{"id":383,"date":"2018-02-13T02:36:17","date_gmt":"2018-02-13T02:36:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/?p=383"},"modified":"2018-02-13T02:36:17","modified_gmt":"2018-02-13T02:36:17","slug":"mindless-enjoyment-chocolate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/2018\/02\/13\/mindless-enjoyment-chocolate\/","title":{"rendered":"Mindless Enjoyment: Chocolate"},"content":{"rendered":"

What do you do to relax or treat yourself after a long day? Perhaps you take a moment and revel in the luxury of chocolate. After all, studies have shown that chocolate has health benefits, among other things it is high in antioxidants and heart healthy. What is the harm in taking respite and mindlessly enjoying a piece of chocolate? Many would argue that there is no harm, it is delicious and healthy. While chocolate is delicious and healthy it can be harmful. Cocoa farmers employ hundreds of thousands of children, some of whom are miles away from their families who they haven\u2019t seen in years. Knowing this makes it a bit harder to mindlessly revel in that piece of chocolate after a long day. Imagine the little hands cracking open the fruit of the cocoa with a machete in order to provide the chocolate you are enjoying. Does it give you pause? Now imagine a situation not quite as jarring, the cocoa farmer who barely scrapes by gets to taste chocolate for the first time in his life, his face lights up with joy and he wants to share with his friends who have also not had the opportunity to enjoy the fruits of their labors. While we all enjoy the sugary treat of chocolate rarely do we appreciate the hard work that provided it. It may seem like a treat you have always enjoyed is being taken away from you with this knowledge, it is hard to enjoy something when you know others are hurt so you can have it. Not all hope is lost, when shopping for chocolate look for the Fair Trade logo. Fair Trade works to make sure that workers are safe and adequately compensated. It is possible to enjoy a harmless piece of chocolate, it is not possible to do so mindlessly. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"See<\/p>\n

\u201cChild Labor in Cocoa.\u201d Fortune<\/i>, fortune.com\/big-chocolate-child-labor\/. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFair Trade.\u201d Fair Trade Certified<\/i>, www.fairtradecertified.org\/. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What do you do to relax or treat yourself after a long day? Perhaps you take a moment and revel in the luxury of chocolate. After all, studies have shown that chocolate has health benefits, among other things it is high in antioxidants and heart healthy. What is the harm in taking respite and mindlessly enjoying a piece of chocolate?… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":384,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[134,107,178,103],"class_list":["post-383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-contemplative-practices","tag-child-labor","tag-chocolate","tag-cocoa-farmer","tag-fair-trade"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":385,"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383\/revisions\/385"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}