What would it be like if you never ate another piece of chocolate? Would your life be any less meaningful? Would you still be able to find happiness? Or would you not be able to continue living if you couldn’t stop at the convenience store to pick up your favorite chocolate snack while filling your car with gas? I don’t mean to be overly dramatic, and to be clear, I love chocolate. But these are the questions that came to mind as I watched the videos and went through the contemplative practice. For me the fact that chocolate or any other specialty food is so normalized in our Western culture as to be taken for granted is a curious phenomenon. I often wonder how I would feel if, for whatever reason, the coffee that I depend on to get my day going were suddenly not available. While this makes me cringe to think about, it also makes me wonder how it is that so many commodities like chocolate and coffee that provide trivial benefits at the expense of other people have been normalized to the point that we can literally ignore the deleterious consequences that are necessary for our enjoyment. Is it addiction? Because, as far as I know, addiction changes the perceptions of the user creating the ability to rationalize practically anything. But if it is addiction, what is it that we’re really addicted to? is it the physical cravings for caffeine or sugar? Or is it luxury? Or have we’ve been spoiled by the fact that we can have it whenever we want it? I think that considering solutions to food system problems requires confronting the apparent human propensity for excess in ways that harm the environment and other people. Perhaps this means changing the culture of Western ideologies and perhaps that may be too big of an ask. But if humans don’t collectively admit the addiction and stop the rationalization, well, there may indeed come a day when chocolate is gone.
