Is chocolate one of the best desserts ever?🍫

 Do you like chocolate? My speech is all about it! But my speech is not a happy speech about chocolate, its about the sad story of chocolate. When I read my speech in front of the class I got into the semi-finals and then the finals. My favourite part of writing my speech was doing the research and watching the video about the bitter side of chocolate. Do you even know what the bitter side of chocolate is? Read my speech and learn all about it. When I read my speech in front of the whole school, I got 3rd place. I hope you like it. And remeber, chocoate is not all that it's cut out to be. 

                                                                                                                                                                                       Is chocolate the best food ever?

Who likes chocolate? You probably do, but have you ever considered where it came from? I´m here to tell you the bitter side of chocolate, but first the sweet side.

Firstly, chocolate is delicious, it's sweet and perfect for dessert. It’s difficult to imagine that the chocolate chip cookie, one of the world’s most beloved sweet treats, was actually invented by accident in 1930 when Ruth Wakefield and her husband, Kenneth, were running the Toll House Inn on Route 18 near Whitman, Massachusetts. Mrs. Wakefield prepared all the food for the guests at the inn and had gained an enviable local reputation for her impressive range of desserts.

Secondly, here's the bitter side. The journey from cocoa bean to chocolate bar is rife with corruption, violence, and exploitation. People, many of them children, are being forced to do illegal work just so we can eat chocolate. Unfortunately if you know how it starts then it might not be  possible to enjoy chocolate. People are forced to be slaves because of it. 60 percent to 2 thirds of the world's cocoa beans come from west africa, mainly in two countries, Ghana and Ivory Coast. The people in Africa have to cut the cocoa pods off the cocoa trees without using machines, only machetes, which are a big knife. Cocoa pods have cocoa beans in them, which are mandatory if you want to make chocolate. Once the farmers have 30 - 35 tons of chocolate they take it to the port where the beans are shipped off to big chocolate companies that you've probably never heard of. 400 cocoa beans = 1 pound of chocolate. The cocoa farmers get less than 1 dollar a day or about 200 dollars a year which is about as much as adult workers can get here in a day. The big chocolate companies get a huge amount of money from the chocolate we eat. I think the farmers should get more of the money because they work every day, their children work every day, and they barely get 1 dollar.

Lastly, Ivory Coast has lost more than 85 percent of its forests because farmers destroy the native trees to grow the cocoa trees. Cocoa trees make about 30 pods a year, which is enough for 2 tons. Each pod contains about 40 seeds. If a farmer has the choice of protecting the rain forests or feeding their families then they don't have much of a choice at all. Sadly sometimes bad people come and kill the farmers if they know that they have money that they want. 

What I'm trying to tell you is that chocolate shouldn't make people slaves or destroy forests. I think we do need chocolate, but the farmers should have a choice if they want to work at the cocoa farms or not, and if they do then they should be paid a whole lot more. Thank you for listening to my speech and I hope you agree with me that chocolate shouldn´t cause slavery.