I'm all for upcycling, but this product by Voyage Foods sounds like trash:
"Introducing a cocoa-free chocolate bar that upcycles unused grape seeds from wine production in Napa Valley in California."
Never mind you can't legally call this chocolate because it contains no cocoa, or that it probably tastes like shit - this is a solution in search of a problem.
We can't solve wicked problems in cacao farming countries by trying to eliminate demand for the products they sell.
It's been 100+ years of people discovering slavery in this supply chain, and then reaching for simplistic solutions to be able to feel better about it.
We've also had decades of multinational companies getting better at PR, and countries writing better sounding declarations. Yet the reality is the problem is getting worse in absolute terms, and we keep trying the same solutions.
Anyone wanting to help solve these issues might want to talk to... farmers.
Spoiler alert: a lot of farmers are poor and hate the certification schemes that just create more paperwork.
Generally, 75% of premiums paid by chocolate makers end up going to the certification bodies, with only 25% reaching the co-ops... and sometimes that money is used by the co-op for amenities that serve the co-op's leadership rather than something the farmers can use.
The first step to solving poverty is paying farmers a fair price. Everything else is lipstick on a pig.
Just paying more is not sufficient, but anything that doesn't start there is, simply, bullshit.
After years of not even keeping with inflation, prices are finally moving, almost doubling recently to reach $4400 a ton.
More concretely: the cost of the cacao in a 100g bar at the grocery store was about $0.25 last year, and could be $0.45 this year. Prices will go up a bit, most consumers won't even notice, but a million farmers could be temporarily lifted out of poverty.
Daniel Haran