For the love of chocolate.
The Rule of Law saves chocolate.
Chocolate has become a traditional treat for holidays, and deservedly so.
Credit for first using chocolate goes to the Omecs, an ancient indigenous people of the modern day states of Tobasco and Veracruz, Mexico. The Olmecs were the first to make chocolate from cacao from South America.1 The Aztecs made the drink available only to the Aztec elite and their warriors. It was adopted into the sumptuary laws (religious or moral laws) of the Aztecs that one had to be royalty or a warrior to drink cacao.2 The Izalcos polity located in what is today western El Salvador, relied on cacao seeds as a kind of currency.3
The American Revolution was almost certainly saved by the availability of tax free chocolate. By 1773, chocolate was being imported into the American colonies.4 After dumping English tea overboard in the Boston harbor and vowing to protest by not drinking British tea; the colonists turned to chocolate because it could be imported with taxation, unlike the heavily taxed British tea. Thus, drinking chocolate became a symbol of American protest and sustained the tea-drinkers while the American Revolution could get underway.
It was not until the 1920s, that Americans began to prefer eating chocolate to drinking it (once milk had been introduced into chocolate making).5
During World War II, Hershey (the chocolate company) proposed that the DOD buy chocolate for the military as part of the rations. A one pound bar was produced that while providing energy, was just not that tasty. What is probably most memorable about these chocolate bars is that the troops shared these bars with the prisoners as they were freeing them from the Nazi death camps. Coe imagined that this must have made a connection of a familiar but distant memory for those starving prisoners.6
Regulating Chocolate
There was a lot of concern that chocolate in Great Britain was impure. The medical journal, The Lancet announced the establishment of a health commission that would look at the purity and safety of food in 1850. Chocolate was a focus of this commission and based on 70 samples they found that 39 had been colored with red ocher from bricks, contained starch grains from potatoes or arrowroot. Samples from France also showed the same contamination. This investigation led to the passage of the British Food and Drug Act of 1860 and the Adulteration Food Act of 1872.7
Today, there is still controversy, but it is about the difference between chocolate in the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe. Agreeing on a definition for chocolate during the time of the European Union, proved impossible when it came to chocolate. The version of chocolate in the United Kingdom was permitted, but had to be labled “family milk chocolate” to be sold in the rest of Europe. The directive reads:
The derogation provided for in Directive 73/241/EEC allowing the United Kingdom and Ireland to authorise the use on their territory of the name ‘milk chocolate’ to designate ‘milk chocolate with high milk content’ should be maintained; however, the English name ‘milk chocolate with high milk content’ should be replaced with the name ‘family milk chocolate’8
Belgian chocolate was also very serious about its standards for chocolate. Belgium has a long history of legal standards to prevent the adulteration of chocolate with low quality fats established as early as 1894.9
The Food and Drug Administration regulates chocolate in the United States, and they are divided into categories each having their own section in the Code of Federal Regulations: cocoa nibs; chocolate liquor; breakfast cocoa; cocoa; cocoa as a food additive; sweet chocolate; white chocolate; milk chocolate; buttermilk chocolate; skim milk chocolate; mixed diary products chocolate; and vegetable fat coatings.10
The regulation defining “chocolate liquor” describes the basic ingredient for the chocolate we eat. It is made with ground, processed cacao beans and must contain 50-60 percent of cacao fat.11 In 2007, the Chocolate Manufacturers Association and others petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to change the regulation to allow the use of vegetable fat in place of cacao fat, and still call it chocolate. At least 30,000 comments in opposition to the change were received by FDA.12 The FDA did not change any of the requirement for cacao fat content.
So there we have it. Different percentages, mainly more milk in English milk chocolate, plus the use of vegetable fat, is what makes English chocolate taste different from chocolate manufactured in the United States.
