Chocolate Project

1. Chocolate Project Killian K

2. Where does Chocolate come from? • Chocolate is a product of the cacao bean (also known as a cocoa bean) which grows in pod-like fruits on tropical cacao trees. • Ground up and roasted, cacao beans are the all-natural raw material for the chocolate we love. Most of the chocolate we eat has its roots in Africa, which generates about 70% of the world’s cacao beans.

3. Top Cacao Countries • West African country of Côte d'Ivoire alone produces some 1.4 million tons of beans a year. • Ghana is the world’s second largest producer with over 600,000 tons per year. • Other top cacao-growing countries include Indonesia, Brazil, Ecuador, Togo, Mexico and Papua New Guinea. • Cacao beans are grown also in other Latin American countries and the Caribbean, but their share of the market is smaller.

4. Ivory Coast cocoa farms child labour • Children at the age of 12 and younger have to leave their homes and work in a cocoa bean farm. They can’t go to school and have to cut cocoa plants open with big machete knives. Sometimes they cut themselves and there is no first aid box around them. They don’t wear proper safety clothes . • One of the boys in the newspaper article said “I haven’t seen my family for 3 years. They live 200 miles away and I am 12!”

5. How is chocolate made? • A cocoa tree takes about 5 years to grow the cocoa. • Cocoa beans ripen throughout the year. • Men chop open the Cocoa plants and scoop out the cocoa beans (seeds) • They place them in a tray and cover them with banana leaves so that they ferment.

6. How is Chocolate made? • They place the cocoa beans on the mat and then wait for the sun to dry them. It will take about a week for the sun to dry them. Once they are dry they are lighter and easier to send to other countries. • Once they have fully dried, a farmer scoops them into sacks and sends them to a different country. The sacks weight from 130-200 pounds

7. How is Chocolate made? • Once the seeds arrive at the factory they are cleaned and sorted by the factory workers and put into gigantic ovens. • The roasting process makes the cocoa beans break. Then they go through a machine called a winnower. • The winnowing machine makes notched cones cut of the sharp bits of the cocoa beans and a big fan blows them away. • Then the cocoa beans go to the mill and metal discs grind the beans to make chocolate.

8. How is Chocolate made? • To make the chocolate manufacturer’s blend un-pressed chocolate liquor mixes with sugar, milk and extra cocoa butter. • Now the thick chocolate crumb has to be refined to make the chocolate even silkier. • The chocolate bar is nearly ready. Now it just needs to be churned one more time in a chomping machine. • The chocolate goes through a process called tempering which is what makes chocolate all shinny. • Now it is delivered in a van to the shops.

9. A list of where chocolate comes from. Chocolate comes from the Ivory Coast. It comes from Ghana.

10. A list of where chocolate comes from. Nigeria Brazil

11. A list of where chocolate comes from Indonesia Cameroon

12. A list of where chocolate comes from Ecuador Togo

13. A list of where chocolate comes from Peru Dominican Republic

14. Packaging

15. Packaging • Chocolate is packaged with tinfoil as the first layer, as the second layer they put some normal paper with the name of the chocolate and some decorations. There are two layers because it would stick to the normal paper. On the back of the normal paper there is a chart that tells you something called nutritional information (information on how healthy something is.)

16. Why Fair-trade chocolate? • You should have fair trade chocolate because it helps farmers. • But makes it more expensive. • So some of the money can go to the farmers. • This helps pay for schools and clean water.

17. Chocolate flavours and colourings There are many chocolate flavours such as… • Mint • orange

18. Chocolate flavours and colourings • White • Milk • Nut • Caramel

19. How do you do the colouring? • The colouring is mainly linked to the flavour because if it was mint, it’s green and the flavour is made from mint leaves and the mint leaves are green! • I don’t know why brown chocolate is called milk chocolate when milk is white, but it does have a little bit of milk in it.

20. Is Chocolate good for you? • Dark chocolate has more cacao (the beans that chocolate is made from) and less sugar than other chocolates, so it is considered healthier than milk and white chocolate. • Dark chocolate contains lots of antioxidants that helps the heart system • It is good for reducing blood pressure • Eating dark chocolate widens blood vessels and makes your blood flow better • Eating dark chocolate every day reduces the risk of heart disease by one third. • The smell of chocolate makes you relax

21. Is Chocolate bad for you? • Chocolate can cause headaches • Chocolate is high in calories and can make people chunky. • Chocolate contains lots of caffeine and sugar. Chocolate products are blamed for making children hyperactive. • In the countries I have mentioned in the pages above there are farms that have unsafe working conditions, unfair wages, and child labour.

22. Hotel Chocolat • My uncle Brendan works for Hotel Chocolat. He sees the factory which does not have any children in it. • He gets to taste lots of different flavours. • The company was started in 1988 by Angus Thirlwell and Peter Harris • They have a Chocolate Tasting Club in Britain, and now there are 100,000 members. • The Tasting Club has made over 1,500 different recipes.

23. Hotel Chocolat • In 2006, the company bought a cacao farm in Saint Lucia, West Indies, and they are the only company in the UK to own their own cocoa plantation. • This plantation is one of the reasons why the company choose not to have a Fair Trade logo, they think having a planation of their own and paying workers a good wage is enough. • I am going to use some of this chocolate in my taste test!

24. Taste test • Try one of each of the three chocolates

25. Taste Result

26. Which one had the most Chocolate?