Management By Chocolate

When I was working at Innovationsbron, my then colleague and now friend Maria commented that I did something she called "management by chocolate". I had a habit (still do) of bringing chocolate or cookies to all my meetings to share with the participants, since it made the process much smoother. If you use really good dark chocolate, you get satisfied with only a few bits (in theory at least) making you benefit from the antioxidants without getting fat from the sugar.

Being a chocoholic it's good to learn that the chocolate industry seems to work harder and harder on sustainability issues, both social and environmental ones. While browsing the Swedish JournalChocolat I found out that there are several large initiatives going on such as the Cocoa Horizon foundation started by Barry Callebaut, one of the largest cocoa producers in the world. Together with another major chocolate player Mondelèz they have started Cocoa Life, helping the cocoa workers in Africa to improve their situation. They are also a member of the World Cocoa Foundation who support "support cocoa communities, education, field programs and scientific research". This organisation also partner up with other funding agencies such as the Bill & Melissa Gates Foundation in order to create a bigger impact.

Also small producers such as the Swedish Gefle Choklad make their own sustainable products and Scottish Chocolate Tree is famous for their bean-to-bar concept (although I'm a bit hesitant to their Haggis Spice bar...).

In a chocolate shop in Gothenburg I came across a sign saying "Strength is the ability to break off four pieces of chocolate but only eat one". True, true!