Post: #1

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/ampp3d/dont...te-4642238

There are a couple of charts in the article. Couldn't figure out the links.

Quote:Try not to panic, but the world is in chocolate deficit. Chocolate. Deficit.

Last year, the world ate about 70,000 tons more cocoa than it produced. That's a lot of bars of Dairy Milk. And we're in the throes of the longest consecutive streak of chocolate deficits in more than 50 years.

How does that look? Well, there are 11g of cocoa per 220g bar of chocolate. So... 6,363,636,364 bars of Dairy Milk.

Leading chocolate brands Mars Inc and Bary Callebaut AG have predicted that the shortfall will rise to 1 million metric tons by 2020 - and up to 2 million by 2030. Eeeek!

Well, the main reason is we're eating too much chocolate. But also:

In the Ivory Coast and Ghana, where more than 70% of the world’s cocoa is produced, dry weather has ravaged cocoa plants. And global warming means this is only going only going to get worse - temperatures are set to increase there by up to 2 degrees Celcius by 2050.

A disease called Frosty Pod has also wiped out between 30 and 40% of the world’s cocoa production.

The world is only getting hungrier for chocolate. China imports more and more chocolate each year, and though they only consume around 5% per capita of what Western people eat, that figure is increasing.

Cocoa farmers don't see much of the profit from selling their beans so they're moving into more profitable crops, such as rubber.

Chocolate is getting pricier. The fact that your Freddo bar has gone from 10p to 25p is no coincidence - From 1993 to 2007, the price of cocoa has risen from $1,465/ton to $2,736/ton - an 87 percent rise.

Post: #2

There's been a noticeable improvement in thread titles lately.

Post: #3

I would also be very annoyed. I love dark chocolate (in small amounts).

Post: #4

I fucking love me some chocolate.

I think I'll go eat some now before the price goes up.

Beyond All Seas

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes
frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Kipling

Post: #5

No chocolate means no nutella. No nutella means 90% of the people in the ass eating thread are going to be very angry.

No nutella also means that the guys from that thread aren't going to have this opener anymore.

Post: #6

My reaction to thread title:

Post: #7

Let's keep things in perspective. Most fatties aren't fat because of eating too much chocolate, especially dark chocolate. Even with low quality "cocoa bars", that would end up being hideously (no pun intended) expensive. The bulk of their calories comes from eating vast amounts of refined grains/sugars that are just slightly coated/sprinkled with chocolate to make them look nicer. For example:



Think this thing that weighs 150 grams contains more than 2 grams of cocoa powder?



There's about as much cocoa powder in this baked good as there are rare earths under my house.



Even this delicious chocolate cake contains a very small amount of actual cocoa compared to sugar, flour, milk, margarine, eggs and other stuff.

The only products that are going to suffer from this are those actually being made mostly from cocoa:



And since dark chocolates like this are already considered upper-class stuff anyway, I don't foresee this cocoa price increase significantly affecting fatties.

Post: #8

Rioting burns a lot of calories. Maybe this is how this version of Earth's fatness starts to swing the other way.

Post: #9

Good thing I've already got a bunch of boxes of Valrhona chocolate I brought back from Hong Kong.
I think I'll lock them up with the Cohibas and expensive alcohol in my 'things I don't want girls fucking with' cabinet.

Post: #10

bullshit. Most of the 'reforest the world' tropical tree planting projects I've worked on...which were just fronts for agroforestry included plenty of cacao plantings. You've got new cacao plantings being established worldwide along the climate zones in which it will grow. This is just someone being clever with futures.

Post: #11

Ebola virus caused a recent spike, too.

Post: #12

(11-20-2014 08:55 AM)Dr. Howard Wrote:  bullshit. Most of the 'reforest the world' tropical tree planting projects I've worked on...which were just fronts for agroforestry included plenty of cacao plantings. You've got new cacao plantings being established worldwide along the climate zones in which it will grow. This is just someone being clever with futures.

I'm not an expert on this, but cacao plants grow very slowly, and if a disease is wiping out a large portion of the crops it's going to take years for production quantity to recover.

