Chocolate, Part I

 

The History of Chocolate from Guatemala to Geneva

 

When I used to travel back and forth across the ocean into hostile places in the world, I thought that if I were ever captured that the enemy could try to tempt me with women, money or power and I would not succumb; however Peanut M&M’s® are a whole other level of appeal.  It seems that the enchanting power of chocolate goes far beyond just what organic chemistry can tell us.

 

The best part of a chocolate chip cookie is—of course—the chocolate which is loved the world over.  I cannot remember how old I was when I realized that Theobroma cacao plants do not grow anywhere near Switzerland, so how did the Swiss Miss® get to be so associated with this imported tropical plant product?  

 

For centuries the Old World knew nothing of cacao bushes and trees, whose broad crowns swayed beneath the protective canopy of taller trees.  Cacao bushes grew in the primeval forest, producing blossom, leaf, and fruit simultaneously.  The eighteenth-century Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnaeus named this evergreen tree of Paradise Theobroma, meaning “food of the gods.”  In legends handed down over thousands of years the native peoples of Central and South America described how the gods alone were worthy of enjoying its fruits (Teubner, 1997).

 

This food is surrounded by intrigue! “The Latin definition [Theobroma cacao] was provided in 1753 by the great Swedish scientist Linnaeus, himself a chocolate-lover.  The binomial system he invented for the classification of all living things replaced unwieldy descriptive Latin sentences” (Bardi & Pietersen, 2006).  While Linnaeus may have been the first to scientifically name the plant, he was not the first to discover it—not even close.  The distinct honor of giving the world the gift of chocolate is believed to be first attributed to the Olmec peoples of modern day Mexico (Bardi & Pietersen, 2006) likely centuries before the Spanish Conquistadors arrived.  Just as Christianity was taking root in Europe, the cacao bean was traded in the markets of Mayan princes as both currency and food (Teubner, 1997). 

 

Since most of Europe was looking towards the East (often the Far East) for spices and exotic delicacies, the wonder of chocolate was something original to the New World in the West.  The 30-40 seeds in the cacao pod will not yield quite as fine of a product until the fruit has been allowed to rot and ferment for about five to ten days.  The beans were then washed in water and rubbed clean before placing them in the sun to roast to fully dry them and, in the absence of sorbic acid, to prevent mold from forming on these rich beans.  This fermentation, cleansing and roasting enhanced the flavor to a milder and tamer version of the raw product.    

 

The next step according to tradition and Archeological evidence seems to point to the grinding of the beans into a powder, and then the consumption of the treat in liquefied drink form.  The elite crust of the New World would often employ slaves to shake the cold water and cacao xocolatl (“xoco” means bitter, and “atl” means water) mixture until it became frothy by using special tools designed for making the drink.  “Since cacao beans are rich in fat [~55%], simply to mix the ground cacao with water would soon have lead to separation, with the cacao gradually settling in a unpleasant sludgy sediment at the bottom of the cup (Bardi & Pietersen, 2006).”

 

From there it was up to the imagination and purchasing power of the connoisseur of how the drink would be flavored.  According to an account by Bernial Diaz del Castillo the Montezuma nobles and warriors were known to drink the xocoatl several times a day from gold flasks.  They were known to spice the drink with native vanilla, wild honey, pita juice or even chilis.  It was the Spanish who took advantage of their international trade and started drinking it hot mixed with sugar (Bardi & Pietersen, 2006).  This was certainly the first revision of modern day hot chocolate (genius!). 

 

From there the history of chocolate recipes takes a religious, political and state secret bend. 

 

The Spaniards, for whom drunkenness was a sin, developed a liking for this new drink.  Since the Church recognized it as a beverage rather than a food, it could be consumed even during periods of fasting. . . . Still the drink continued to be made with water.  The countries in which the cacao bush was indigenous all belonged to the Spanish and Portuguese crown, and so for roughly a century cocoa remained a Spanish drink and a secret (Teubner, 1997).

