|
|
Indulge in Chocolate Heaven
 Chocolate – we love it – and we just can’t live without it. Chocolate it seems is curiously entwined into our lives. We spend hours thinking about it, seconds eating it and then hours working it off in the gym. And what’s wrong with that?
Joy of joy - as if we needed another excuse to get stuck into a bar or two!
Chocolate Week is now into its fifth year. We’re particularly pleased to see this year’s campaign focusing on the many wonderful British chocolate producers, The UK chocolate industry is worth £3.4 billion a year – that’s a lot of choccie.
Let’s be serious for one minute girls and look at the health benefits of chocolate. This is serious stuff. Did you know, for example, that a FEW squares of dark chocolate can reduce your risk of dying from a heart attack? It’s all to do with those chemicals called flavonoids. They help blood flow and lower blood pressure.
The Academy of Chocolate aims The academy aims to:
- Encourage chocolate lovers to ‘look beyond the label’ to differentiate between chocolate confectionery and ‘real’ chocolate;
- Improve the standard and knowledge of chocolate in the UK by promoting an understanding of the ingredients of chocolate, through the chain, from bean to bar;
- Encourage the transparent sourcing of cocoa beans from the plantations, and their production in socially fair and environmentally undamaging conditions;
Though the academy’s education plan, they believe that demand for fine chocolate will act as an incentive to select better quality cocoa beans and therefore have an impact on the cocoa growing countries. They in turn will be able to take more care with their production, fermentation and drying methods thus protecting the workers and the environment. This will lead to a better price for the cocoa beans.
Unless we begin to pay cocoa farmers a decent price, like many other areas of agriculture, the young people will leave the plantations and move into cities where there is more lucrative employment. Cocoa plantations will give way to more lucrative forms of agriculture and the sources of the finer beans will be lost. Not only will this have a poor effect on the quality of cocoa and thus our chocolate but also will have a further destructive effect on the world’s environment.
As our chocolate research sadly drew to an end, Womens Everything Editor Maxine Muzzlewhite was curious for us to pick our favourite. Sorry, that is just so difficult. But if we really had to pick out just a couple of winners, it would have to be Whitakers beautiful white chocolate truffles or Green and Blacks ginger chocolate.
Now, please excuse us while we pop off for a little nibble in chocolate heaven. Enjoy, indulge and let us know YOUR favourites.
|
|
