Are we being good ancestors?
Oblivion is a word used to describe a state of unawareness and unconsciousness towards something. A night of partying might lead one to a drunken state of oblivion where deciding and acting are substituted by the impossibility to make the right choices. One could say the same about our modern food habits.
“Specialization neatly hides our implication in all that is done on our behalf by unknown other specialists half a world away”. When we ‘consume’ with its carried symbolism of carelessness and irresponsibility, we indulge ourselves into a state of ecological drunkenness. We are no longer capable of standing in front of the supermarket refrigerators and differentiate between the labels of nutrition, fair trade and convenience. We buy only what is offered, and the rest of the ingredients fall into oblivion. But how, if at all, is then cacao a forgotten ingredient? How can we say that of the main component of chocolate, beloved by millions? Chocolate is a food with a “market size [...] valued at USD 130.56 billion in 2019 and [that] is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.6% from 2020 to 2027” (Grand View Research, 2019) so, how can we call it forgotten? The answer lies in standardization.
Cacao and chocolate, while chemically tied, seem to be further than ever. The growth, harvesting and fermentation of cacao lay in very different hands than the ones transforming it into chocolate. It shouldn't surprise us that chocolate is “the most cited beverage in written documents about the topic” (Reyes, 2015) of cacao, while cacao itself is barely mentioned. As humanity, we streamlined the process and forgot the roots where it comes from. We labeled its pungent flavor as harsh, but fell in love with the stimulation that it brings so we added sugar to cover its bitter traces. Its origins, rituals and traditions. We have sent cacao into the depths of oblivion. Chocolate drunkenness. We must ask ourselves then the next question…
“Are we being good ancestors?”
But there are things we can do, and staying informed about the origin, rituals and memory of our beloved cacao is one of them. The following list of resources can hopefully help shed a light on these solutions.