 

Eventually Italian explorers discovered the beans that the Spanish and Portuguese were not spilling and trade routes developed from Italy north through the Alps (evidently how Swiss Miss® got in on the secret).  Britain would capture Jamaica from the Spanish to start their cacao trade venture (Teubner, 1997).  The delight of chocolate was now in Europe through trade and royal marriages, but would still stay within the hands of the elite largely because the method to produce chocolate had not changed very much and was labor-intensive.  Later, the Brits mechanized the process with the first chocolate factory by Fry and Sons of Bristol; the production was further developed by the French who used hydraulics.  Not to be outdone, the Prince of Lippe opened eight factories in Munich alone (Bardi & Pietersen, 2006).  The Prince of Lippe had served as an officer with the Portuguese military and simply could not abide without chocolate.

 

The industrialization of the production process meant that the supply had to be sufficient and reliable.  Once the secret only of the Spanish and Portuguese crowns, the other colonial powers were applying known agricultural techniques to produce the cacao cheaper and in higher quantity to meet the demand.  Chocolate was now international and it had the power to shape trade and to make fortunes.  All of this power comes with a large responsibility and the three biggest purveyors of this sublime dessert were not without a moral compass. 

 

By curious coincidence the Frys [who supplied the British Navy with chocolate], the Cadburys [who personally supplied chocolate to the Queen] and the prominent Rowntree family near York were all Quakers who maintained a social conscience even as their fortunes accrued.  They built housing and communal facilities such as libraries for their workers, and boycotted cacao from colonial plantations in which conditions of near slavery prevailed.  By the same token, they also avoided industrial malpractice (Bardi & Pietersen, 2006).

 

Aside: Nowadays it is up to the consumer to vote with their wallet on where and how chocolate is produced.  Products like Frontier Brand Organic Hot Cocoa are produced in countries that pay workers fairly and do not resort to child labor or indentured servitude to artificially hold prices down. 

 

The biggest advance in chocolate recipes was by far the development of chemistry.  Usually, we do not think of chemistry as being a part of the kitchen milieu, but recall that something as routine as baking a loaf of bread is indeed a controlled chemistry experiment.  Between the science of chemistry, ingenuity, and necessity, the practice developed to mix the fruit of Theobromma cacao and the staple of the Alps, the liquid of life—milk.  “In 1867 a Swiss chemist by the name of Henri Nestlé discovered a method of making powdered milk by evaporation.  This was fully a pivotal event. . . . The outcome was the world’s first milk chocolate bar (Bardi & Pietersen, 2006).”  Up until now, the density of the chocolate brick was dependent upon the amount of cocoa butter in the product.  The credit for bringing chocolate from a gritty crumbly mass to a silky substance which could be poured (instead of beaten) into a mold and then to candy bar form goes to the Swiss who made the names Lindt, Nestlé and Toblerone household words.    

 

In the next blog (Part 2 of 3), we will discuss how chocolate is made and in Part 3 of 3 we talk about chocolate in America!

 

Wilson

Pro Deo et Patria

 

 

Photo Credits:

Cacao Pods (Cocoa Fruits) by Michael & Christa Richert and can be found at: http://www.rgbstock.com/photo/mDJMTie/cocoa+fruits

Chocolate (Cacao just add milk) by A K Rehse and can be found at: http://www.rgbstock.com/photo/mfmoQNm/cacao-just+add+milk

Hot Chocolate Heart by Kevin Tuck and can be found at: http://www.rgbstock.com/photo/muJqBly/Hot+chocolate+heart

Frontier Organic Hot Cocoa used with permission from Frontier

Chocolate Bar by Sanja Gjenero can be found at: http://www.rgbstock.com/photo/mgylB4G/chocolate

 

Works Cited:

Teubner, C. (1997). The chocolate bible. (p. 6). New York: Penguin Studio.

Bardi. , & Pietersen, (2006). The golden book of chocolate. (p. 13). Florence: McRae Books.

