Off reveals the fascinating--and often horrifying--stories behind the desire for all things chocolate. Her passionate investigative account is an eye-opening expos of the workings of a billion dollar industry that has institutionalized misery as it serves America's pleasures. Once known as a sweet indulgence for children on Halloween and for sweethearts on Valentine's Day, in recent years chocolate has become a high-end (and year-round) delicacy with more and more exotic chocolates turning up on menus and in shops everywhere. But as giant chocolate makers and artisan chocolatiers alike take chocolate in sumptuous new directions to meet the demand of ever more discerning consumers, the dark history of this much-loved confection remains largely unknown.
Bitter Chocolate traces the fascinating origins of chocolate from the banquet table of Montezuma's sixteenth-century Aztec court to the bustling factories of Hershey, Cadbury, and Mars today. Carol Off, an award-winning investigative journalist, tells the engaging stories of the visionary entrepreneurs who founded these companies and helped fuel our insatiable appetite for chocolate by revolutionizing its production. But she also digs deeper, revealing that slavery and injustice have always been key ingredients in the making of this much-coveted treat. 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.
Both a riveting history and an impassioned investigative account, "Bitter Chocolate" deepens our understanding of the costs of our culinary pleasures.
