Some chocolate has a dark side to it – child labor

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Robert C. Ulin, Rochester Institute of Technology

(THE CONVERSATION) Chocolate makes for a perfect gift, a comforting snack and even a health food, thanks to its plentiful antioxidants. Rumor has it that it might even work as an aphrodisiac. It is no surprise, then, that the chocolate industry garners billions of dollars each year.

However, there is also a dark side to chocolate.

As a cultural anthropologist who has done years of research on food and drink in Europe and North America, I have come to understand the close relationship between culinary traditions and social inequality.

In a course I teach on the anthropology of food, chocolate is among the numerous food commodities that I cover in the course as an index for understanding social class relations locally and globally, including human trafficking.

Exploitative labor, especially child labor, is among the most troublesome ways in which global chocolate is tied to inequality.

History of chocolate

Chocolate can be traced to the Olmec civilization of Mesoamerica. The Olmec were the first to transform the cacao plant into chocolate, around 1750 B.C. The...