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Transcript

Why Olive Oil Is So Expensive? · Be Amazed

0:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Boy, when did food get so expensive?
0:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Last time I went for a grocery run, I thought I was going to have to sell my kidney.
0:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Whilst the cost of food is shut up as of late some food items like olive oil and saffron have always had soaring price points.
0:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Why are astounding?
0:22
[SPEAKER_00]: So whether you're a gallevant in gastronomist or a microwave maestro, prepare yourself to be blown away by the unbelievable reasons why some supermarket mainstays come so darn much.
0:49
[SPEAKER_00]: I bet most of our moms have the same things in their cupboards, some all of baking dish that seemed better days, a kitchen mixer from the 1800s, and a bottle of olive oil.
1:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Now I don't know for sure what bygone era the mixer or the dish came from, but I can tell you where olive oil comes from.
1:09
[SPEAKER_00]: The grocery store.
1:11
[SPEAKER_00]: As for how I got to the grocery store though, that's a little trickier.
1:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And isn't even worth the money when I could buy a gallon of sunflower vegetable oil for a fraction of the price?
1:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, for a lot of people, it is.
1:28
[SPEAKER_00]: After all, the global olive oil market was put at an astronomical 12.3 billion dollars in 2022 alone.
1:37
[SPEAKER_00]: and it's predicted to keep growing.
1:40
[SPEAKER_00]: But why is something seemingly so simple such a lucrative goldmine?
1:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Divide out, let's start things up with the basics.
1:49
[SPEAKER_00]: What actually is olive oil?
1:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it's the fan extracted from, you guessed it, well, it is.
1:58
[SPEAKER_00]: That only is it delicious to eat, but it can keep you looking pretty and has a button of health benefits too.
2:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Awesome.
2:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, and all of us are creating equally, there are more factors that affect the quality of a finished bottle of olive oil than you could shake a big leavey branch at.
2:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Altitude, harvest times, and the methods of harvesting all have a huge impact on what goes into the bottle on your supermarket shelves.
2:27
[SPEAKER_00]: But the most important thing is the cultivar, that's the type of all of itself, and the way farmers have bred them over centuries to produce the best oil.
2:39
[SPEAKER_00]: So if the best olives make the best olive oil, where can I get the best olives?
2:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Luckily, olive trees are quite hardy and will bear fruit in a whole load of different climates.
2:52
[SPEAKER_00]: But just like me, they prefer a little Mediterranean sunshine.
2:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Spain, Italy, and Morocco are the largest producers with Spain growing a whopping five times as many olives as their second biggest competition.
3:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Alright, I got it.
3:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Get the best olives, give them
3:15
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm in the money, okay, easy tiger, you might know the what, but you don't know the hells and wins.
3:25
[SPEAKER_00]: It takes between three to five years for a new wallet for you to actually grow any olives.
3:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep, it's a long game, and when fruit eventually does grow, farmers need to bring in the harvest at the right time to make the most of their yield.
3:42
[SPEAKER_00]: This can differ depending on location, but typically throughout September and October, the olives accumulate a large amount of oil and get all juicy and fat.
3:52
[SPEAKER_00]: As the weather cools and the days get shorter throughout November, the oil accrualment slows down.
3:58
[SPEAKER_00]: By now, the olives are so ripe that they begin falling off the tree.
4:03
[SPEAKER_00]: But if they hit the ground the oil would then then start to break down and can be ruined.
4:08
[SPEAKER_00]: So workers have to move fast and pick that precious fruit, but for it falls to avoid wasting what they've painstakingly waited for.
4:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Roughly it takes about 50 pounds of these super fat olives to make a gallon of oil.
4:22
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a colossal 36,000 olives.
4:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Yikes.
4:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And each tree will only produce between 33 to 44 pounds of olives in a year, so in order to make any money farmers need more than a couple of trees to actually produce anything to sell.
4:40
[SPEAKER_00]: But, the more trees you have, the more land you need to grow the trees.
4:45
[SPEAKER_00]: That also means more workers are needed to help pick those olives.
