No other food in this world is more popular, more sensuous, more happiness inducing or arguably more delicious than chocolate — and I mean real artisanal handmade chocolate made from the highest quality cacao beans.
Everywhere we travel, I’m always on a mission to discover and drink the best cup of hot chocolate I can find. There’s nothing more sumptuous and decadent than drinking a delicious cup of well made hot chocolate with, perhaps, a delicious pastry. It’s a match made in heaven for me. My mouth waters just thinking of it. So I just asked Mike to make me a cup of hot chocolate with the chocolate we just brought from Oaxaca. Truth be told, I have a collection of all kinds of chocolate from Oaxaca, Mexico City and El Salvador at my son’s and daughter-in-law’s house. And I usually enjoy a cup of hot chocolate every morning. Lucky for me, Mike makes a mean cup of hot chocolate!
Great chocolate is delicious — especially when it comes in the form of hot chocolate. Or a great chocolate bar. Or chocolate cake. Or chocolate anything, really.
During our Gastronomad Experiences we seek out sustainable, organic, natural foods and drinks that support traditional communities. And for our Latin American Experiences (Mexico City, Oaxaca and El Salvador), we explore the amazing world of chocolate. Southern Mexico and Central America are chocolate heaven!
We associate chocolate with love and romance for good reasons. Unfortunately, in the modern world of chocolate, it's not all rainbows and roses. The world of cacao is in crisis. And most people are unaware of the dire situation that surrounds chocolate production and the cultivation of cacao. If you’re a chocolate lover, or love someone who is, then read on.
There are two markets for cacao: The “bulk” or commodity market, where quality doesn’t matter, and the “boutique” or premium market, where quality is everything.
It may surprise you to know that most chocolate you find in the world is the bad kind. West African nations — especially Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon — produce 60-70 percent of the world's cacao, nearly all of it low-quality commodity beans filled with pesticides destined for industrial junk food. The farming is controlled by giant agribusinesses like Olam, Cargill, and Barry Callebaut. These poorly and unethically produced cacao beans are made into chocolate in huge factories and sold on the global consumer market by companies like Hershey’s, Mars, and Nestlé.
These African cacao-producing regions have no history of cacao culture. Africans continentwide consume only 4% of the world's chocolate. Most cacao agricultural workers in Africa have never even tried chocolate. They grow cacao, but have no idea what chocolate tastes like or the role it plays in the human diet or the history and origin of it. The cacao industry in West Africa clearcuts forests to plant cacao as a monoculture, accelerating massive deforestation, destroying biodiversity and depleting the soil. Farmers typically make less than 10% of the retail price. The industry in Africa is plagued by forced child labor, unsafe working conditions, human trafficking and even slavery. The number of children working on West African farms has increased by more than 20% in the past seven years, and is now well over 2 million children, some as young as five years old.
And then there's the other kind of chocolate — the kind produced in Southern Mexico and Central America. In this region, cacao has been grown and enjoyed for thousands of years.
Botanically, cacao originates in the Amazon rain forest. Recent archeological evidence points to the likely first use of cacao some 5,300 years ago in what is now Ecuador.
In a recent study, researchers tested 352 ceramic items from 19 pre-Columbian cultures in present-day Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Mexico, Belize, and Panama spanning around 6,000 years. Nearly a third of them “tested positive'' for cacao (traces of cacao DNA and telltale chemicals). Through this process, they could track the spread of cacao use, starting in Ecuador in around 3,300 B.C. by the Mayo-Chinchipe civilization and spreading North via trade routes along the Pacific coast to Central America and Southern Mexico over the next 1,500 years, where it was fully domesticated by the Olmec and Maya civilizations.
Over those millenia, cacao culture has thrived. Among indigenous communities in Oaxaca today, cacao drinking symbolizes unity and is part of special occasions like Day of the Dead, as well as births, weddings and funerals. But chocolate is also enjoyed as a drink (usually made with water, not milk) by millions of Mexicans and Central Americans as just a normal part of their diet.
And this part of the cacao world is the direct opposite of West Africa. Many cacao farmers are restoring forests and saving communities, enabling families to stay together instead of the young people moving to cities or the United States to find work. El Salvador is a great example of how cacao is making everything better and, generally, doing a lot of good for the communities and the environment.
As someone born in El Salvador and a devout chocolate lover, a true chocoholic, you might say, I’m proud of what El Salvador is doing for the world of cacao there. And this is where romanticizing the notion of chocolate is perfectly appropriate and justified. Where you can be a hopeless romantic and fall in love with a food that goes back thousands of years.
