Guilt free chocolate?..for Christmas.. (Divine Fair Trade Chocolate)

Member Name: millergirl

Product:	Divine Fair Trade Chocolate
Date:	28/09/01 (160 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The farmers get a fair reward for their work, It is delicious choclocte

Disadvantages: It is expensive

I love chocolate and no matter how hard I try I can’t change that.

Some months ago I watched a TV programme about modern day slavery which focused on two trades, rugs and chocolate. It’s not my job to depress you but I will say that if you saw the same programme it is likely to have changed how you feel about eating chocolate and indeed buying rugs. Now the later is not something I do very often so gave me no problems, just for information I do recall it said if you look for the ‘Rug Mark’ you can be sure it was made without the use of slave labour.

Chocolate however is quite a different situation there are not many weeks go by when I do not taste chocolate but what was I to do now I knew a bit more about the cocoa trade. Well as I watched the young children, some stolen from their families, working so hard and receiving at best a pittance and sometimes nothing I vowed not to eat chocolate again. Oh what relief when the programme makers had read my thoughts and said that was not the way to help but buying fair trade chocolate would help.

I must say here that no one was saying that all the work is done by modern slaves or that all cocoa is produced in such conditions, but enough to trouble me. It was my intention to by pass all other chocolate but I have been a miserable failure (well quite a happy one really) and bought several ordinary bars. Now though I have found Divine chocolate and I’m pleased to report that in my opinion it does live up to its name!

Divine is considerably more expensive than other chocolate but that should be obvious as the whole point of it is to give a better life to those involved in the manufacture. A 150gm bar of Divine milk chocolate cost me £1.19 whilst a 125gm bar of Cadbury cost 79p in the same shop.

I want to quote from the wrapper of my Divine chocolate, A message from the day chocolate company:

Every time you take a bite from this Divine bar the
Kuapa Koboo growers in Ghana share in your enjoyment. The cocoa growers are a partner in this venture, so a fair share of the proceeds goes to their community.

Christian Aid and Comic Relief enthusiastically support Divine chocolate. The Day Chocolate Company was founded in October 1998 for the purpose of selling Divine chocolate.

Now with the best will in the world nobody is going to switch to fair trade chocolate unless it tastes good and rest assured this does. It is really sweet and smooth rather like Galaxy in texture, hang on while I eat another piece to check! Yep, it is delicious and I know my chocolate. So from now on what I intend to do is to buy less chocolate but to buy this more expensive but decently produced bar.

There is also a ‘dubble bar’ which I have not tried or indeed seen for sale yet but I believe it is a bubbly bar. I will keep my eyes open and no doubt try it if I see it.

The Nutrition is quite similar to other chocolate per 100g:

Divine Dairy Milk

Energy 541 Kcal 530Kcal
Protein 6.6.g 7.8g
Carbohydrate 55.7g 57.1g
Fat 31.5g 29.9g

Divine is stocked in over 4,500 outlets including:
Sainsbury’s, Co-op, Somerfield, Morisons, Safeway’s, Asda, NUS shops, independent, wholefood and fair trade shops.

If your favourite shop doesn’t stock it as them to give it a try, they can contact the Day Chocolate Company at:
4, Gainsford Street, London SE1 2NE

Also if you can’t find a stockist ask if ‘your’ shop would consider a tasting stall to see how much interest their customers would have. The web site above gives details of how to set this up.

Now for me chocolate has always been accompanied by guilt! Divine can now clear me of the new guilt I’ve acquired since I found out about the salve trade used in its manufacture.

It may still contain to
o many calories etc but a girl's got to have some fun in life and at least it’s legal!

3rd December 2001.
Just read an op by Gothiron talking about making your own baskets up for Christmas. What a great idea the fair trade one would be, so think about adding some Divine chocolate, yummy and in a good cause too!

Happy Christmas preparations :-)

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