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Tony's Chocolonely bars are shaped unevenly to represent farmer inequality and the coastline of Africa
(lemmy.world)
"It doesn’t make sense for chocolate bars to be divided into equal-sized chunks when there is so much inequality in the chocolate industry! The unequally-sized chunks of our 6.35 oz bars are a palatable way of reminding Choco Fans and Serious Friends that the profits in the chocolate industry are unequally divided.
And in case you haven’t noticed, the bottom of our bars depicts the West African coastline. The chunks just above it represent the Gulf of Guinea. From left to right, you have Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Togo and Benin (terribly politically incorrect, we know, but we had to combine them to create enough space for a hazelnut), Nigeria and part of Cameroon."
I swear to god I need a rolling my eyes emoji for the shit I see on Lemmy sometimes.
Today's post is...
*Shuffles cards.
Inequality... Chocolate... so you can feel depressed about the world while you are eating chocolate.
(no offense to OP, maybe I'm just an old man who doesn't get it)
Hey. I understand that maybe you're unaware of the nuance behind this. Almost all massive producers of chocolate rely of human exploitation and slavery to get their chocolate. Many "workers" are also young children. People need to know this.
I know that it seems like people might just be out to "spoil the fun", but the more you know about a product and how it is produced, you can make decisions about your consumption.
I've made decisions like purchasing the majority of my clothing secondhand, avoiding N×stlè products, cutting much of my meat consumption, etc. because I'm faced with the reality that my choices affect the lives around me, even if I do not see the impact directly.
It's upsetting to hear about the reality of things like this, but it's very very important to be informed. I do not want to simply consume a product if I know that it is actively harming lives and/or contributing to human suffering. If that means avoiding certain chocolate bars, so be it. I hope that someone would do the same for me, too, if I were in such a position.
Like the coffee industry in many unfortunate ways.
Fair Trade Coffee hits different.
Zapatista coffee is tasty I hear.
Death Wish for me, but i will absolutely look at Zapatista.
The thing is you live in what is called the imperial core if you are a western nation citizen and especially if you are an American citizen. You get what you want for dirt cheap prices(even if you think it is expensive). Turns out many things you own or get is at the expense of other people who still live in dirt houses or just don't know where their next meal will come from or just in general an exploited people who isn't getting a sustainable compensation for their work. You get chocolate, an electric car, or diamonds at dirt cheap prices from the labor of people who don't even know what chocolate tastes like. You get chocolate because you enjoy chocolate. Chocolate is cheap because you demand it to be so you can have a little treat. You winge at learning about something while eating chocolate. We are sitting comfortable eating chocolate while you cry about learning about inequalities. You are asked to think about inequality about your little treat. It isn't about chocolate at all. Just take some time to consider your little treat is making someone millions while the person's hands who made it is hungry and will die at 40 because of the conditions they live in.
No we don't expect you to completely stop eating chocolate. No we don't expect you to change the world. We ask you to just think about other people for a moment while you take a break. I know it is hard since most people are being exploited in a different way here in the west and we have our own lives but at least we have so much food here that we won't go hungry with programs to help funded by how rich we are. While people who made our little treat dedicate some farm land for our tasty morsel when they are hungry themselves. Never to even know that there hands create a delicious thing we can buy for less than 20 minutes of our labor in America