OT for ahr.
I bought a big chocolate bar recently, store brand, nothing embossed in the chocolate but a few grid lines, and on the label it says "Sustainably sourced cocoa".
Are there cocoa mines? Are there cocoa wells? Is cocoa a fossil food?
Do they grow cocoa on islands about to be flooded by a rising ocean?
What other kind of cocoa is there but sustainably sourced?
| What other kind of cocoa is there but sustainably sourced?
I imagine it's probably like exotic hardwoods: "sustainably sourced" rosewood would be farmed as opposed to stripping all the wild trees until they're gone.
He thinks he is funny. And he is. It was a fun read.
Hehe that's pretty funny. I remember Frito-Lay products used to say "It all starts farm grown potatoes." on the back of the bag. Well no shit what other kinda potatoes are there.
If you compliment him...he will make another lame attempt...not good.
Well, duh, the kind in the supermarket. They come in 5 pound bags not from some dirty farm.
And we've all heard of the Millenniums who protest the slaughter houses insisting we should only eat the meat sold in grocery stores.
Yes, the are among us and they will breed.
Having verified that cocoa beans grow on trees, and reading more about cocoa on wikip,
As if, if they had money they'd care abou tthe ennvironment]
This must be what you and the candy label are referring to. I saw this in person in 1971 in Central America, when I would see tractor-trailor flat trucks with humongously thick logs on them as the trees were cut down for some use or other, and then the land was used for agriculture, for the almost surely growing population.
Above it sound slike the logging companies fell the trees first, for their own profit, so why shouldn't the cocoa farmers raise cocoa on the cleared land. It seems to me the problem is the growth in population. "If cars can get better mileage, why can't we get better satiety out of food? Why can't people eat less, not just the fat ones but everyone? Then we could have more people without needing more farmland."
Are you confusing "sustainable" with "renewable"?
Lots of agriculture can't be sustained in the long term, some say.
Hydroponic, comes to mind.
- . Christopher A. Young learn more about Jesus .
| I saw this | in person in 1971 in Central America, when I would see tractor-trailor | flat trucks with humongously thick logs on them as the trees were cut | down for some use or other, and then the land was used for agriculture, | for the almost surely growing population. |
Exotic hardwoods were cut because there was a big US market for them. How do we know the land was then used to support farming for a growing population? You make it all sound very Mr. Rogers-esque.
| Above it sound slike the logging companies fell the trees first, for | their own profit, so why shouldn't the cocoa farmers raise cocoa on the | cleared land. It seems to me the problem is the growth in population.
Trees are cut in Brazil to support cattle grazing, which helps Burger King save .5 cents per burger. But the rain forest soil is high in clay and low in nutrients. It's quickly depleted and abandoned, while the grazers move on to a new spot. (Not news, either. It's been going on for decades. Though I saw something recently about efforts to re-establish rain forest growth.)
The commonality in the two cases is that resources are being managed recklessly because there's big money to be made in the short term. Maybe that's a natural system in its own way: We'd never have the foresight or the discipline to manage the cocoa crop if we weren't forced to by the threat of dwindling Hershey bars. The crisis has to reach American shopping malls before it's real for us. So maybe your sustainably sourced cocoa isn't so silly after all. It may be the ticket to you being able to buy another chocolate bar 5 years from now. :) Likewise, there's a farmed hardwood industry now that didn't exist a few decades ago.
(Though I wouldn't call it a chocolate bar when you buy Hershey's or a generic, budget brand. The last time I tried Hershey's chocolate I couldn't discern any chocolate flavor at all. Being a big fan of chocolate that's 70+ % cocoa, when I eat mainstream milk chocolate these days it tastes like a butter and sugar bar to me. The creaminess is wonderful, but there's just no chocolate flavor.)
Maybe you're getting old and your taster is shot...they taste the same as always to me. Palmer chocolate tastes like wax and lard, on the other hand.
Your other commends are very astute. Thanks!
| Maybe you're getting old and your taster is shot...they taste the same as always to me. Palmer chocolate tastes like wax and lard, on the other hand. |
I don't mean that I think Hersheys has downgraded their chocolate. I just think it never was much good. Even the mediocre Lindt at least has about 50% cocoa solids. I don't think Hersheys even lists that on their labels. Once I got used to dark chocolate from Whole Foods or Trader Joes, the Hershey's seemed very bland. (Maybe someone used to Hersheys might think 70% cocoa solids organic chocolate tastes like bitter baking chocolate. :)
I've never heard of Palmers. Maybe that's local?
