The Chocolate Curse - Planet Money

Listen to this episode of Planet Money here.

Have you noticed the quality of chocolate declining in the past few years? No? Many chocolate companies are switching to a lesser quality cocoa bean, and are hoping no one notices.

Cocoa beans  are difficult to grow. They only thrive in certain regions of the world, and are very prone to diseases. Ecuador has a reputation for growing some of the finest beans in the world. One Ecuadorian farmer noticed that all of his trees succumbed to Witch's Broom disease, making the cocoa unusable.

Witch's Broom disease

This farmer wanted to make a plant that would not easily get disease, and could be grown in more places. After cross breeding different species for 12 years, he stumbled upon the solution. He created a super cocoa tree. These trees are much shorter than usual, but grow cocoa pods the size of a human head. It grew 10 times the amount of cocoa, known as CCN. This made chocolate companies very interested.

However, CCN did not taste at all like the fine chocolate Ecuador was known for. One farmer described it as a "rusty nails" taste. This caused Ecuador's chocolate rating to be downgraded.

Years later, the flavor of these beans were improved through new processes. It didn't taste as good as the old Ecuadorian chocolate, though. It tasted bland. But this was good enough for chocolate companies, who soon started mixing this in with other chocolate. After taste tests, consumers could not tell the difference in taste, with many believing this to be fine chocolate. Odds are, we all have eaten chocolate with this bean in it.

I don't believe the majority of us have refined enough palettes to tell the difference between this and finer chocolate. When we're craving it, chocolate all tastes the same. I have not noticed a decline in flavor, though it is happening.