Health Claims for eating chocolate
In November 2018, the Barry Callebaut company of Switzerland petitioned the US Food & Drug Administration for permission to make a qualified health claim (“QHC”) for certain cocoa products containing high levels of flavanols.13 The FDA allowed (not approved) their statement that fell short of a ringing endorsement —- saying the evidence is supportive but not conclusive for these claims14 — but excuse enough to eat chocolate.15
Tragedy of Cocoa Farming
There are three pressures on cocoa farming which is primarily done in countries predominately in West Africa — Ghana, Cameroon, Guinea, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Côte d'Ivoire.16 One is that farming is dying out with the older generation and the younger generation is not taking on the old farms. Two, is that to maintain the industry, they have long relied on child slave labor which has to be stopped.17 Third, the lack of genetic diversity in the majority of chocolate trees has made it vulnerable to being wiped out by a single disease or fungus. There is a very real possibility that both of these pressures will reduce the availability of chocolate in the world in the coming decade to the point it is no longer available.18
In 1999, the International Labour Organization developed a directive called ILO Convention No. 182 to eliminate the worst forms of child labor and adult slavery.19 This should address chocolate farming, but international law is slow and required political agreement on any enforcement action. In 1999, Cong. Engel from NY, proposed a “Child labor free” label for chocolate, but there was industry opposition yet a voluntary protocol emerged with chocolate companies agreeing to make this a goal to reduce the "worst forms of child labor," (defined according to the International Labor Organization's Convention 182). They fell far short of their goal that was set to be accomplished by July 2005.20
Meanwhile, genetic research has done promising work to make chocolate trees more diverse to ensure their survival.21 Work to make cultured chocolate in the laboratory is also underway, should we need to resort to that form of chocolate.22
Looking to some optimistic signs, progress is being made on all of these threats to chocolate and to the people who grow it, according to the World Cacao Foundation.23
Chocolate’s Future — reports of its death are greatly exaggerated
In 2018, it was reported that by 2050, the world would run out of chocolate due to climate change.24 Much like the quote attributed to Mark Twain, reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated, is true for cacao trees and chocolate. Maybe we should credit the rule of law for saving chocolate and our traditional ways of consuming chocolate.
So enjoy some chocolate this season for all these reasons!
Coe, “The True History of Chocolate,” Thymes and Hudson Press (1996), p. 248.
FN from Coe, Fray Diego Duran, 1964, 1967, “The Aztecs”, translated by Fernando Horcasitas and Doris Heyden. New York: Orion Press. Quote: “The elder Motechuzoma --- Motechuzoma Ilhuicamina --- had laid down in the sumptuary laws that he would not go to war, be he the sone of a a king, may not wear cotton, feathers, or flowers, nor may he smoke, or drink cacao, or eat rare viands.”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0278416520302300
https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-americas/history-of-chocolate
Snyder, Rodney. “History of Chocolate: Chocolate in the American Colonies.” Colonial Williamsburg: That the Future May Learn from the Past. (no longer available).
See generally, Coe, “The True History of Chocolate” Thymes and Hudson Press (1996).
Coe, “The True History of Chocolate” Thymes and Hudson Press (1996) p. 245. FN Nikita Harwich, 1992, Histoire du chocolat, Paris: Editions Desjonqueres.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2000:197:0019:0025:EN:PDF at 3.8.2000(13).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_chocolate
https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-21/chapter-I/subchapter-B/part-163
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2007-10-14-0710130658-story.html
https://in-confectionery.com/what-the-fda-response-to-barry-callebauts-petition-says/
https://www.fda.gov/media/165090/download
https://www.thefdalawblog.com/2023/02/be-still-my-beating-heart-fda-announces-qualified-health-claims-for-cocoa-flavanols-and-reduced-risk-of-cardiovascular-disease/
https://www.statista.com/statistics/263855/cocoa-bean-production-worldwide-by-region/
https://foodispower.org/human-labor-slavery/slavery-chocolate/
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-future-of-chocolate/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worst_Forms_of_Child_Labour_Convention
https://www.slavefreechocolate.org/harkin-engel-protocol
https://www.hudsonalpha.org/hudsonalpha-scientists-help-secure-the-future-of-chocolate-with-improved-cacao-reference-genome/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevensavage/2023/07/21/reasons-not-to-take-chocolate-for-granted/?sh=ee7dc134b780
https://www.worldcocoafoundation.org/blog/four-ways-were-working-for-the-future-of-cocoa/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/01/05/no-world-wont-run-out-chocolate-2050/1007061001/