Ibid, p. 18.

Teubner, C. (1997). The chocolate bible. (p. 7). New York: Penguin Studio.

Bardi. , & Pietersen, (2006). The golden book of chocolate. (p. 20-21). Florence: McRae Books.

Ibid, p. 23.

Teubner, C. (1997). The chocolate bible. (p. 10). New York: Penguin Studio.

Ibid, p. 10-11.

Bardi. , & Pietersen, (2006). The golden book of chocolate. (p. 25-26). Florence: McRae Books.

Ibid, p. 27. 

Ibid, p. 29.

Proviso:

Nothing in this blog constitutes medical advice.  You should consult your own physician before making any dietary changes.  Statements in this blog may or may not be congruent with current USDA or FDA guidance.

Bleached flour, is that supposed to be refined?

Bleached or Unbleached flour—do I get the same results?

 

To better understand bleached flour we would do best to get to know the gradients of flour better.  Sifting flour once makes it “clear”; sifting twice elevates it to “patent” (or “second clear”).  People want the “clearest” flour they can find.   According to Joel Salatin, all grain is actually very expensive and pretty much always has been through history before the age of cheap energy.  If something becomes hard to get, it generally becomes more valuable; and what is considered more valuable is also associated with the appearance of wealth. The fact that societies even had grain at all was a sign of relative peace (no one was raiding or burning crops) and the presence of grain was a pretty good metric for prosperity (people had time and energy to plant instead of hunting and gathering). 

 

The more flour is sifted the more “debris” is removed.  What is left is endosperm or the pure starch and small amounts of protein (think fuel) for the wheat kernel to germinate from seed to plant.  This process of discarding the roughage (the bran and germ portions of the wheat kernel) is an aberrant and abhorrent one, but has been around for centuries. 

 

Early millers in Europe found that by passing flour though sieves of various sizes, the grain could be separated from its refuse, which made white flours the choice of priviledged classes (hence the term “refined”) and whole-grain flours the ingredient of peasants. . . . Interestingly, when white flour production was threatened during the Second World War, the British government outlawed white bread, replacing it with a rough whole-grain bread, nicknamed “the National Loaf.”  Surprisingly, during a time of deprivation, the mean nutrition level improved, just the opposite of what would have been expected.  (Joachim & Schloss, 2008)

 

Flour without the “debris” was considered more valuable even though it is not as healthy or filling.  But to a baker, the quality of the flour is imperitive because flour “is called the ‘100 percent ingredient,’ against which all other ingredients stand in ratio” (Reinhart & Manville, 2002).  The biggest factor in determining final baked product quality is the amount of protein in the flour.  Although not exclusively gluten, for the sake of discussion we can say the “gluten content” of the flour is king. 

                   Cake Flour: 6-7% Gluten

                   Pastry Flour: 7.5-9.5% Gluten

                   All-Purpose Flour: 9.5-11.5% Gluten  *depends where it is grown and milled

                   Bread Flour: 11.5-13.5% Gluten

                   High-Gluten Flour: 13.5 to (rare but possible) 16% Gluten

                   Above chart attributed to (Reinhart & Manville, 2002)

 

Sometimes in Europe you see flour labeled as “#55” or “#65” which refers to the quality of the sifted final product which—again– will determine the outcome of the result of the baked goods.  Most of us understand that the more heavier parts of the wheat kernel can weigh the flour down, making a light, fluffy texture difficult (not impossible, difficult).   But all of that has to do with the granularity of the flour, what can we expect when we buy flour bleached?  And here is another question you may have asked, “If you buy unbleached flour you may notice that it is slightly more expensive, why is that?”  As it turns out, the color of the flour correlates with the thread count of the table cloth. 

 

The whiter the flour the more valuable it was thought to be.  If you have been following this blog, that makes about as much sense as a stripped down car selling for more than a fully loaded one, but I digress . . .   Flour when it comes out of the grain mill is naturally yellowish as it boasts of the carotene pigments in the wheat berry that also correlate to the proportion of the gluten.  Below you can see darker, hard red wheat on the left and hard white wheat on the right. 

