The world is running out of chocolate. How will I survive?
As a woman who believes chocolate is the third major food group, preceded only by meat and potatoes, this news is devastating.
The shortage is caused by many factors, one of which is that we are eating too much chocolate. Last year we ate more cocoa than we produced -- 70,000 metric tons to be exact. In five years the shortfall will increase to one million metric tons. By 2030: two million
metric tons.
Like all goods, chocolate is subject to the law of supply and demand, and the demand is skyrocketing in places recently introduced to chocolate. Blame the Chinese.
Chocolate sales in China are expected to grow almost 60 percent in the next four years. People in the Asia-Pacific region are eating twice as much chocolate as a decade ago. Even that amount does not match Western Europe's consumption.
Another problem is that disease has destroyed all the cocoa trees in Costa Rica. An additional blow is that global warming is wreaking havoc with rainfall in West Africa.
I'm trying to do my part to conserve this resource. I eat only milk chocolate which contains about 10 percent cocoa and ignore dark chocolate which contains up to 70 percent.
Industry insiders and commodity brokers predict scarcity and higher prices will soon begin.
They also fear hoarding.
I really don't like standing in line or paying a higher price. But a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.
I cannot, under any circumstances, give up chocolate.
Quote of the day: We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. ~ Aristotle
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