4:54
[SPEAKER_00]: even with the best dollar figures in the world, it might be worth considering coming in the big guns to help you out.
5:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Nowadays, nearly all of harvesting is done in one of two ways, either by machine or by hand.
5:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Any chance it's pros and cons.
5:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Mechanical harvesting has grown increasingly popular as it's a much quicker way of bringing in a massive yield.
5:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Large machines grip onto the chunks of olive trees and shake them really hard to release the fruits.
5:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Then they either fall into a sort of net or a special device sucks them up.
5:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I had sure loved to stick some big robot arms on that.
5:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Lay down beneath one of them, and let it pour all that salty goodness straight into my mouth.
5:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Hmm...
5:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Using these hooking machines, just one farmer can bring in a ridiculous 141 tons of olives every day.
5:51
[SPEAKER_00]: That's about the same weight as a blue whale.
5:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Now that's a whole lot of oil.
5:57
[SPEAKER_00]: However, there's a drawback.
6:00
[SPEAKER_00]: The rope housing at the hands of these machines isn't exactly easy on the trees and can damage them.
6:06
[SPEAKER_00]: While a sindustrial farming machines can easily cost upwards of an eye-watering 100,000 dollars.
6:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, mama!
6:14
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a mammoth cost a burden before you even got any olive oil to sell.
6:19
[SPEAKER_00]: As such, many olive oil purists and small scale farmers prefer to keep things a little bit old school.
6:26
[SPEAKER_00]: How you ask, why you and your buddies wouldn't net beneath the tree then stand around and whack it with a big stick, of course?
6:33
[SPEAKER_00]: I know, I know.
6:35
[SPEAKER_00]: If a machine giving it a little shake is gonna damage it, surely beating it about can't be good either.
6:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you're not dishing out the beat down of the century on this leafy pinata, and only gets hit hard enough to dislodge the fruit.
6:48
[SPEAKER_00]: However, whilst it's later on the trees, it's also later on yield.
6:53
[SPEAKER_00]: The number of olives produced by manual labor is much, much lower, at around £460 a day, which isn't even a quarter of a ton.
7:03
[SPEAKER_00]: He hikes.
7:04
[SPEAKER_00]: That's over 560 times the last olives.
7:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure, you've saved four can outloads of money for a big machine to do the work, but now you're stuck with the wage bill for the huge legion of treewack as you hired instead.
7:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Phew, that's all the olives brought in.
7:21
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm exhausted.
7:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Wait, where do you think you're going?
7:25
[SPEAKER_00]: We're not even close to being done.
7:28
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a first, make sure to follow my podcast to keep up to date with all my amazing episodes.
7:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Now come on, breaks over, back to it.
7:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Where were we?
7:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, once on the fruit is grown in, it gets way to establish the quantity, then wash to clear off any unwanted dirt and debris.
7:46
[SPEAKER_00]: After that, it's straight into a mill to be crushed.
7:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Crushing the fruit breaks down the plant tissues and releases some of the oils which turns the olives into a kupi you margin as paste.
8:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Mmm, delicious!
8:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Spain's largest producer of olive oil crushes up to 2,200 tons of olives every single day.
8:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And the whole harvest needs to be processed within 24 hours of bringing in the fruit to avoid fermentation or oxidation ruining the final flavor.
8:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Hold on, before you go chucking all your olives into that old dodgy mix of your mom has, I'm gonna need you to chill out.
8:27
[SPEAKER_00]: No, literally.
8:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Temperature control is of utmost importance in producing the best quality olive oil.
8:35
[SPEAKER_00]: If temperatures exceed 122 degrees Fahrenheit, the oil will begin losing all the nutritional benefits.
8:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, 122 degrees sounds like a lot, I'd melt if I even got close to that, and traditional mills like we just all don't really have this problem.
8:51
[SPEAKER_00]: But inside the largest most modern industrial machines, things get pretty toasty.
8:57
[SPEAKER_00]: As a result, these newer olive handling machines have to be specially configured to keep things nice and cool.
9:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Finally, we can actually begin extracting olive oil.
9:11
[SPEAKER_00]: but we get used to make, baby.
9:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is where it gets the juicy.
9:18
[SPEAKER_00]: In the past, the most popular method for extracting the oil was arranging it in layers.
9:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Each of these layers is filled with olive goop and put under a lot of pressure to squeeze out the oil.
9:30
[SPEAKER_00]: However, nowadays technology has afforded us a more high-tech solution to extraction, cut centrifugation.
9:38
[SPEAKER_00]: These clever machines, called centrifuges, can separate particles in a liquid according to density.
9:45
[SPEAKER_00]: They spin the liquid super fast, which causes particles of higher density.
9:51
[SPEAKER_00]: That's our oil, to separate from the water and debris.
9:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Centrifugation has become more favored as it makes better oils at less cost.
10:01
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a win-win situation.
10:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Out of all the 1,700 olive oil producers in Spain only 0.5% still use the old-school present system.
10:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Sheesh fellas, get with the times.
10:16
[SPEAKER_00]: At last we've got our oil.
10:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Now all that's left to do before packing it up and shipping it off is the quality control.
10:24
[SPEAKER_00]: This sounds boring, but it's really important in determining how much the oil is actually worth.
10:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Have you ever wondered what the difference between olive oil and extra virgin olive oil is?
10:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Well it's nothing to do with what they get up to after seeing your prom.
10:39
[SPEAKER_00]: It's your mind out of the darn gutter.
10:42
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a marker of certain flavor profiles and taste characteristics in the oil.
10:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Extra virgin is the tipy top shelf best you can get, but in order for oil to be extra virgin it has to have less than 1% acidity.
10:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Low acidity levels indicate that fats in the oil haven't broken down into fatty,
11:06
[SPEAKER_00]: It also retains many more antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals.
11:11
[SPEAKER_00]: This is all science and mumbo jumbo.
11:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Basically, extra virgin oil not only tastes better, but it's better for you too.
11:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Virgin olive oil is the next step down.
11:21
[SPEAKER_00]: It's made the same way as the extra virgin olive oil, except the acidity can be up to 2%.
11:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, this doesn't sound like a lot, but when you think that it's over twice as much as the top shelf stuff,
11:36
[SPEAKER_00]: As for you playing Jane on the Boyle line, steer clear of it if I were you, it might only be a quarter of the price but you'd be lucky if even a quarter of it is actually the good stuff.
11:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't believe me, go check the label.
11:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Often these cheaper elevoyles are packed out with?
11:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, cheaper oils.
11:56
[SPEAKER_00]: But what actually under these cheaper oils and what makes them cheap?
12:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's take vegetable oil.
12:02
[SPEAKER_00]: The majority of cheap vegetable oils you see on the shelves are made from oil palm fruit.
12:07
[SPEAKER_00]: These plants naturally grow in tropical rainforests and are evergreen and perennial, meaning they produce fruit throughout the whole year.
12:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Whilst an olive produces 10 to 20% of its weight and extra virgin olive oil, palm fruit is around 56% oil.
12:25
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, one hectare of land could produce 0.3 tons of olive oil, but a staggering 3.2 tons of olive oil.
12:34
[SPEAKER_00]: That's more than 10 times the amount.
12:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Because of this, bio-divers' natural rainforest are being leveled to make way for more production efficient, but far less ecologically viable oil palm plantations.
12:50
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's another story entirely.
12:52
[SPEAKER_00]: As you can see, my volume alone olive oil isn't exactly the most efficient product in the world, but that doesn't mean it's not worth the effort.
13:01
[SPEAKER_00]: The most expensive olive oil you can buy is Lambda Ultra Premium Extra Virgin Olive Oil.
13:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Just 500 milliliters, which is a little over 2 cups, is going to set you back a shocking 12,800 dollars.
13:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my poor heart, each bottle even comes in its own bespoke hand-crafted box with two white gold plagues, one of which is adorned with the name of the buyer.
13:26
[SPEAKER_00]: It supposedly well regarded for pungent fruiting flavors, and I wouldn't know.
13:32
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not a lunatic or bear to spend the prings of a car on a bottle of oil juice.
13:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Have you tried this outrageously expensive oil?
13:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me know in the comments if it's got bang for your buck.
13:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Phew, all in a day's work, I guess.
13:48
[SPEAKER_00]: So in quick summary, olive oil is so expensive because making it is so darn complicated.
13:54
[SPEAKER_00]: You need to buy the land, plant the trees, wait for them to bear fruit, wait again for the right time to harvest them, then rush through all the other steps to produce the olive oil before the fruit goes bad.
14:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, even thinking about it all makes me tired.
14:09
[SPEAKER_00]: But olive oil isn't the most complicated food to produce, oh no!
14:13
[SPEAKER_00]: You've done enough hard work for today, though, so grab a snack and enjoy a well-art rest.
14:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Be prepared, though!
14:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of these upcoming foodstuffs make olive farming look like a walk in the park.
14:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Olive, schmallev!
14:26
[SPEAKER_00]: How about something for those of us a little more adventurous in the kitchen?
14:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Ever heard of saffron, it's a red spice used in European South Asian and Middle Eastern foods where it's distinctive, sweet and floral flavors.
14:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Not only is it delicious but historically, it's been used in ancient beauty treatments clothing dyes and even as a traditional medicine.
14:49
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, Safron has always been highly coveted, and at times it's pound-for-pound price has rocketed over three times that of gold.
14:58
[SPEAKER_00]: It's still extortionately high today, with the very best Safron, fetching a mind-blowing $5,000 per pound.
15:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Yikes!
15:07
[SPEAKER_00]: But why?
15:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, harvesting this steep seasoning isn't incredibly intense of process.
15:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Severan is picked from the Crocus Satiba's flower, and is actually the stigma or pollen receptor of the flower.
15:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Each flower will only ever produce three stigmas, so once they're gone, they're gone.
15:29
[SPEAKER_00]: As if that wasn't enough, each strand is so exceptionally fragile that any machine will damage them.
15:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Sapphrav farmers have to painstakingly pluck the flowers by hand, then take the stigmas from them.
15:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And all that picking has to be done, before sunrise, because the strands are so delicate that simply being exposed to the sun is enough to damage them.
15:54
[SPEAKER_00]: SHEEEACH!
15:55
[SPEAKER_00]: What's more, one full-time farmer harvesting saffron all day rarely collects more than the weight of a single jelly bean's worth.
16:04
[UNKNOWN]: Hahahaha!
16:05
[SPEAKER_00]: and then all the little strands must be dried out.
16:09
[SPEAKER_00]: This brass has various from country to country but can take up to 10 days.
16:14
[SPEAKER_00]: That sounds like backbreaking work, and for the two to three weeks a year that these flowers bloom, it is.
16:22
[SPEAKER_00]: That's right, the entire years harvest happens across mere days.
16:27
[SPEAKER_00]: The factoring in the labor cause and the astounding complexities of producing this spice it's no surprise that Safron is the most expensive spice in the world by a colossal margin.
16:40
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a good job you only need the thinnest pinch to flavor your food, otherwise all these buriani's would have me remoraging my house.
16:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Now home cook a fishiananos before you get your best body in a bunch, I know what you're thinking.
16:56
[SPEAKER_00]: I've got saffron in my cupboard and I'll wait a few dollars for it.
17:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure, but how yes, certain what you've got is the real deal.
17:04
[SPEAKER_00]: You see, when there's not a lot of product to go around and prices keep going up, it opens up the market to cheap counterfits.
17:13
[SPEAKER_00]: In a 2019 raid at a factory in Alicante, Spain authorities seized an eye-watering $900,000 worth of bootlegs saffron ready to be shipped throughout Europe.
17:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Whilst many products that line our supermarket shelves might be labeled as saffron, they could easily be corned silk dyeed to look like saffron or in the case of the warehouse in Alicante, real saffron cut with other substances like cheap plant fibers.
17:40
[SPEAKER_00]: So, how can you make sure you're getting the authentic experience?
17:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, price is a good starting point.
17:47
[SPEAKER_00]: If a deal seems too good to be true, then it probably is.
17:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't get scam trying to cut costs.
17:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Secondly, choose a reputable seller.
17:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Their horn produces 90% of the world's saffron.
18:00
[SPEAKER_00]: If you were asking me then, it's not a bad place to start looking.
18:04
[SPEAKER_00]: But Iranian saffron is arguably not the best.
18:07
[SPEAKER_00]: That prize goes to Kashmiri saffron, which is made from longer stigmas.
18:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, better produce means a much bigger price tag, so if you want to go hell for broke on a big night in, be my guest, I'm getting door-tash.
18:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Normally, I'm not much of a silver medal guy, but the second most expensive spice could be even more shocking than the first.
18:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Several might have been new to you, but you've definitely tried this next flavor.
18:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Whether that's in your morning coffee, your favorite sugary snacks are eating an entire double-vice cream crying over your rigs.
18:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep, no world's second most expensive spice is the Nella.
18:49
[SPEAKER_00]: That's right, and it's purest pod form, the so-called boring flavor sells for $600 burp out.
19:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Wait, I could roll up to Trader Joe's and buy a pint of that nilla goodness for a couple of books.
19:08
[SPEAKER_00]: By that logic, there's hardly any nilla in there.
19:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, there's actually none.
19:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, there, before you go charging and waving your seat around as confirmed, we'll let me explain.
19:21
[SPEAKER_00]: The vanilla flavor you get in your lattes and buttons is actually an artificial compound called synthetic vanilla.
19:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Picture the vanilla your mom says you have it home.
19:32
[SPEAKER_00]: chemically it's close to the real vanilla and found in vanilla pods, but in reality it's made from a similar yet different molecule, such as eugenol, which is extracted from aromatic spices like cinnamon cloves and nutmeg.
19:47
[SPEAKER_00]: The eugenol goes through a process known as isomerization, which jiggles about the arrangement of the atoms into something more akin to organic vanilla, called isoeugenol.
19:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Then it gets mixed with an alkaline and undergoes an oxidation process where it's combined with, you guessed it, oxygen.
20:08
[SPEAKER_00]: This completes the big transformation needed for it to flavor all your favorite snacks.
20:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Sheesh, who knew Twinkies were so scientific.
20:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Nowadays, it's far more common for vanilla flavored products to contain this fake vanilla than to have even been in the same room as any actual vanilla.
20:28
[SPEAKER_00]: But why is that?
20:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, the real vanilla comes from a particular type of orchid that originated from Southern America and Mexico.
20:37
[SPEAKER_00]: However, that's not where the majority of the world's vanilla comes from anymore.
20:41
[SPEAKER_00]: In the late 1700s, a large part of the global vanilla trade was moved to Madagascar, but farmers failed to account for one small problem.
20:50
[SPEAKER_00]: The orchids can only be pollinated by the Mexican Malapone of E. And they were all back in Mexico.
20:57
[SPEAKER_00]: And no bees means no beans.
21:00
[SPEAKER_00]: After decades of failing to produce any vanilla ponds, the farmers had to become busy little bees and do the pollinating themselves.
21:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Even the orchids have both male and female reproductive parts.
21:12
[SPEAKER_00]: They've got the facilities, but they need a little extra help.
21:20
[SPEAKER_00]: That's where the farmers come in.
21:22
[SPEAKER_00]: They take a then-pointy little stick and lift the delicate membrane that keeps the male and female-all-pourts separate.
21:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Then they bring the two sections together by pinching their thumb and forefinger.
21:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Boom!
21:35
[SPEAKER_00]: This pollinates the plant and vanilla pod will almost immediately begin to form.
21:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I've made it sound a lot easier than it actually is.
21:44
[SPEAKER_00]: This is finicky, fiddly work, and it's only made harder by the fact that vanilla orchids bloom just one morning every year.
21:52
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you take that date to have an extra hour in bed,
21:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Bad news buddy, your sleepy ass is going to need a new job.
22:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe think about night shifts.
22:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Or maybe he'd be better at processing the pods.
22:06
[SPEAKER_00]: What?
22:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you think you just plucked these beany boys off the flower and ate them?
22:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh-uh.
22:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Nine months after they've been pollinated, the pods are ready to be picked.
22:17
[SPEAKER_00]: But then they have to go through a lengthy curing process.
22:21
[SPEAKER_00]: First, they're blanched in hot water before being placed in large sweat containers between 36 and 48 hours.
22:29
[SPEAKER_00]: This is where the bean begins to change from green to brown.
22:33
[SPEAKER_00]: From then, they alternate between drying in the sun and the day and going back to the sweat box at night and on and off, on and off, for between 5 and 15 days.
22:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And after that, they go for another slower period of drawing indoors and a well-ventilated room-a-tumped special drawing racks.
22:52
[SPEAKER_00]: The whole process from growing and pollinating to finally having beans to export takes about a year.
22:58
[SPEAKER_00]: During that time, every five to seven pounds of green beans shrinks down to just one pound of processed vanilla.
23:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh yeah, sure, hope Dairy Queen keep using that fake nail art, my ice cream bands are going to get seriously expensive.
23:17
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll admit it, I'm a snacker.
23:19
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't go 45 minutes with them, shoving a butterfinger deep into my mouth, oh.
23:24
[SPEAKER_00]: What can I say?
23:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a glut or the net.
23:27
[SPEAKER_00]: But I've never given much thought to hell the chocolate for my favorite candy bars is made.
23:32
[SPEAKER_00]: And to my surprise, Cacao, the plant chocolate comes from, isn't incredibly hard to farm.
23:39
[SPEAKER_00]: But because the Cacao pods all ripen at different times, farmers have to keep an eye on them all year round.
23:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Each bud contains between 20 and 50 beans set and a white puppy fruit.
23:52
[SPEAKER_00]: These pods are hacked down from the tree with machetes split, and all that beauty goodness is scooped out.
23:59
[SPEAKER_00]: But hold your hungry horses.
24:01
[SPEAKER_00]: The chunky veins in their undambed and sweetenformed are incredibly bitter.
24:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Before they can become delicious chocolate, they have to be firm in it for six to 10 days to destroy the seed coat around the outside of the bean and improve the flavor.
24:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Next, the beans are dried for between five and 10 days before being sorted and sold on.
24:23
[SPEAKER_00]: 2.
24:24
[SPEAKER_00]: That sounds exhausting.
24:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it is.
24:28
[SPEAKER_00]: It takes one tree an entire year to produce enough beans to make a little over a pound of cocoa, so farmers need a hell of a lot of trees.
24:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And that means a hell of a lot of work.
24:40
[SPEAKER_00]: You're probably wondering how cocoa is wound up in an episode about expensive foods, though, right?
24:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Candy buyers are just a couple of bucks.
24:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me guess it's not really chocolate.
24:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Never saw that transcoming.
24:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Not quite smarty pants.
24:57
[SPEAKER_00]: It's definitely real chocolate.
24:59
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, in most of the western world, chocolate is pretty inexpensive.
25:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Sadly, that's not the case for the farmers who grow it.
25:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Over a third of the world's cocoa produce comes from the Ivory Coast, but get this.
25:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Many farmers who've spent their entire lives growing and processing the beans have no idea what chocolate even tastes like.
25:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Chocolate candy bars in the Ivory Coast cost about $2.70 which isn't allowed to you or me, but it's about a third of a farmer's daily pay.
25:30
[SPEAKER_00]: In order for me to enjoy cheap chocolate here in the U.S., the farmers right at the end of the supply chain get paid way less for their product.
25:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Now this doesn't mean you should feel bad for enjoying a delicious sweet treat every now and then, just tried by more fair trade markets.
25:47
[SPEAKER_00]: These insure farmers are given a guaranteed minimum price for all their hard work.
25:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Meadow.
25:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And with that, I'm hungry.
25:54
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's the end of the episode.
25:56
[SPEAKER_00]: My poor little hands are ruined from all that labor.
25:59
[SPEAKER_00]: I've never worked a hard day like that in my life.
26:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Which of those heroic harvest was your favorite?
26:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And thanks for listening.