             

     

Millers and bakers knew that this process happened naturally. 

If given half a chance, though, flour bleaches itself.  That is, as it ages in contact with air, the pigments are oxidized and transformed into colorless compounds.  But aging requires storage time, and time is money.  That’s why “unbleached” —meaning naturally self-bleached during storage—flour costs more (Wolke & Parrish, 2005).

 

Historically, whole wheat flour was fermented.  Time and bacteria did the work naturally and healthfully.  But now the need was to have refined flour stripped, whitened and –by golly– this needed to be done expeditiously.  After millennia of slow, healthy, whole food, the process needed some chemical accelerants.  In 1774 a Swedish chemist named Carl Wilhelm Scheele isolated an element that was officially named Chlorine in 1810 by a British chemist named Sir Humphry Davy (Ettlinger, 2007).  This new element was later pressed into service as an artificial aging agent. 

 

Is there a measurable performance difference between bleached and unbleached flour? 

Evidently there is:

The bleaching of flour isn’t mere cosmetics.  Flour that has been matured, either by natural aging or by being treated with oxidizing agents, makes doughs that bakers report as being more elastic during kneading.  That’s because oxidation not only removes the yellow color of flour but removes certain sulfur-containing chemicals (thiols) that interfere with the formation of gluten (Wolke & Parrish, 2005).

 

The bleaching process is pretty much assumed to have happened to store bought flour unless you see it labeled specifically as “unbleached flour.”  This brings us to national security and the Department of Homeland Security’s interest in cake flour.  No, seriously.  Chlorine gas is very toxic, like banned in the Geneva Convention kind of toxic—so it has to be tightly controlled and transported in highly protected rail cars so that it does not get into the wrong hands.   A separate danger is that flour is also very fine organic particulate that can be explosive under the right conditions and concentrations. 

 Chaya recently wrote an article about the effects of chlorine in water.  If you think chlorine is benign enough to put in grandma’s cookies, think again.

And so there you have it, bleached flour was to accelerate the process that delivers us the finest of flours, cake flour.  If you are playing along with the home game here, cake flour is stripped and artificially aged (bleached flour) so that it is the least nutritious least-likely-to-be-confused-with-healthy-bread, refined flour that you can buy.    I think that I will stick with grinding my own flour in our grain mill. 

 

Wilson

Pro Deo et Patria

 

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Chaya’s Note:  Although bakers who care more about aesthetics than health like to age their flours (or cheat and bleach them), aging your flour is a terrible idea!  The extremely digestible nutrition of whole wheat is mostly found in oils.  This even includes the iron, which oxidize with time and air exposure.  Please use your home milled flour immediately—or put the rest in the freezer.   If you want to use the oxidation process to lighten your flour, soak it in warm water before mixing in the other ingredients.  This fermenting process will give you moister, lighter bread every time in a healthy way!

If you think you need sifted, all-purpose, bleached flour to get delicious and light results, think again.  It takes practice, but you’ll get amazing artisan bread that will nourish your family by using the whole wheat! The picture below is of homemade Challah bread (traditional Jewish bread for Sabbath) using home-milled flour.

 

 

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Proviso:

Nothing in this blog constitutes medical advice.  You should consult your own physician before making any dietary changes.  Statements in this blog may or may not be congruent with current USDA or FDA guidance.

 

Photo Credits:

 Child’s Rations Book:  The National Archives UK

All other photos are property of Pantry Paratus.

Works Cited:

Joachim, D., & Schloss, A. (2008). The science of good food. (p. 241). Toronto: Robert Rose.

Reinhart, P., & Manville, R. (2002). The bread baker\’s apprentice, mastering the art of extraordinary bread. (p. 29). Ten Speed Pr.

Ibid

Wolke, R. L., & Parrish, M. (2005). What einstein told his cook 2, the sequel : Further adventures in kitchen science. (1st ed. ed., p. 217). New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company.