The return of cacao culture to El Salvador
While ancient Mayan cacao farmers on the Yucatan Peninsula often had to grow cacao in sinkholes, the edge of the Mayan empire in present-day El Salvador offered vast forests ideal for growing cacao. So El Salvador was a major cacao growing region for the Maya.
When the Spanish invaded the area and a Spanish aristocracy was established, the first thing they did was take control of the cacao plantations as a source of revenue for themselves. Centuries later, at the turn of the 19th Century, the country moved away from cacao production and made indigo the major export product. In the 20th Century, they moved to coffee growing.
Now, climate change, disease (specifically, a coffee leaf rust disease known as roya, which devastated crops over the past four years) and market changes threatens the coffee industry in El Salvador. So the country is looking to return to its roots by specializing once again in a more profitable and sustainable product: cacao.
In Southern Mexico, El Salvador and some other locations in Southern North America, new plantations are embracing agroforestry, where cacao is planted among other plants and trees, which is sustainable and produces far higher-quality cacao. This kind of agriculture produces lower cacao yields, but enables farmers to grow and sell other crops from trees that shade the cacao, such as papayas, bananas, coconuts and others. Farming with biological diversity to produce a range of crops isn't something that can be done on an industrial scale. It requires small, family-owned farms.
Because growing great cacao requires the crop to be grown in a forest, with shade from other trees and biological diversity, El Salvador is looking to the expansion of its cacao industry as a solution to historic deforestation and rising climate-change driven environmental problems.
Meanwhile, as coffee futures drop and cacao futures rise, there’s a qualitative aspect to both that favors cacao. Lower-altitude coffee is lower quality, and the international market increasingly rejects it. By converting low-altitude coffee plantations to cacao production, historic coffee growers can look forward to a much better livelihood in the future.
And, it turns out, El Salvador makes extremely high-quality cacao, which has been winning awards lately in international competitions. (During our El Salvador Gastronomad Experience, we spend some quality time with an organic cacao farmer and producer who is winning some of those awards for quality, someone who happens to be a distant relative.)
In fact, in Central America, generally, we’ll see coffee decline and cacao rise over the coming decades. Climate change is making the region too hot for coffee. But cacao loves the heat.
El Salvador was a major cacao producer for 3,000 years. And now it’s back.
A similar trend is taking hold in Mexico, where agroforest cacao is on the rise, improving the local environment and saving communities economically and socially. Nearly all of Mexico’s cacao production takes place in the relatively poor Southern states of Tabasco and Chiapas. Tiny amounts are also grown in Oaxaca, Guerrero and Veracruz. The growth of cacao in these regions provides healthy jobs, restored forests and the opportunity to make a living the way their ancestors did.
Two kinds of chocolate — good and bad
In commodity cacao production in West Africa, forests are clear-cut, and cacao is planted as a low-quality monocrop. When you buy commodity chocolate, you're probably contributing to environmental destruction in Africa and the destruction of local communities — possibly even slavery and child labor.
But when you buy bean-to-bar chocolate from Mexico or Central America, you're probably contributing to the opposite — to the restoration of forests and to the preservation of communities and the environment — and a sustainable way of life. Look for direct trade (where the seller knows the origin and the farmer, as well as their growing methods), fair trade and organic cacao, where there’s transparency every step of the way.
Some of Mexico's best chocolate sellers, including our friends in Mexico City and Oaxaca, are very young and innovative, producing, in our opinion, the world’s best, most delicious and healthiest chocolate. They know exactly who grows their cacao and how they do it, what their labor practices are and they visit those farmers frequently. That's the kind of people you should buy chocolate from.
During The El Salvador Gastronomad Experience, we do a deep dive into the wonderful world of sustainable cacao farming with “the Willy Wonka of El Salvador” who makes my most favorite chocolate bars in the world.
You may have heard that chocolate makes you happy — and it does so in more ways than you think. Flavonoids in cacao are antioxidants that reduce inflammation and protect brain cells. Theobromine is an alkaloid that stimulates the central nervous system and can increase energy levels and mental alertness. And the phenylethylamine in cacao is a natural mood enhancer that stimulates the release of endorphins in the brain.
But now you know that not all cacao is produced the same and not all chocolate is made equal. For true health and happiness, choose direct-trade, fair trade, organic chocolate. To truly experience the joy and happiness that chocolate promises, only buy the best kind.
Like great chocolate, Gastronomad Experiences are also fair trade and organic and also designed to bring you joy and happiness.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll enjoy my cup of hot chocolate on the table beside me. -Amira
