Speech

Everyone here likes chocolate right?

But is it actually that good for you?

Hi I’m Jack and today I’m talking about chocolate.

See this chocolate bar, I researched the ingredients and I found out that this might only be 10% cocoa, and it was 28% sugar. And sure some chocolates might have nuts or fruits in them to make them “healthy” but the Cadbury picnic bar is still 25% sugar. I even found one that was 33% Sugar. 33%! That’s one third! And yes you can get chocolate that is 50% cocoa or whatever, but they still have a lot of sugar in them! The lowest percentage I could find with Cadbury was Black Forest and that’s still 15% Sugar.

Now I’m not saying you shouldn’t eat chocolate at all, I know there are people including myself who couldn’t go without chocolate.

But we should eat less of it. In 2013 NZ and Australia ate 4.8 kg of chocolate per person. That’s a lot of chocolate. In 2015 Switzerland ate 8.2 kgs of chocolate per person. A substitute for chocolate is carob chocolate. Carob chocolate is a type of chocolate that diabetic people can eat. Naturally this has less sugar and is a lot healthier than normal chocolate

Not only is eating a lot of chocolate not healthy, it’s expensive. First of all you have to buy the chocolate, then your teeth rot and you have to pay for fillings then if you keep eating lots of chocolate and it gets really bad you might need a root canal or crown! That would cost a couple of thousand dollars and if you don’t want pay that much then your only other choice is to have all your teeth ripped out and get dentures. That would cost thousands of dollars for all that. Or you could just eat less chocolate and save thousands.

And instead of buying lots of cheap chocolate bars you should get one or two expensive chocolate bars because they are the ones that are more likely to be with Fairtrade. Fairtrade is a program that supports the people who are actually growing the cocoa beans. The companies that are selling cheap chocolate probably are not treating their workers well. There are many companies that are with Fairtrade, some of them are Cadbury, Hershey’s, Sweet Riot and Theo Chocolate. Another big company is Nestle which has some Fairtrade products but not all. If you want to find out if a type of chocolate is Fairtrade look for this symbol (Points to bar.)

The chances of us stopping chocolate buying altogether though is impossible, as cocoa is the fifth most commonly traded commodity up with oil (1) coffee (2) Agriculture (3) and animals products (4). DeLafēe of Switzerland’s gold chocolate box sold for $330 and it only came with eight tiny chocolates! That’s a lot of money!

But it can’t just be us stopping it has to be everyone, starting (Takes a bite) Now.