Ettlinger, S. (2007). Twinkie, deconstructed, my journey to discover how the ingredients found in processed foods are grown, mined (yes, mined), and manipulated into what a. (First printing,March 2007 ed., Vol. 1, p. 22). London: Hudson st Pr.

Wolke, R. L., & Parrish, M. (2005). What einstein told his cook 2, the sequel : Further adventures in kitchen science. (1st ed. ed., p. 217). New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company.

 

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UPDATE:  While doing some research on FDA regulations regarding “Whole Wheat”, I came across this regulation about the bleach content found in wheat:

Unless such addition conceals damage or inferiority or makes the whole wheat flour             appear to be better or of greater value than it is, the optional bleaching ingredient azodicarbonamide (complying with the requirements of 172.806 of this chapter, including the quantitative limit of not more than 45 parts per million) or chlorine dioxide, or chlorine, or a mixture of nitrosyl chloride and chlorine, may be added in a quantity not more than sufficient for bleaching and artificial aging effects.  

You can find this on fda.gov  with this identifying information:

 

[Code of Federal Regulations]

[Title 21, Volume 2]

[Revised as of April 1, 2012]

[CITE: 21CFR137.200]

 

 

Fish Stock

 

Wilson explains this fish stock recipe

 

 

There may be a line to my thriftiness, like trying to recycle my own paper—I think that I will just leave that to the pros.  However, as it turns out a lot of our ancestors really got along great with a lot less food waste (and nearly zero processed food) by using all of the animal or plant they were eating.  “So, how do you make fish stock?”  If you were to have asked me that ten years ago, I surely would have quipped with, “Why would you ever want to make fish stock?”

 

While there are detractors from the science of what Round Up® (glyphosphate) will or will not kill (albeit ever so slowly perhaps), one thing it is pressed into service to combat with great regularity are dandelions.  These bright yellow reminders that nature is still pretty wild were actually harvested for food and wine production by my Italian ancestors. 

 

So when I learned that fish stock was really good for you and that it was made from the parts of the fish being thrown away after the filets were cut, I had to try it at least once.  With all of the places that I could have turned to for a recipe for fish stock, I settled on two particular tried and trusted people.  One was our buddy Ann Marie from CheeseSlave.com the other was a well worn copy of Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon Morell.    

 

In Europe . . . the fish monger skins and filets the fish for you, giving you the filets of your evening meal and the bones for making the stock and final sauce.  Unfortunately, in America sole arrives at the fish market preboned.  But snapper, rock fish and other non-oily fish work equally well; and a good fish merchant will save the carcasses for you if you ask him. . . . Be sure to take the heads as well as the body—these are especially rich in iodine and fat-solulble vitamins” (Fallon & Enig, 1999)

 

Now I knew that Sally wrote extensively about soup stocks and fish stocks in particular, but I had not actually searched Ann Marie’s CheeseSlave website and I was pleasantly surprised to find this simple recipe.  Below is my attempt at trying to recreate her fish stock recipe:

 

Ingredients

Onion, yellow or white, organic if possible (1)
Whole fresh, non-oily fish with the bones and fish heads and trimmings — cod, sole, halibut, haddock, whiting, halibut, flounder or snapper (2 pounds)
Parsley stems — not the leaves (6-8)
Lemon juice (1 tsp)
Sea salt (1/4 teaspoon)
Dry white wine (1 cup)
Enough filtered water to cover the ingredients by an inch
Optional: 1/4 cup fresh mushroom stems

 

Cut up the onion into rough chunks and put them in the stock pot.  For even more flavor and body in your stock, I would recommend just cutting the onions skins and all.  These onions had some mold under the surface, so I skinned them. 

 

Divide the parsley stems and put them in the stock pot.  I saved my tops for cooking later in the week.

 

Measure the other ingredients and add them to the stock pot.

