Carol off, a Canadian journalist, travels into the jungle of West Africa to uncover the truth behind the worlds most seductive sweet, cocoa. In her book “Bitter chocolate” she reveals how much blood and horror is mixed into producing the regular chocolate bar on the shelfs you see in your local super markets. She later shows us the history of chocolate, from the Spanish who learn about it from the Aztecs and enslave them forcing them into labour intensive crop harvest and dried with slave labour. Only after learning about how the chocolate I am consuming every day is made was when this book really caught my attention and made me think twice before purchasing any chocolate. However, this book is not perfect, throughout the book she
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This course topic has a strong correlation with “Bitter chocolate” since, she explains a series of open-minded men saw an opportunity and decided to take advantage of it like Cadbury and Hershey who built empires in their home country despite the obvious slavery happening abroad to supply these giant chocolate factories. In the early days of mass production, Quacker was the dominant company in the cocoa industry. Cadbury and Hershey were both family run businesses that promised to uphold their moral standards as a business practice. However, Quacker was well-known to be abolitionists, but when a report came out regarding the slave- like conditions people were enduring under their watch, nothing was done allowing the story die down on its own. Mill’s theory states that “a small group of wealthy and influential people at the top of society who hold the power and resources” Carol Off (2006). Bitter Chocolate: Investing the Dark Side of the World’s Most Seductive Sweet (pp. 210), meaning that even though Cadbury was accused of committing a crime there would be little to no legal retribution. The men behind these huge factories were earning a living off cocoa and sugar, grown by slaves. The misery and slavery that thousands of Africans are put through to produce cocoa is the result of centuries of injustice. She describes the terrible history of the …show more content…
Is that not why we worked so hard for our allowance money? It was not until I read “Bitter Chocolate” and watched the movie again that I realized the film was about colonialism, there are children shovelling snow to make a little pocket money, while there are thousands of children at the Cote d’Ivoire forced into slavery and worked to death in the worst conditions to produce this delicious sweet. Cocoa was first used by the Olmec, it was so highly prized that the Aztecs later used cocoa as a currency instead of silver or gold. The Spanish were the first to develop a triangular trading system by bringing weapons to Africa, African slaves to America to work in cocoa plantations and chocolate to Europe. Not long after the cocoa plantations in America were destroyed by diseases and companies had to relocate to Africa again. The Europeans are also responsible for these sinful acts, young children are treated no better than slaves and the ones who profit from it are the European companies themselves, the IMF and World Bank who impose impossible conditions on producer nations, the corrupted leaders in the countries themselves who exploit their own citizens to produce cocoa to also benefit their lifestyle and none other than us, the consumers. However, major companies like Cadbury which was founded by Quakers stayed
This course topic has a strong correlation with “Bitter chocolate” since, she explains a series of open-minded men saw an opportunity and decided to take advantage of it like Cadbury and Hershey who built empires in their home country despite the obvious slavery happening abroad to supply these giant chocolate factories. In the early days of mass production, Quacker was the dominant company in the cocoa industry. Cadbury and Hershey were both family run businesses that promised to uphold their moral standards as a business practice. However, Quacker was well-known to be abolitionists, but when a report came out regarding the slave- like conditions people were enduring under their watch, nothing was done allowing the story die down on its own. Mill’s theory states that “a small group of wealthy and influential people at the top of society who hold the power and resources” Carol Off (2006). Bitter Chocolate: Investing the Dark Side of the World’s Most Seductive Sweet (pp. 210), meaning that even though Cadbury was accused of committing a crime there would be little to no legal retribution. The men behind these huge factories were earning a living off cocoa and sugar, grown by slaves. The misery and slavery that thousands of Africans are put through to produce cocoa is the result of centuries of injustice. She describes the terrible history of the …show more content…
Is that not why we worked so hard for our allowance money? It was not until I read “Bitter Chocolate” and watched the movie again that I realized the film was about colonialism, there are children shovelling snow to make a little pocket money, while there are thousands of children at the Cote d’Ivoire forced into slavery and worked to death in the worst conditions to produce this delicious sweet. Cocoa was first used by the Olmec, it was so highly prized that the Aztecs later used cocoa as a currency instead of silver or gold. The Spanish were the first to develop a triangular trading system by bringing weapons to Africa, African slaves to America to work in cocoa plantations and chocolate to Europe. Not long after the cocoa plantations in America were destroyed by diseases and companies had to relocate to Africa again. The Europeans are also responsible for these sinful acts, young children are treated no better than slaves and the ones who profit from it are the European companies themselves, the IMF and World Bank who impose impossible conditions on producer nations, the corrupted leaders in the countries themselves who exploit their own citizens to produce cocoa to also benefit their lifestyle and none other than us, the consumers. However, major companies like Cadbury which was founded by Quakers stayed