Will you be my Fair Trade Valentine today?  Win prizes!

Participate in Global Exchange’s “National Valentine’s Day of Action”!

How? Please forward this email to ALL your contacts TODAY!

By doing so, you’ll be spreading the love to low-income farmers around the world who make cocoa for the chocolate you love, and helping to end poverty and abusive child labor in cocoa-farming communities.

AND you may win a prize drawing for $40 in fabulous Global Exchange Fair Trade gifts, including CHOCOLATE!

What is the National Valentine’s Day of Action? Global Exchange has developed a fabulous, free Fair Trade cocoa curriculum, including 9 ready-to-use lesson plans. Educators nationwide (including teachers, youth group leaders, Sunday/religious school teachers, etc, etc) are acting in solidarity to present our innovative, teaching standards-friendly cocoa curriculum, to educate students about Fair Trade on or before Valentine’s Day.

Why email ALL your contacts? Because your other friends, family and colleagues also know educators who may be interested.

Educators receiving this email: Will you join teachers nationwide and help reach our goal of educating at least 3,500 students this Valentine’s Day? Educators who teach the curriculum will be entered into a prize drawing for $75 in Fair Trade gifts from Global Exchange’s Fair Trade online store.

REGISTER TODAY!  The first five new participants in the National Valentine’s Day of Action to download the curriculum AND email us to register will receive Fair Trade cocoa beans to use with their lessons.

To participate as an educator, enable us to track whether we have reached our goal of 3,500 students, and get entered into the prize drawing, please take ALL THREE of these steps:

1. Download the curriculum at www.globalexchange.org/cocoa
2. No later than February 13, email fairtrade@globalexchange.org with “National Valentine’s Day of Action Participant” in the subject line and the following information in the body of the email:

Your name:

Your school:

City and state where your school is located:

Your mailing address:

Your phone number:

Number of children in your classroom:

Date you plan to teach the curriculum: E-mail or postmark your curriculum evaluation by February 21^st.

How to win if you refer an educator: When downloading the curriculum, educators enter the name of the individual who referred them to the curriculum.

While we encourage participation around the globe, please note that only individuals with US addresses are eligible for the prize drawing.

Want to increase your chances of winning?? Do these three things:

1. 1 minute: Forward this e-mail to everyone you know, especially educators! Hurry, they start planning their curriculum now!
2. 10 minutes: Make an announcement at your local PTA or teacher staff meeting.
3. 20 minutes: Go to www.globalexchange.org/cocoa/vdaycurricula.html and download the National Valentine’s Day flyer and pass it out at your local schools, put them in teacher’s mailboxes, etc.

However you choose to do it, just remember that YOU’RE making a DIFFERENCE. And that cocoa farming parents and their children will appreciate every effort you make to help better their lives.

PS:  Have you made your Fair Trade New Year’s Resolution yet?  It’s not too late!  Visit www.globalexchange.org/cocoa and follow the links to the New Year’s Resolution page.

It is not just for the sublime experience that I buy the best. There are other reasons. Most chocolate bars can’t even be called chocolate. Just read the label on a chocolate bar sometime. You’ll notice they’re actually called “candy” or “wafer bar”. Some of them have a thin chocolatey layer at best – called a “confectionary” coating. They also substitute vegetable or palm oils for the cocoa butter and put other junk in it too.

Chocolate connoisseurs know what to look for and use their senses to rate the products. A well-educated nose can sniff out perfumed or sugary scents – a dead giveaway that artificial flavours and preservatives have been added. High quality chocolate has a fresh, deep aroma.

There are health reasons too. Dark chocolate (with 70% cocoa mass) is a rich source of antioxidants. It also has the least amount of sugar. And it’s good for your heart too! Plus we get a mental boost because chocolate triggers the release of endorphins.

Single origin chocolate is a whole new trend in the high-end industry. The beans are still blended, although there’s a higher percentage of the flavour beans, but the blend is from a specific region like Java, Cuba, Grenada, Tanzania and Madagascar. Like wine or coffee, the chocolate absorbs the taste of the region’s soil. I did a taste test with Greg Hook while I was at the Chocolate Arts factory. It was amazing how different each one of the chocolates tasted. And because chocolate of origin bars come from smaller islands they can be more easily inspected, so there is a lower incidence of child slavery.

I learned a lot about chocolate from an ancient National Geographic article (Food of the Gods, by Gordon Young, November 1984) that Greg gave me as homework. While the chocolate industry has been modernized over the years, the first few steps of chocolate bean processing are still done the same way as the Aztecs used to do it. The shade-loving cacao tree grows in tropical countries where the pods are harvested from the trunks year round. The gelatinous seeds are extracted and laid out on banana leaves to ferment in the sun.

“Chocolate is very acidic,” Greg told me. “That’s why when it’s left out to ferment there is no bacterial growth.” The truffles he was feeding me on my visit use a highly acidic type of dark chocolate.

Once dried, the beans are bagged and shipped off to foreign manufacturers for roasting and further processing. At the plants, chocolate is cleaned, roasted and shelled, the nibs are shattered by heavy-duty machines and ground into a paste called chocolate liquor. Don’t get excited, the liquor has no alcohol in it, but is the base for all chocolate and cocoa. The hardened liquor becomes baking chocolate. But if the chocolate liquor is pressurized, an amber coloured cocoa butter oozes out, leaving behind a cake-ish lump. The “chocolate press cake” is then ground and becomes cocoa powder. To make candy, more fatty cocoa butter is blended with the chocolate liquor. If cocoa butter alone is used, with no liquor added, that is white chocolate. Dutch chocolate goes through an alkalizing process to achieve different colourings and flavourings. Milk chocolate of course has milk added to it.

I have a penchant for milk chocolate. Greg used to be addicted to it too, he admitted. “It’s the sugar in it,” he said. But now he finds that if he eats three pieces of dark chocolate a day  – containing at least 75% cocoa solids, he is satisfied. He also doesn’t get cavities nor does he gain weight. Still, he does go on the occasional binge. The record for staff at the store is 20 chocolates in a day! I will not divulge my record.

So buy the good stuff, it’s better quality, better for us and there is less of a chance it will be tainted with child slavery. You can buy fair trade or organic chocolate (organic chocolate has stringent monitoring systems that check labour practices too) at many health food stores and specialty shops. If you can’t find fair trade or organic products, buy the more expensive, high quality chocolate with high cocoa content. But first, ask your chocolate retailer about the chocolate they buy. Just because it’s expensive doesn’t guarantee that a child didn’t slave over your sweet treat.

Here are a few trusted brands to indulge in over Christmas. Have a merry time!

Cocoa Camino

Dagoba

Dean’s Beans

Divine Chocolate

Green and Black’s (now owned by Cadbury)

Ithaca Fine Chocolates

Newman’s Own

Rapunzel

Excerpt from Something’s Rotten in Compost City, A Plot to Take Over the Food You Eat by Spring Gillard.