 

Wash the blood off of the carcass as much as possible, and add that to the stock pot.  I did not use the skins (although I hear that you can do so).

 

Be sure to remove the gills from the fish head, as this may bring a bitter flavor to your final product.  This guy makes me nervous while using the knife, but this is a good demonstration:

 

 

 

Cover everything with water, about an inch should do nicely.

 

Bring to a boil.  You will notice some scum on the surface—skim this off as much as you can (it need not be perfect).

 

Reduce to a simmer for 4-24 hours depending on what you want it to look like.

 

Strain the broth and the final product should look like this:

 

Divide it up into small containers to freeze it or Ann Marie has a great tip at using a (specially purposed) ice cube tray to have smaller portions at the ready for soups and such. 

 

I know fish stock seems really gross to the American palate, but actually it is surprisingly tastey when you use it to make rice or soup.  Leave a comment, let me know what you think!

 

Wilson

Pro Deo et Patria 

 

 

Proviso:

Nothing in this blog constitutes medical advice.  You should consult your own physician before making any dietary changes.  Statements in this blog may or may not be congruent with current USDA or FDA guidance.

 

Works Cited:

Fallon, S., & Enig, M. G. (1999). Nourishing traditions, the cookbook that challenges politically correct nutrition and the diet dictocrats. (p. 119). New Trends Publishing.

Photo Credits:

All photos by Pantry Paratus

 

Summer Food, Part I: Artichokes

Some background and a simple Artichoke Recipe

 

 “What is an artichoke?,” you ask.   It is a good side dish for having friends over to eat with you and your family on the back porch probably because it can be messy and you would have to eat it with people you like to begin with.  Try this simple artichoke recipe and let us know what you think.

It is an unlikely vegetable when you look at it because it does not look like something you think that you may want to even eat if you saw one in nature.  I have to think that the first person to eat a lobster was pretty brave.

“The vegetable we call the artichoke is actually the unopened flower bud of a plant that is an improved cardoon . . .  Charles Perry says the word ‘artichoke’ is derived from the Arabic al’qarshuf, which translates as ‘little cardoon’” (Parsons, 2007)

 

Here is a cool video of a cardoon, blossoming in time lapse photography:

 

 

 

The part of the artichoke (a sort of thistle) we eat looks like a leaf, but in Botanist speak it is called a “Bract.”  When you shop for them in the store, try this tip:  when an artichoke is really yummy and at the peak of ripeness the leaves should squeak when you rub them together! 

 

Here is the artichoke recipe our family uses to prepare them.

 

When you buy it in the store, it will look like this:

 

Trim the top of the artichoke flat and put the leftovers in your compost bin. 

Why compost?  Because some other farmer (or you if you grow these) has exported the very best of his/her farm to you and you can redirect the waste and turn it into rich topsoil.

 

 

 

 

Trim off the bottom about ½” or so from the base.

 

 

In a pot that is big enough to hold all of your artichokes (you may have to do more than one batch) bring about 2” of water to a boil (add salt if you want to).

 

 

Nest the artichoke(s) in the pot, douse with ~ 1 Tablespoon of olive oil, salt and pepper to taste.

 

 

 

 

Cover with a tight lid and bring to a boil, then lower the heat to simmer.

 

 

Cooking time will vary widely on the ripeness of the artichoke.  Check them after 20 minutes, but 30 minutes is not unrealistic.  The color of the artichoke will expectedly change as the cooking progresses—the more interesting part is why that happens:

 

Most of the qualities and limitations of an artichoke come from the abundance of phenolic compounds that react with oxygen, causing artichokes to turn brown as soon as they are cut.  Tannic phenols cause an immediate unpleasant astringent reaction when raw artichoke comes in contact with our salivary proteins. Although cooking fixes both problems, it also causes the flesh to change from vibrant green to drab olive.  Some of the phenolic compounds have antioxidant effects and one of them, Cynarin, has the unique ability to make food eaten after a bit of artichoke taste sweet.  Cynarin inhibits the sweet receptors in taste buds, so when it is replaced by the next bite of food, the receptors reactivate and the new food taste sweet (Joachim & Schloss, 2008).

