Did you know there’s a special day just for chocolate? And it falls tomorrow, World Chocolate Day is celebrated on July 7 every year, and it’s the perfect day to enjoy your
favourite chocolatey treats. But chocolate isn’t just yummy—it has a fascinating story that goes back thousands of years, which you can read all about it on our chocolate feature on page 4 and 5.
Cocoa is mostly grown in Africa or South America, but our very own Sri Lankan cocoa is small in quantity but rich in quality and has a unique flavour—making it a hidden gem in the world of chocolate, that many are not aware of. Chocolate begins with the cocao tree, which grows in warm, rainy places like the central hills of Kandy, Matale and Badulla. The cocao tree produces big pods, and inside each pod are cocao beans. These little beans are what become chocolate.
In Sri Lanka, some farmers grow cocao alongside other crops like pepper and tea. These farmers play a very important role in making sure we get high-quality chocolate. Many of them take great care of their trees using natural and eco-friendly farming methods. While we enjoy eating chocolate, it’s important to remember the people who grow and harvest cocao.
Harvesting cocoa is a very hard job, it takes many workers and many days to process the chocolate we so easily find off our supermarket shelves. Have you ever heard about Fair Trade programs ? Perhaps you may have seen a label and wondered what that was all about.
Fair Trade means farmers get paid fairly for their work and get the opportunity to lead better lives, because the chocolate industry can be quite an unfair place, where workers are treated poorly and get very little money for all the hard work they put in to their job. Do you also know that in places like Africa, children just like you are made to work in cocoa fields and are treated very poorly, almost like slaves?
It’s terrible isn’t it! So when you see a Fair Trade label on your chocolate bar, you know it’s free of child labour and helping someone across the world or on our very own island earn a decent living. That makes each bite of chocolate feel and taste even better.
Do you also know that chocolate companies today are trying to be more careful about the environment? Chocolate requires a lot of resources, so it’s important to plant new trees, reduce waste, and find better ways to make delicious treats without harming nature.
Can you imagine a world without chocolate cake, chocolate ice cream, chocolate brownies and chocolate chip cookies? What a dull place that would be. So while celebrating such a fun day with your family and friends be thankful that there are farmers and hard workers out there that makes this tasty treat so easily available to us. Whether it’s a small bite or a big celebration, chocolate reminds us of the sweet things in life—and that kindness, like chocolate, is best when shared.
So go ahead—take a bite, make a memory, and till next week have a choco-tastic World Chocolate Day!