It's an interesting issue in general. As a baby boomer, my parents grew up with little processed food. I grew up at a time when foods were inventions. Marshmallow fluff, Kool-aid, oreos, fish sticks, lucky charms cereal.... I thought sugary grain flakes were breakfast. For lunch I thought it was normal to eat tasteless, industrial white bread slathered with something called Skippys. Skippys consisted of old peanuts combined with lots of sugar and hydrogenated vegetable oil. I thought coffee was a powder, like Kool-aid. I also thought salad dressing was a powder, to be mixed with tasteless oil and tasteless vinegar. (We didn't have herbs and spices. We had garlic salt, onion salt, powdered thyme, etc.) I thought Coke and Pepsi were normal, delicious foodstuffs.
Things got so extreme that we needed the hippie era and the natural foods fad to reassess and figure out what food should be. Even that movement was a bit naive. What's granola, after all, but sugary oat candy? (And to this day, people who work out in gyms are eating sugary candybars, with a bit of oat, and believe them to be nutritious "energy bars".)
Now I eat mainly unprocessed foods, like my grandparents would have had, except that it's still hard to get nonindustrial food. I'm sure my grandparents didn't have trouble finding apples that didn't taste like cardboard, or oranges with juice. And the only organic bread I can find is Whole Foods, which they make in their factory and then heat up in their stores, pretending to bake it! Post-modern bread. :)
I thought Bud was delicious when I was 20. I thought Coors was even better. Then at one point I tried homebrew, prohibition-style. It was made of supermarket malt syrup with bakers yeast and yarrow stalks. The bottles that didn't blow up were then drunk. It was delicious! For many years after that I brewed my own beer, using fresh-frozen hop flowers, malt syrup made for brewing, and variously toasted, malted barley grains. Most of America doesn't even know what real beer tastes like. They drink a watered-down, slightly sour brew that's made with large amounts of sugar, to cut the malt taste. Bud uses about
30% rice. Miller doesn't even use real hops. They use a chemical extract. Real beer would skunk (hop oils going rancid) in those clear bottles due to light exposure.I think that trend applies across the spectrum. Food production became so industrialized that in just 1 or 2 generations we acclimated to eating things that are barely food at all, then it takes some effort to discover and acclimate to quality food.
.... Just my opinion. You could be right, after all. Maybe I'm just getting old and need bitter chocolate to get any taste at all. :)
They make a lot of hollow bunnnies and the like for holidays. They look good, but they do taste awful. You'll find them in K Mart and places that sell cheap stuff.
a lot of the foil wrapped stuff around the holidays.
yicky indeed.
when i read a label that has palm kernel or palm oil or anything other than cocoa butter or chocolate, it's a sign to get something else.
i used to make a lot of chocolates and usually could find decent chocolate in bulk at the bakery supply or cake making places.
in reference to actual sustainability, cocoa is a good understory plant for a mixed tropical forest. it's having troubles at the moment due to diseases and being replaced by other farm crops, but if the price goes up those trends can be reversed. we'll see what happens.
songbird
If you make your own brew...have you heard of Gusmer (brewer supplies)? They have been an ever expanding company in our area.
Zachary is the other crappy chocolate (I'm sure there's more).
| If you make your own brew...have you heard of Gusmer (brewer supplies)? They have been an ever expanding company in our area. | I haven't heard of them, but I haven't brewed for a few years, and when I did I had a choice of 2 or 3 local suppliers.
I enjoyed brewing and loved the beer, but the trouble was that I'd make about 10 six-packs at a time and liked to keep 2 or 3 varieties ready. Yet I rarely drink more than one or two beers at a time myself. So I'd give away a lot of beer.... then I'd have to brew more.... It just got to seem like too much trouble. The cooking and bottling each required an evening of intensive work.
| Would you be interested in my home made Primal Cocoa Ganache | Candy? | | It is really, really strong and very low carb. Have to | keep it refrigerated or it melts. Pretty easy to make too. | Sounds interesting. You mean you can share the recipe? I've been trying to cut down desserts in order to lose weight, but I love chocolate.
This comes out like fudge? It actually sounds a lot like my recipe for very easy, very rich chocolate cream pie: 1/2 pound semi-sweet chocolate melted into 1 cup light cream. The frosting is made from one cup heavy cream, optionally with sweetener. That's it. The filling gets poured into a pie crust and refrigerated. My version has lots of carbs. I don't avoid carbs. Though I also don't eat chocolate cream pie very often. Stevia sounds interesting. I looked it up.
I have a niece who's on a "ketogenic" diet and raves about it. I'm guessing that's similar to your "primal" diet. Personally I'm very skeptical about the health of such a diet in the long term, though mu niece needs to lose weight and it's helping her to do that. It's also helping her to become more aware of food quality. Maybe I shouldn't say too much, though. We had a long, heated debate about Paelo diet here awhile back. :)
On 27 Jan 2015, "Mayayana" wrote in alt.home.repair:
I believe a "ketogenic" diet is about low-carbohydrate / high fat and protein. I followed such a diet (Adkins) for a while and found it to be effective and pretty easy to maintain, but there are those that say it's not very healthy.
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