 

 

The artichoke is done when the leaves (bracts) pull off easily and fleshy parts are tender.

 

 

Pull it out, set it in a serving dish.

 

 

Okay, so cooking an artichoke is not any harder than boiling noodles, so let us get on to the good part—eating it.  Pull off one of the leaves (bracts) and put your thumb on the top (where you cut it in step one) of what would be the inner fleshy part.

 

 

Put the whole thing in your mouth and bite down just before the part where your thumb is scraping the good stuff off with your bottom teeth. It should look like this when you are done.

 

 

Repeat . . .

 

 

Repeat . . .

 

 

Repeat . . .

 

 

Now you will be getting down to some more rigid parts with purple tips. The going here is slower and the yield certainly less.  Keep going though, the best part is yet to come.

 

 

 

When you get to something like this part, grab a spoon and carve away anything that looks like soft fibers—you should end up with a bowl shaped artichoke heart.

 

 

 

Divide it up and enjoy the artichoke heart!

 

 

I hope that you start a new summer tradition, with this artichoke recipe.  It is one of my favorite summer time treats—leave a comment, let us know how you liked it.  If you are looking for a complete meal to try with this artichoke recipe, try this menu from our buddy Ann Marie at Cheeseslave.com.

 

Wilson

Pro Deo et Patria

 

Photos Credits:

All photos by Pantry Paratus

 

Works Cited:

Parsons, R. (2007). How to pick a peach: The search for flavor from farm to table. (p. 35) New York: Houghton Mifflin.

Joachim, D., & Schloss, A. (2008). The science of good food. (p. 30). Toronto: Robert Rose.

I cannot think of anywhere in the world where I have been and not seen a Coca-Cola® beverage.  Actually, while on a convoy in Iraq I remember being stopped along the roadside in the middle of nowhere.  It had to be 120˚F plus.  Out of thin air comes this guy in a stark white outfit carrying a foam cooler, and he was selling ice cold cans of Coca-Cola®.  He was not a mirage, but he was actually there!  After I paid my $1 to him, I had a little piece of home there that day in my hand. 

 

Okay, I upgraded this in my mental file from “interesting” to “fascinating” once I started to dig into some of the reporting on this.  Apparently Coca-Cola® has its detractors.  I very seldom drink the beverage after making the switch away from sugary drinks a long time ago; however it rates up there with Tri-five Chevies, Disney® and baseball as universally recognized American icons.  The story of how one Atlanta based pharmacist introduced a product that the world could not live without is interesting.  Even more interesting is how it gets to all points beyond Georgia.

 

Ever since, I’ve been fascinated by the miracle of Coca-Cola in Tanzania. Thousands of smart people spend millions of dollars trying to get life-saving medications to the people who need them. And too often, we fail. But Coke is everywhere in this country, from the fanciest hotels in Dar es Salaam to little shops in the Serengeti. They’re doing something right (Gordon, 2009).

 

 

Coca-Cola® in Africa, really?  Yes!  Actually it is rather at home there since the first bottling plant arrived there in 1928 in Johannesburg, South Africa.  Today Coca-Cola® is Africa’s largest employer.  Historically, Cola beans come from Western Africa. 

Cola “nuts,” not real nuts but the interior part of the fleshy seeds of plants of the genus Cola  . . . are chewed fresh, or dried and ground to a powder for making into a drink.  They have similar effect to tea or coffee, since they contain the same alkaloid, caffeine. . . .  Although the formulae of Coca-Cola and similar drinks are supposed to be secret, it seems safe to assume that they contain cola (Davison, 2002). 

