How should we respond to the bitter truth about chocolate?

Most people will never watch this documentary Chocolate: The Bitter Truth. Perhaps I’m being too cynical, but I suspect most people would rather not know the truth about how their Mars bars, Kit Kats and Hershey’s kisses are produced. Chocolate is a multi-billion dollar global industry, and I’m sure they would rather not having the public knowing about the extreme poverty of West African farmers, the child labourers and the children trafficked into slavery. A decade after these chocolate companies signed a pledge to eradicate child labour, little has been done to implement it. Chocolate: The Bitter Truth highlights the continuing abuse children suffer in the production of chocolate, despite repeated promises of reform. This investigative documentary shows that the chocolate industry still supports child labour through its supply chain, that child labour is still rife in the fields and that the industry has made few moves to eradicate it or the child trafficking behind it. Now that’s truth that most people don’t want to hear. But isn’t it the kind of bitter truth to which we must respond? Isn’t this the kind of extreme injustice that should call us to action? To me the nagging question has been “How can you enjoy this chocolate bar knowing how it was produced?”

Thanks to those already participating in the discussion. (For Part 1 of the discussion and video, see Giving up chocolate for Lent, maybe for life by Ken Symes.) I invite anyone else to join the discussion by commenting below as together we aim to draft a Christian Response to the bitter truth about chocolate. Let’s continue giving our reactions to the truth we’re seeing in the documentary plus sharing other knowledge we have about the chocolate industry. And let’s begin to identify those verses of Scripture which speak to this kind of bitter truth. Before watching this video, I recommend that you grab a Kit Kat chocolate bar and then unwrap it as Paul Kenyon unwraps one at 50 seconds into this video. Eat it as you watch the children in the video eat the same Kit Kat bar. It was a big wakeup call for me.

Chocolate: The Bitter Truth is a BBC: Panorama documentary with Paul Kenyon. It was rebroadcast on CBC: The Passionate Eye with the insertion of a little Canadian insight.

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Susan Boyle gave up chocolate for Lent

I’m personally giving up chocolate.
Apart from it being too fattening,
I think the money raised will be quite phenomenal!
—Susan Boyle

It’s great to see Susan Boyle doing well and doing something good with her fame. I still go back every now and then to see Susan’s try-out almost two years ago on Britain’s Got Talent when she took the entire audience including Simon Cowell by surprise with her amazing voice singing “I Dreamed a Dream.” She had some ups and downs with the sudden fame the show brought her, but she seems to be doing well now. It’s great to see here doing something like promoting a good charity like SCiAF and personally participating in the fundraising by giving up chocolate for Lent. Hopefully the money raised will be quite phenomenal!

I too have given up chocolate for Lent. I do so because it’s been nearly a year now since I discovered the bitter truth about chocolate and children. Côte d'Ivoire is the world’s largest producer of cocoa beans, supplying over 40% of the world’s chocolate. You can be sure the next time you eat a Kit Kat, Hershey’s Almond or Mars bar that some of that chocolatey taste is coming from Côte d'Ivoire. 200,000 children work in Côte d'Ivoire’s production of cocoa, and 12,000 of those children are victims of human trafficking and slavery (“Children in cocoa production”). And the problem of child labour is by no means limited to just one producing country. I want to think about this reality, research it some more, discuss it on this blog, pray about and try to discern what our Christian response should be to such a horrible victimization of children. Lent is a season for getting serious about our discipleship. I want to see if we as Christians have a responsibility to change how the world produces chocolate.

Check out my intro article on this challenging subject:
Giving up chocolate for Lent, maybe for life
by Ken Symes 
“It’s not exactly uncommon for Christians to give up chocolate for Lent. One friend told me the benefit was how awesome the chocolate tasted on Easter Sunday after the 40-day ‘fast.’ Christians give up chocolate (TV or Facebook) in order to create a space for spiritual growth. So I guess if you gave up Twitter for Lent, instead of tweeting your friends, you would “tweet” God and grow through the discipline of prayer. So why give up chocolate for Lent?”

