Bitter Chocolate: The Dark Side of the World's Most Seductive Sweet($34.95Value)

Description

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. People in the First World consume chocolate with no qualms save what the confection might be doing to increase their waistlines. But, in fact, the manufacture of chocolate depends on its cultivation in Third World nations by citizens condemned to live in general poverty and with little control over their futures. Off describes the migration of the cacao tree from its Mexican homeland to West Africa, the land that now dominates its production. Off travels to the tropical Côte d’Ivoire, where the laborers who harvest cacao pods have never even tasted the final product into which they have poured their lifeblood. Off draws an even more sordid picture of the relationship between the institution of slavery and the rise of British chocolate capitalism under such magnates as Cadbury. Worse still, Off asserts, slavery continues to be a vexing, intractable problem in these West African regions. --Mark Knoblauch "Bitter Chocolate is less a book about chocolate than it is a study of racism, imperialism and oppression as told through the lens of a single commodity." —THE GLOBE AND MAIL "An astounding eye-opener that takes no prisoners in its account of an industry built on an image of sweetness and innocence, but which hides a dark and often cruel reality. You’ll never look at chocolate the same way again." —QUILL & QUIRE (STARRED REVIEW) "Astonishing. . . a wrenching story and one well-researched by an investigative journalist who has proven she knows the ropes. . . . Bitter Chocolate is a compelling and important book." —THE LONDON FREE PRESS "In the style of Mark Kurlansky's Salt, Bitter Chocolate unravels chocolate's glittery packaging and uncovers an industry tainted by war and genocide." —OTTAWA EXPRESS Carol Off is a co-host of CBC radio's current affairs program As It Happens . One of Canada's leading investigative journalists, she has won numerous awards for her CBC television documentaries set in Africa, Asia, and Europe. She lives in Toronto, Canada. Used Book in Good Condition