Nothing Like Chocolate (Kum-Kum Bhavani, 2012): USA

Reviewed by Sandra Andersson. Viewed at Santa Barbara Film Festival.

Nothing like chocolate directed by Kum-Kum Bhavani is a must see for the chocolate lovers of the world. Most of us doesn’t think about how the chocolate is made or where it comes from when we buy chocolate, mostly we just choose our favorite brand and flavor and don’t think any further than that.

This documentary has its focus on Mott Green and his chocolate factory and company; The Grenada Chocolate Company. Green moved from Oregon to  Grenada and started his chocolate company in 1999 together with his friend Doug Browne, their goal was to make organic chocolate from local products only. Nothing like chocolate takes us on a tour in the factory where we can see and get explained to us that all their machines are old and/ or homemade, we are also introduced to some of the workers in the factory and at the company’s own chocolate store. Green also takes us with him to visit some of the cocoa farmers, where we get are introduced to the farmers life and get to see the cocoas journey from the tree to finished chocolate. Green explains to us that it’s more expensive to buy the local cocoa than to import but that it’s worth it since they know it’s organic and it helps the farmers in Grenada.

We also get to learn about how the chocolate industry is an industry filled with slavery and child labor, especially with the cocoa that comes from the Ivory Coast. We get to see interviews with big chocolate companies that says they are buying their cocoa from the Ivory Coast but knows nothing about the child labor and slavery.

Seeing Nothing like chocolate you might get the impression that it’s mostly a long commercial for The Grenada Chocolate Company, since that is what gets most of the screening time during the documentary. I do wish that Bhavani should have focused a little bit more on the fact that so much of the chocolate industry includes child labor, not only in the Ivory Coast but at many other places as well.

Like I said I think every chocolate lover in the world should see this documentary, we need to know about where to chocolate we eat may come from and how the people in the chocolate process are treated. Before we buy our next chocolate bar we need to think about how it was made and where the cocoa might have come from – was the farmers fairly treated or was there any slavery/ child labor involved?