmer's market and Straus Family Creamery milk and yogurt from Whole Foods. I had researched Straus and it looked like a company that valued it's cows and the quality, as opposed to quantity, of milk and yogurt it produced. But the other day I decided to do a little more research and in doing so came across the site Cornucopia (which helps promote small scale farming), where I found a great score card of tons of different dairies. It turns out Straus rates a little lower on their scale than I would have thought. Now I have a few new dairies to try out. I found it really helpful in getting a better sense of the farms I'm considering buying dairy from.

Enjoy!