Are there any chocolate companies with well-documented supply chains that don’t use child labor, slave labor, or otherwise exploit cocoa producers? Because everything I’ve seen and heard tells me that its best to just not eat chocolate at all.
I’d say Tony’s would be your best bet? Not using slave labor is their stated goal, no idea how much they stick to it in reality
I’ll look closer at them, thank you!
they allow some percentage of slave labor iirc
You also have Zotter in Austria
With quite a few Fair Trade/Organic certifications https://www.zotter.at/en/zotter-experience-world/philosophy
Please avoid Nutella, Kinder and Ferrero products in general. They are known to source their cacao and nuts from child labour.
Also Nutella is like 2/3 palm oil, which destroys rainforests.
Also, Nutella adapts its recipe for different EU countries. The poorer countries get more sugar %. This was warned about in EU Parliament some time ago but I don’t know if it’s actually been put under control.
is that why the nutella i buy in statesia tastes like shit? should i ask someone to import some from belgium for me?
Quite possibly yes, and absolutely no, they don’t deserve the money.
i mean it tastes like shit so, y’know, i eat other stuff. they don’t deserve the money on multiple levels i’m with you. i’ve spent many years trying to figure this out. it’s so… mealy here.
Isn’t palm oil also cheap and tasteless in comparison to cocoa butter? So not only is it bad for the environment but it also just kinda sucks
Yes, which is part of why it’s in so many things.
But it also means its a food quality type of thing to avoid, which realistically is probably a better way to get to most people than the environment that they don’t seem to care about if it saves them even a single penny. Tell them it tastes worse.
Funnily enough palm oil is, in isolation, one of the more environmentally friendly oils (based on land and water use). This is probably in direct relation with it being cheap. Switching to other oils is still better because the deforestation of rain forest being so much worse overall, but the real solution as is so often the case has to be lower plant oil use in general.
I want to offer counter points.
If you want an oil that does not impact the taste, and that has specific melting properties at certain temperatures, then palm oil can be the correct choice. This is a quality of palm oil that few other oils have. It is neither inherently good nor bad, it is just a property you can select. If you actually want a certain taste by the oil itself, then don’t select palm oil.
Secondly, being cheap is nothing bad. It is, by itself, unrelated to quality. In fact, all else being equal, cheap ingredients should be preferred. We need to get away from the opinion that only expensive food is good. Price and quality are somewhat correlated, but this is not an absolute, and it most certainly is not a requirement.
I suppose it depends on the product, but if you are buying chocolate you want it to taste of chocolate, not nothing.
I can’t recommend Tony’s Chocolonely enough since they are the only chocolate maker [ I know of ] that actively tries to act against exploitation of cocoa farmers by paying a higher price per kilo. There is a John Oliver Episode on them :)
They are great, here in my hometown (Nottingham, UK) we have a little place called Louisa’s, and as far as I’m aware, she’s the only vegan chocolate maker in the UK. She does direct trade with small family farms so that everyone gets paid fairly (direct trade > fair trade), she also knows a lot about the cocoa plant and so will visit her farmers to help them grow better beans and ensure these farms are run in an ethical fashion.
Her chocolate is absolutely divine too, if you can, order from her.
Warning, it’s pricey, but hopefully you’ll understand why!
They also make good fucking chocolate.
Head and shoulders above most other crap, especially the ones on the top of the picture.
Definition of a conundrum: the only place around me that sells Tony’s chocolate is Wal-Mart.
Do they have an online store in the US?
My only gripe is that it’s impossible to break off two equal pieces, which makes sharing needlessly difficult.
Sh… share?
With people you like, you know?
That’s true xDD
Instead of corporate, mass produced chocolates, please consider locally made, small batch chocolates if you truly want to support your chocolate industry. Also, its so much better.
Several years ago my daughter’s school had a trip to a (small, local) chocolate factory.
For part of the trip the children queued up to dip a marshmallow into a vat of chocolate to taste it.
My daughter was one of the first in the queue, ate hers and went to the back of the queue for a second one… I was so proud 😁
How many drowned?
Who got the factory at the end??… is the workforce paid???
Ah, it was full health & safety… large stainless steel vat containing hot molten chocolate, rotating stirring paddle, steps (unsecured) up to an open inspection hatch… but they wore hair nets…
And, I think they had that policy where all the staff could take as much chocolate as they wanted… so of course, all got sick & tired of that and never took any more.
Did you sign an NDA and this is the only version of the story you are legally allowed to repeat?
(I’m glad for stories like that - I lived visiting factories/companies and farms throughout all school days. Kids need to understand what the production factors are & how logistics connects us all.)
fuck. my chocolatier is probably going to be booked solid during valentimes. i should go on a date this saturday and get some sipping cocoa
Now cross check that with https://www.slavefreechocolate.org/ethical-chocolate-companies to trim down that list quite a bit.
At the very least stick to fair trade certified brands.There are a lot of European brands missing on that website, and judging by the plethora of random small American ones, I assume it’s probably because it’s made by an American.
It also weirdly puts Tony’s in the boycott section, when it’s basically the only big brand trying to actively change their whole supply chain (there’s still progress to be made, but putting it alongside Nestlé? really?).
In any way, it’s good advice in the end.
Despite numerous announced initiatives by companies profiting from child and slave labor, none have produced meaningful results. The underlying issue is the inability to ensure a true living wage for farmers, leading them to resort to unpaid child labor, while the industry strives to keep cacao prices at rock bottom.
