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Why Buy Organic Chocolate for Valentine's Day

By: Michele Kivisto


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Chocolate is a time-honored gift for your loved on Valentine's Day. Beautifully wrapped chocolates in a heart-shaped gift box not only make a romantic Valentine's Day gift, they can also be powerful aphrodisiacs.

Chocolate has been regarded as an aphrodisiac since the days of the Aztecs, who called it "god food." The last Aztec emperor, Montezuma, was known to drink up to 50 golden goblets of cacao every day to increase his sexual prowess and modern scientists have learned that it might even have worked! Chocolate contains a number of natural compounds that mimic or increase the production of dopamine and serotonin, two hormones that cause feelings of elation and pleasure. When these compounds are combined with the natural stimulants caffeine and theobromine found in chocolate, the resulting rush of energy and pleasure can be sexually stimulating for many people.

Unfortunately, natural aphrodisiacs are not the only compounds found in chocolate. Chocolate production has one of the highest rates of chemical pesticide and fungicide use of any crop, so when you bite into an ordinary piece of chocolate, you're getting harmful chemical residues with your aphrodisiacs. That's not romantic at all!

The solution is to buy organic chocolates, which contain all the natural aphrodisiac qualities of chocolate without the use of chemical pesticides and fungicides to produce them. Organic chocolate is also typically shade-grown, meaning that it's grown sustainably in healthy, natural forests, instead of in monoculture fields where healthy, natural forests used to grow. Shade-grown chocolate preserves biodiversity and provides habitat for endangered rainforest wildlife. When you buy organic chocolate gifts for Valentine's Day, you can be sure that you are protecting both your lover's health and the environment.

Organic chocolate gift boxes make great Valentine's Day gifts because organic chocolate is good for your health and the environment, but fair trade organic chocolates is even better because it's also slavery free!

A significant percentage of the world's chocolate is grown in West Africa, where child trafficking is a serious problem and young children are often taken from their families and forced to work long, dangerous hours in cocoa plantations for little or no pay. Even children lucky enough to remain with their families often suffer. Of the estimated 284,000 children working on cocoa farms in West Africa, 64% are under the age of 14 and 66% do not attend school. These families remain trapped in a cycle of poverty in part because of widely fluctuating cocoa prices, which often fall well below production costs. This leads to crippling debt and forces farmers to rely on unpaid family or slave labor, reduce inputs, and take other cost-cutting measures which ultimately lead to lower production and even deeper debt.

Buying fair trade chocolate is one way to break this cycle of debt and poverty for chocolate producers. Fair trade chocolates, which are marked "Fair Trade Certified," guarantee a minimum price that is set above production costs, ensuring a stable and sufficient income for farmers. Fair trade standards also prohibit abusive child labor and forced labor, and encourage environmental sustainability. Many fair trade chocolate producers are also certified organic, so the best organic chocolate gifts for Valentine's Day organic chocolate gifts for Valentine's Day are fair trade organic chocolates that are good for your lover, gentle on the Earth, and beneficial for the people who produced them.

http://goodchocolatekarma.com

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