{"id":369,"date":"2018-02-12T20:15:08","date_gmt":"2018-02-12T20:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/?p=369"},"modified":"2018-02-12T20:15:08","modified_gmt":"2018-02-12T20:15:08","slug":"chocolate-my-comfort-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/2018\/02\/12\/chocolate-my-comfort-food\/","title":{"rendered":"Chocolate – My Comfort Food?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Confiserie Coffee Dark Chocolate Dark Chocolate<\/p><\/div>\n

During Week 3, when the Contemplative Practice on chocolate was done, I had a rough time. First, I was recovering from a bad cold and second, my grandfather had passed away the day before I did my contemplative practice, so my mood was anything buy joyful.<\/p>\n

One thing that I did notice when I did the practice though, is how much of a \u201ccomfort food\u201d chocolate is in my mind. I don\u2019t eat chocolate, or foods with chocolate in them regularly, but I had gone on a grocery trip earlier that day and wow, upon reflection during the contemplative practice, I was surprised. I had bought a chocolate croissant, some chocolate candy, ice-cream bars coated in chocolate and cacao powder. I did not eat all of this in one day, and it was highly unusual for me to buy so much \u201ctreat\u201d foods in one trip, but I allowed myself to do it, I guess as a coping mechanism for grief. In all honesty, by the time I ate the chocolate for the contemplative practice I felt unwell from so much sugar. I wouldn\u2019t say I felt quite \u201ccomforted,\u201d I guess it was just something I could turn to as a sort of distraction.<\/p>\n

During this contemplative practice I also realized why fair-trade chocolate is such a big deal here in the Netherlands. They have one main brand, Tony\u2019s, which is fair-trade and found everywhere. I spoke to a government employee a while back and he told me all government employees are required to buy fair-trade chocolates, that they are not allowed to buy non-fair-trade. I\u2019m not sure how this is enforced, but it is hopeful to see that the Dutch governance is taking this stance. Before this course, I hadn\u2019t known much about the fair-trade movement and about the child labor, but I\u2019ve informed and glad to be so to make positive consumer decisions in the future.<\/p>\n

Photo:\u00a0http:\/\/maxpixel.freegreatpicture.com\/static\/photo\/2x\/Confiserie-Coffee-Dark-Chocolate-Dark-Chocolate-968457.jpg<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During Week 3, when the Contemplative Practice on chocolate was done, I had a rough time. First, I was recovering from a bad cold and second, my grandfather had passed away the day before I did my contemplative practice, so my mood was anything buy joyful. One thing that I did notice when I did the practice though, is how… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[134,107,170,103,169],"class_list":["post-369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-contemplative-practices","tag-child-labor","tag-chocolate","tag-comfort-foods","tag-fair-trade","tag-tonys"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":372,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369\/revisions\/372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385w18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}