 

I also previously blogged about Susan Boyle’s surprising spectacular first appearance on Britain’s Got Talent:
God chose what is regarded as nothing by Ken Symes
“How quick we are to judge other people! First impressions are made sometimes with lightning fast precision. That's what the audience and judges of Britain's Got Talent did to this middle-aged Scottish woman whose appearance was, well, a bit off. Were they ever surprised! You will be too!”

 

 

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Giving up chocolate for Lent, maybe for life

I love chocolate. I think it’s important for you to know that before I get to the giving it up for Lent part. I’ve always loved chocolate. As a young child, I can remember the treat of getting one chocolate bar for the week. I can remember rationing out the squares of my Jersey Milk bar so that I would have two or three squares everyday to get me through to the following Friday when Mom would buy the next weekly chocolate. I remember the thrill of graduating to two chocolate bars per week! And much more recently, under the stress of work and life, I’ve experienced the indulgence of a daily chocolate bar!

I recently discovered the delightful taste of Wunderbar! And the Peanut Butter version of Oh Henry! is quite yummy. And the Mars Caramel bar (pictured here) is out of this world! Believe me, I love chocolate!

Now, its not exactly uncommon for Christians to give up chocolate for Lent. One friend told me the benefit was how awesome the chocolate tasted on Easter Sunday after the 40-day “fast.” In theory, Christians give up chocolate (or TV or Facebook) in order to create a space for spiritual growth. So I guess if you gave up Twitter for Lent, instead of tweeting your friends, you would “tweet” God and grow spiritually through the discipline of prayer. So why give up chocolate for Lent? Instead of being a temporary deletion that challenges me, a good Lenten discipline should be a spiritual exercise which may permanently change me. Thus, I am not giving up chocolate for Lent in order to practice self-denial (though this will be true) nor to create a space for prayer, but instead I suspect that a time of contemplation about chocolate and spirituality might actually change me permanently. We shall see.

Last Easter I watched a documentary that shocked me. It’s undeniably true that children are involved in the harvesting of cocoa in a widespread way in west Africa. And it’s not just child labour, but also forced slave labour. Children are taken from Burkino Faso and forced to work under gruelling conditions in the cocoa jungle of Ivory Coast.  This has been well-documented for over a decade now and yet most of us buy our Mars Caramel bars, Oh Henry!s and Wunderbars without the real truth ever entering our minds: “This chocolate bar has been produced with the use of forced child labour.” If those chocolate bars were labelled this truthfully, who would buy them? So during this season of Lent, I am giving up chocolate in order to consider a Christian response to this bitter truth about chocolate. Where is the redemptive movement of God in the chocolate industry? And what is our responsibility as Christians spearheading redemption in this world?

To prepare this kind of Christian response to such a significant social injustice, I need your help. A theological response to a problem like this is best developed in community rather than in solitude. There is a method for doing something like this and I’m going to follow it roughly as you’ll se in log posts every Wednesday through the season of Lent. The method goes like this:

1. Define the issue. Research the facts. Get to the truth.
2. Collect and consider Scripture which is relevant to the issue.
3. Review existing theology or doctrines which come to bear on the issue.
4. Bring this all together and draft a Christian response.
5. Submit the draft to discussion and debate, then finalize it.

Would you join me in this process? Whether or not you give up chocolate for Lent is your choice, but join our group in hammering out a Christian response to the chocolate industry and you will be changed, if nothing else, you’ll be able to think Christianly about chocolate. How can we get started? You need to watch this outstanding documentary from the BBC called Chocolate: The Bitter Truth. I can’t imagine that anyone could watch this and not be affected. Use the Comment section below to tell us whether you already knew this bitter truth about chocolate. What’s your reaction to seeing this first part of the documentary? If you did know some of this already, tell us what you know and how you discovered it. I’m inviting us to use the Comments to work on Step #1 of the method I proposed above. Feel free to dive into Step #2 as well. While you can certainly view the entire documentary now (click through to youtube), next Wednesday, I will be posting the next part of the video, as well as summarizing our discussion and moving us forward in the above method. (There will likely be some posts between now and then to draw more facts about chocolate to our attention.) Ready to find out the truth? Watch this!

Chocolate: The Bitter Truth is a BBC: Panorama documentary with Paul Kenyon. It was rebroadcast on CBC: The Passionate Eye with the insertion of a little Canadian insight.

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