Bitter Chocolate: The Dark Side of the World's Most Seductive Sweet
Author: Carol Off
A shocking exposé of the little-known corruption and exploitation found at the heart of the multibillion-dollar cocoa industry—blood diamond for chocolate.
"It's the measure of a vast gulf between the children who eat chocolate on their way to school in North America and those [in Africa] who must, from childhood, work to survive...between the hand that picks the bean and the hand that unwraps the candy bar."—from the introduction to Bitter Chocolate
Whether part of a child's Halloween haul or the contents of a heart-shaped box, chocolate is synonymous with pleasure. But behind the sweet image is a dark history of exploitation.
Bitter Chocolate traces the fascinating origins and evolution of chocolate from the banquet table of Montezuma's Aztec court in the early sixteenth century to the bustling factories of Hershey, Cadbury, and Mars today, revealing that slavery and injustice have always been key ingredients. The heart of the book takes place in West Africa inside the Ivory Coast—the world's leading producer of cocoa beans—where, as Off discovers, profits from the multibillion-dollar chocolate industry fuel bloody civil war and widespread corruption. Faced with pressure from a crushing "cocoa cartel" demanding more beans for less money, poor farmers have turned to the cheapest labor pool possible: thousands of indentured children who pick the beans but have never themselves known the taste of chocolate.
Bitter Chocolate is an absorbing social history, a passionate investigative account, and a shocking exposé of an industry that has institutionalized misery as it indulges our whims.
Kristin Whitehair Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information - School Library Journal
In this work, published in Canada in 2006, CBC reporter Off (The Lion, the Fox and the Eagle: A Story of Generals and Justice in Rwanda and Yugoslavia) explores the dark and bitter stories behind the history of chocolate production, now a multibillion-dollar world industry. She first provides background on Europe's introduction to Central America's cacao tree and its adaptation of recipes to increase the appeal to European consumers. The history that follows, in which chocolate became a common part of North American and European diets, is filled with household names like Hershey and Cadbury and such multinational conglomerates as Archer Daniel Mills and Cargill. Citing the work of investigative journalists, Off hones in on today's cocoa producers, who face a perpetual shortage of labor. Journalists have uncovered use of child labor (possibly slave labor) in Africa; one of them, investigating child slavery in the Ivory Coast, has been missing since 2004. Off's investigative account will make readers think twice as they bite into that next piece of chocolate. Certainly suitable for both public and academic libraries.
Kirkus Reviews
The compelling untold story of a universal luxury that is unattainable to the very people who provide its most essential ingredient. Most of the world's chocolate is produced in some of the least stable, most impoverished places in the world-places like Cote d'Ivoire, Africa, which for 15 years has been in near-constant political upheaval. Harvesting and processing cocoa pods is backbreaking, dangerous labor in a region roiled by ethnic cleansing and in some areas civil war. The workers who get paid at all lose much of their meager wages to government "fees" that amount to state-sanctioned bribery-and they're the lucky ones. The unlucky ones are nothing less than modern-day slaves, many of them children "hired" through brokers and forced to work long hours for no pay and little or no food. But chocolate consumption has always relied on exploitation, argues Off (The Ghosts of Medak Pocket: The Story of Canada's Secret War, 2004, etc.): from Meso-American times, when slaves harvested and mashed cocoa pods to make a bitter drink for their masters, to the colonial era, when European slave merchants traded African workers to cocoa plantations. The chocolate industry has been aware of slave labor in cocoa production since at least the 19th century, she writes, but almost no progress has been made in wiping it out. Congress has rejected efforts to institute a "slave free" labeling system, preferring a voluntary system that, Off contends, has no teeth. So-called "fair trade" chocolate is no panacea either, as a growing number of small chocolate companies have been taken over by the very multinationals to which they were supposed to provide alternatives. Offers only vexing problems, not solutions,but does so with clarity, conviction and outrage. Agent: Don Sedgwick/Transatlantic Literary Agency
Interesting book: Nature and the Marketplace or Total Productivity Management
The Ultimate Tailgater's Big 12 Handbook
Author: Stephen Linn
More than 50 million Americans participate in “tailgating” at college campuses during football season. Between the students and the alumni, and the visitors, a crush of fans are looking for places to park, to eat, to take part in traditional activities for each campus, and learn more about the school and team history. For the first time ever, fans can find the details at every campus in their favorite conference. Want to eat barbecue while you’re visiting USC? Want to know more details about massive Michigan Stadium? Need a place to stay for that game in Clemson? Choose your conference, which encompasses all teams in all divisions, pack the ULTIMATE TAILGATER’S HANDBOOK in the car, and you’re ready. Recipes, local venues and rules, sidebars about unique activities in each place, side tours, insider tips, and photos will help make your game day the best ever.
Features north and south divisions: Colorado, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri, Nebraska, Baylor, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas.
Stephen Linn is a reporter who markets Ultimate Tailgater television and news features around the country. He lives in Nashville.
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