 

 

So the dilemma of how a packaged liquid can make it to the most remote corners of the globe, but other medical products cannot has come up more than once.  As a matter of fact, some very big philanthropists like Melinda French Gates of The Gates Foundation have even taken notice of this.  You can watch her speak about NGO’s working to understand and emulate Coca-Cola’s® strategy for success in this video:

 

 

 

So if Coca-Cola® can reach deep into Africa, what would it take to get medical supplies there as well?  The question becomes more difficult when you consider the logistics involved and the type of medical supply.  Coca-Cola® has done their homework.  They have very tight supply chains and feedback loops to get relevant market data back to them and adjust distribution accordingly.  Health clinics in the bush do not have that type of information flow.  As you can see from the chart below, you are 8 times more likely to find a mobile phone card in Tanzania than Amoxicillin. 

 

(Hayford, Privor-Dumm & Levine, 2011)

 

Furthermore, the nature of the products are different.  Coca-Cola® has transported condoms and literature to remote villages with shipments of product. 

Plans call for Coke over the next two to three months to lend a marketing executive from one of its African offices to UNAIDS for at least a year. At the same time, UNAIDS will identify other needs with which Coke and its bottlers can help, such as delivering condoms, or printing and delivering brochures on prevention and treatment of AIDS. The company and its bottlers will pick up the costs (McKay, 2001).

To date, I could not find where they have actually piggy backed onto beverage shipments the holy-grail of medical supplies —anti-retroviral medications or AIDS medications.  Why not?  Because these medications need to be kept very cold in order to be potent.  Imagine trying to transport an ice cream cone home on a summer day.  Now take that example and put it in a truck through sub-Saharan Africa and the problem becomes extremely difficult to solve.  Ostensibly, this is why the efforts have been focused on prevention (i.e. condoms and literature). 

 

To be clear, you are not seeing an alliance between public health officials and a high fructose corn-syrup based beverage manufacturer because the product is good for people.  Rather, you are seeing the former of these strange bed fellows trying to strategize like the later so that they can correct these preventable epidemics.   This is a stroke of pure pragmatism, but it is working and hopefully they can save lives.  Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that they trail was blazed by a beverage company trying to establish a market for their product and now that it is established, they are reaching back to bring other much more essential items to those in need. 

 

Wilson

Pro Deo et Patria

 

Citations:

Gordon, M. (2009, May 12). Coca-Cola and Public Health. Retrieved from http://news.change.org/stories/coca-cola-and-public-health

 

Davison, A. (2002). The Penguin Companion to Food. (pp. 243-244). Chicago: Penguin Books Ltd.

 

Hayford, K., Privor-Dumm, L., & Levine, O. (2011). Improving access to essential medicines through public-private partnerships. Manuscript submitted for publication, International Vaccine Access Center (IVAC), Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD. Retrieved from http://www.jhsph.edu/ivac/resources/IVAC-Improving-Access-to-Essential-Medicines.pdf

 

McKay, B. (2001, June 20). Coca-cola to tap its marketing muscle to help fight aids. Retrieved from http://www.aegis.org/DisplayContent/DisplayContent.aspx?sectionID=75065

 

 Photo Credits:

Vaccine by ml6mQe2

Cola Beans drying in Africa by mz2MwqU

 

Links for further investigation:

Click to access TCCAF_The_Coca-Cola_Story.pdf

http://blogs.cgdev.org/globalhealth/2010/11/coke-in-africa-please-market-diet.php

http://blogs.cgdev.org/globalhealth/2010/11/coke-in-africa-2-or-why-soft-drink-supply-chains-could-inspire-better-performance-in-global-health.php

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1656386

http://www.jhsph.edu/ivac/resources/IVAC-Improving-Access-to-Essential-Medicines.pdf (this one is good, but has a lot of acronymns) 

http://www.uniteforsight.org/global-health-university/science-of-healthcare-delivery

http://news.change.org/stories/coca-cola-and-public-health

http://www.ted.com/talks/melinda_french_gates_what_nonprofits_can_learn_from_coca_cola.html

http://old.globalhealth.org/news/article/1060

http://europe.cnn.com/BUSINESS/programs/yourbusiness/stories2001/coke.aids/