Solutions Week: Reinventing Chocolate

Short Wave

NPR

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4.7 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 11 September 2024

⏱️ 17 minutes

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Summary

Climate change is contributing to erratic weather where cocoa beans are grown and threatening the global chocolate supply. Record rainfall last year led to fungal infections among cacao trees and dwindled supply of cocoa beans. Heat is also making it more difficult for cocoa beans to thrive. So, for day three of Climate Solutions Week, we look at one innovation in the food industry: chocolate substitutes.

As big chocolate manufacturers rush to stockpile cocoa beans, some companies like Planet A Foods are looking for a more sustainable solution: an alternative that looks like chocolate, tastes like chocolate and feels like chocolate... without chocolate.

You can read more of international correspondent Rob Schmitz's reporting here.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This message comes from the Center for U.S. Voters Abroad Foundation.
0:04.0	If you're a U.S. Citizen living abroad, the Center for U.S. Voters Abroad Turnout Project's online form
0:10.2	will walk you through requesting your ballot in just five minutes.
0:13.5	Visit International Voter.com.
0:16.5	You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
0:25.0	Hey Shortwaiver, Regina Barbara here. It's Climate Solutions Week here at NPR and reporters around the world are bringing new stories
0:29.1	on this year's theme. Food.
0:31.9	For day three, How We Eat, I've got one of NPR's international correspondence,
0:35.7	Rob Schmitz on deck. Hey Rob, welcome to the show.
0:38.3	Gina, thanks for having me.
0:39.2	So I couldn't wait to talk to you today, Rob, because I heard you did some reporting on one of my favorite things in the world chocolate
0:46.3	Actually, I need to correct you already because this is a chocolate alternative. No cocoa beans were harmed in the making of this chocolate.
0:55.5	I'm okay to be corrected, I'm still going to eat some of this not chocolate.
0:58.8	Okay, good.
0:59.3	Because I heard that there's lots of problems facing the chocolate industry right now like climate change.
1:04.0	Yeah that's right. More than half of the global supply of cocoa beans come from just two countries in Africa,
1:11.3	the Ivory Coast and Ghana.
1:13.0	Right, so I learned from the last time our show covered chocolate that cacao trees
1:16.1	are kind of like finicky, that they only grow within like 20 degrees north and south of the
1:21.4	equator.
1:22.4	Yeah, in these two countries are subject to a lot of the increasingly extreme weather patterns
1:27.4	as scientists expect to see in the region as climate change worsens, including record
	...

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