The conclusion is clear: consumer-facing marketing claims unravel to reveal no substantial impact, leaving consumers susceptible to being “brandwashed.” Until significant tangible changes are witnessed or an assurance of ethical practices throughout their operations is evident, Tony’s Chocolonely remains excluded from the list.
They at least give a reason for Tony’s to be on the boycott list. But then again, this is the last “news” article they published and it’s now over two years old, so who can really say.
But doesn’t that apply just as much to Fairtrade and other, similar certifications? Tony’s is Fairtrade certified. Seems weird to give Fairtrade as a guide for brands not on the list but then exclude one specifically.
Oh, I did not catch that. It’s entirely possible that Tony’s being on the boycott list is based on outdated information. As far as I know it’s just one person maintaining the page. I think you can also contact them.
the Ferrero brand make nutella and kinder bars, and they also financially support the zionist entity and their ongoing genocide of palestinians. If that’s the kind of thing you’d rather not support i’d suggest avoiding ferrero (and nestle)
Plus they use a ton of palm tree oil, so there’s the environmental impact in top of that.
Most of these aren’t chocolate.
Either from a pretentious standpoint (Kinder? Nutella?) or realistic one (does Chupa Chups even make any chocolate items? Haribo *might*)
Kinder is fairly terrible chocolate though, assuming it’s even legal to call it that.
Yeah, it tastes like what I call ‘Christmas chocolate’.
“Supermarket chocolate box sets”
Any of these vegan?
The dark almond sea salt from Tony’s is. Ritter Sport and Lindt also have some vegan products, Haribo probably too.
Awesome! Thanks so much!
Be careful of Cadbury, for those considering.
In the US it is mostly Hershey’s, everywhere else it’s fine.
Ritter Sport is the best, fight me irl if you disagree
How ’bout some actual chocolate? https://www.fazer.fi/tuotteet/tuotemerkit/fazerin-sininen/
For those who don’t speak Finnish…
“European brands”, look inside, american trust funds…
Plain false.
Besides Lindt, which is publicly traded and has a minor share of American investors, almost all the other brands are family owned, which is rare in the modern food industry (Kinder, Nutella, Ritter, Knoppers, Toffifee and Haribo). Tony’s is backed by the Belgian investment group Verlinvest.
Most of the American crap you listed only loosely qualifies as chocolate. I’m American and I don’t buy it.
Lindt is the good stuff. And the coconut version of the top middle item.
Lindt isn’t that good. They market themselves as premium but they kind of fail from a flavour perspective. Completely flat and uninteresting.
Didn’t the CEO say he wouldn’t even eat that shit?
I wouldn’t call it shit, but it’s very overpriced. It’s like luxury brands like Gucci and what have you, you’re paying for the brand and the quality isn’t necessarily better. I’m no connoisseur or anything, but I’ve had some really good high quality chocolate a few times, and the depth in flavour you get is just something Lindt doesn’t have.
With cacao harvests suffering due to global warming, and the working conditions generally being shit (slave labour, even) my approach is to treat chocolate like the luxury it is; splurge on it on occasion, get something from a reputable seller, if there’s an artisanal chocolatier locally you can support local business and have a better idea of where the ingredients are from.
It’s the most ubiquitous chocolate we have in every store that isn’t Hersheys or Nestles trash. If you have a better suggestion that isn’t more pricy, then let us know.
Like I said, I treat it as a luxury. I buy from a local artisan, it gets expensive so I don’t eat a whole lot. Flavour is fantastic and I know it’s not from slavery, so that’s all that matters to me.
I don’t judge anyone for choosing Lindt. I just personally can’t.
I think that was Campbell. But maybe them too and I’m ootl.
They changed the recipe a decade or so back. They were quite good before, not anymore.
I like the the dark chocolate in the blue wrapper. No bitter anftertaste and the cool truffle center is lovely. But hey, you have another suggestion on a cheap-ish chocolate that’s worth the calories, that is welcome.
Hershey’s chocolate is so disgusting. They literally add vomit flavor to it.
It genuinely does taste like vomit. The the yanks have the audacity to laugh at British food!
They actually add that flavor to it because that’s what their chocolate is known to taste like. And it’s known to taste like that from going bad in WW2 rations.
So when I say that they add vomit flavor, that’s not a joke. They literally add vomit flavor. It’s so bad.
Edit: Butyric acid, I think or something like that
Yep, a colleague brought some back years ago when he visted the states and I tried some, I ended up spitting it out.
It’s technically not even chocolate, it’s “chocolate-flavored candy”. I’d still fuck up a s’more though.
I started buying Tony’s because I oppose slavery, I keep buying it because it’s very good tasting
I’ve never due to the price, good to know though.
Completely unasked-for protip if you ever find yourself in Zurich - do the Lindt Home of Chocolate tour (building is fucking gorgeous and the tour is pretty cool), but don’t be a sucker and visit the shop in the lobby. There’s a factory outlet at the back of the property.
I know as a random American, chances are you won’t need this information, but I feel I got played when I walked out with my fancy bag of redic-balls expensive chocolate a few months ago (part of that was the CAD > CHF exchange rate, but still)
I don’t even know for sure if the chocolate is less expensive at the back, but noting the number of Swiss coming out of the outlet v. The Home of Chocolate, and difference in bag quality, it probably is.
Also you might see these cars on the way back there, which are adorable af.
