Negative Effects Of Chocolate

Cocoa

Cocoa bean farms produces the chocolate in an equatorial weather which mostly located in West Africa, Asia, and Latin America. However, 70% of cocoa production is from Ghana in West Africa. They sell it to the most of chocolate companies in the world. (Article “Child Labor and Slavery in the Chocolate Industry”, n.d). consequently, the families in these countries depend on the cocoa producing as their main income source. Even though the chocolate considered as the dominant world food commodity with a high profit can reaches to $1.5 billions a year, the farmers who work very hard to grow the cocoa beans get a very little amount of the product’s profits (“Fairtrade Cocoa”,2010). Therefore, in order to give the workers what they deserve

It’s a sweet and delicious snack but not all the people are aware of its dark side and how it has a negative impact in their health. The first major negative health impact of eating too much chocolate that people should be aware of is obesity. Based on Oxford Dictionary obesity means “The state of being grossly fat or overweight”. Eating food with high calories is the reason for gaining weight. However, Willett (2014) assumed that chocolate has the highest amount of calories compared to any another snack. He clarifies that consuming a 1.55-ounce of chocolate bar has 235 calories which clearly will lead you to obesity (Willett,2014). Furthermore, second negative health impact of chocolate overconsumption is the risk of the body sugar level. The sugar is the most important ingredient in chocolate. if you eat a lot of chocolate the sugar level in your body will increase. Therefore, it will rise the chance of becoming a diabetes victim which will lead you eventually to the risk of heart diseases and other complications as well. (“Diabetes and Chocolate” n,d). In addition, Dimer (2015) justifies that people who has specific diseases like adrenal or kidney diseases consider eating chocolate as another negative health impact because of high potassium amount included. She confirmed that only 2 oz. piece of chocolate has more than 200 mg of potassium so if anyone had these diseases should stay away from any kind of

According to the United Nations, human trafficking defined as "the illegal and clandestine movement of persons across national and international borders with the end goal of forcing women and children into economically oppressive and exploitative situations for profit"(as sited in Chanthavong,2002, para.3). The most spread form of human trafficking in Africa is children trafficking. There are 200,000 children are trafficked in there every year to produce chocolate (Chanthavong,2002). Due to the horrible life conditions and poverty in Africa, Cocoa farmers’ traffickers convince the children easily to work from them by telling them that they can be rich if they come with them and almost of these children are between 12 to 16 years old, 40% of them are girls (Article “Child Labor and Slavery in the Chocolate Industry” n,d). However, these children start working at six in the morning and finishing in the evening which means that they work all the day without rest. Also, they work with some danger tools like chainsaws for clearing the forest and machete to cut the beans from the trees (Article “Child Labor and Slavery in the Chocolate Industry” n,d). Above all, farmer treat the children very aggressively by avoiding paying for them or just pay less than they deserve, provide for them the cheapest food