Post: #13

(11-20-2014 11:15 AM)getdownonit Wrote:  

(11-20-2014 08:55 AM)Dr. Howard Wrote:  bullshit. Most of the 'reforest the world' tropical tree planting projects I've worked on...which were just fronts for agroforestry included plenty of cacao plantings. You've got new cacao plantings being established worldwide along the climate zones in which it will grow. This is just someone being clever with futures.

I'm not an expert on this, but cacao plants grow very slowly, and if a disease is wiping out a large portion of the crops it's going to take years for production quantity to recover.

The trees reach fruit bearing age at 6 years, thats pretty good. Speculators hype this shit up. I have yet to see bannana prices skyrocket yet they are supposed to be infected by some huge epidemic.

Every commercial species of tree has some sort of disease that some pathologist is hyping up as the end of the world. Its only 'real' in my eyes when the price changes or quarantines get put in place.

Post: #14

Bananas are unique as a commercial crop in that 95%+ of the bananas sold in export locales are from a clone of the same cavendish varietal. Notice the typical store bought banana (cavendish) has no seeds and tastes pretty much the same every time. This type of agriculture has no possibility of adapting to new external threats.

There are plenty of types of bananas in the world, which you see when in tropical places. These may have seeds, and usually have a wide variety of flavors and textures.

Post: #15

(11-20-2014 05:30 AM)Handsome Creepy Eel Wrote:  Let's keep things in perspective. Most fatties aren't fat because of eating too much chocolate, especially dark chocolate. Even with low quality "cocoa bars", that would end up being hideously (no pun intended) expensive. The bulk of their calories comes from eating vast amounts of refined grains/sugars that are just slightly coated/sprinkled with chocolate to make them look nicer.

Australian Chocolate is far superior to American Chocolate. That's the reason why the women in Australia are so chunky. They'll eat entire packets and blocks of this whilst 'snacking', and all the advertising for these products is targeted at women, usually some chick with a seductive voice spouting lines about how 'you deserve it', with 'sinful' and 'decadent' in there somewhere:











I had a friend who moved to America who cried on the phone to me over how terrible she thought American Chocolate was and wanted me to post her a box of Tim Tams, "even if they melt!"

Post: #16

I have to admit, I tried Tim Tams and I didn't find them anything special (sacrilege?). But I love Vegemite (sacrilege #2?)

p.s. this is considered the best chocolate in Europe, even though it doesn't actually have any more cocoa than other brands:

Post: #17

In my opinion, Milka sucks. One chick brought me back a few bars from some trip to see her family. Like a lot of European shit, it just tasted like Nutella.

Post: #18

All this chocolate talk makes me want to shit my brains out, I only like clean dark chocolate because it doesn't fuck with my stomach. Anything else fucks my body up.

Post: #19

(11-20-2014 12:26 PM)getdownonit Wrote:  Bananas are unique as a commercial crop in that 95%+ of the bananas sold in export locales are from a clone of the same cavendish varietal. Notice the typical store bought banana (cavendish) has no seeds and tastes pretty much the same every time. This type of agriculture has no possibility of adapting to new external threats.

There are plenty of types of bananas in the world, which you see when in tropical places. These may have seeds, and usually have a wide variety of flavors and textures.

I don't know about the improvement programs in cavendish, but in most other forest species there is enough genetic variety to breed for resistance. Trees may 'look' the same but haven't been bred so narrowly that the are clones.

The process is to look for resistant or survivor trees after a disease passes through and rotate them into the tree breeding program. It takes a long time, but it how to do species recovery.

Post: #20

Post: #21

I'm no fattie, but I too love myself some quality chocolate. Milka is really nothing special. Kinder is way better.

My best milk chocolate and white chocolate candidates:



I never liked dark chocolate. I know it's healthy and all, but I hate the bitter taste. But if there is a cocoa shortage, I guess it will first hit the dark chocolate products?

Quote:"White chocolate" is a confection based on sugar, milk, and cocoa butter without the cocoa solids.

Post: #22

Chocolate....

   

I have never understood the fuzz about chocolate.
Especially not when it's coming from men.

Post: #23

Loacker is the shizznit. Hard to find in the US, though.

Post: #24

TimTams are the shit.

Post: #25

If chocolate would completely disappear from this world I would neither care nor notice. That is one thing I can live without, although id doesn't bother me too.