Chocolate Tasting: A Class Activity

This quarter I am teaching the “Introduction to International Studies” class, and this week we were talking about food. I always find that students enjoy this week, in part because crops form part of clear commodity chains so that every student can see the connection between themselves and food producers globally. I’ve also adopted a classroom assignment developed by my friend, Kim Brown, which is quite popular- the chocolate tasting. Later in the class I lectured on bioterrorism and cacao in Brazil, which I’ve also covered in an earlier post here. I also showed Robert Beckford’s clever documentary video on rice, chocolate and gold production, which available for free online. The food unit follows a section on development theories. Beckford’s film was engaging for students, but he also tied events in Africa to IMF/World Bank policies, as well as the global trading system, which makes it a good fit for the class. But before I arrived at the core content of the class, I first did the chocolate tasting.

Picture by Suat Eman at freedigitalphotos.net

I went to my local New Seasons market, where I purchased raw cacao beans. After some taste testing, my daughters gave me the strong advice not to give this to students without some honey to sweeten it. The food court gave me some latex gloves to break up chocolate bars. And World Market had a wide selection of chocolate bars with different levels of cacao. I broke up the chocolate into small blocks on paper towels and called up the class up by rows. We started with the cacao beans. Students were a little hesitant to bite them because the outer shell looks so hard. I explained that these beans were from Ecuador or Peru, the original homeland of cacao, and were used as money in ancient MesoAmerica. After tasting the cacao beans (a few student genuinely liked them, but they weren’t very popular), students then moved to chocolate which had chiles. The ancient Aztecs drank a mix of chiles and chocolate, which was reserved for the elites. It must have been popular- traces of chocolate have been found on the inside of pottery containers found in the U.S. Southwest, where it doubtless was brought on foot. After that the students were able to sample chocolate with different levels of cacao (or cocoa- the term is spelled both ways). The 70% cacao level seemed most popular, while everyone thought the 90% was too bitter (although I favor that with single malt scotch). The class had fun, and nobody took too much chocolate. Many students would break even the small amount of chocolate that I had put out in half. There was a lot of laughter as people watched their friends’ faces as they ate the cacao beans.

I deliberately chose dark chocolate, so that students who were lactose intolerant could take part. But I also warned the students that almost all the chocolate bars said that they were processed in a facility that also handled “milk, nuts and wheat.” If you can have someone help you break up the chocolate (thank you to my amazing graduate assistant) it makes the preparation much easier.

This weekend I’m off to an all-day workshop organized by the World Affairs Council at Lewis and Clark College to prepare K-12 educators to teach about Latin America. I’m doing a session on Brazil, which raises the question: if you only have one hour, what do you want teachers to know? I’m looking forward to Saturday, because I always like to work with teachers. I hope that all of you may have the chance to enjoy some chocolate soon.

Shawn Smallman

1 thought on “Chocolate Tasting: A Class Activity”

  1. Pingback: Introduction to International Studies Syllabus | Intro to Global Studies

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