Today, the Mexican Government introduced its new chocolate bar, priced at less than $1USD. Made of 50% cocoa, powdered milk, vanilla. No refined sugar, no artificial flavourings.
Comedy aside, I think its to address the extraordinary obesity issues that Mexico has faced in the past 20 years. Mexico is in my top 2 of countries I'm moving to as the US collapses, but they have real issues with refined foods and especially added sugar.
What's your other top 2 country? If I go I think I'm going to switch continents. I would prefer there to be a whole ocean between me and this bullshit.
Brazil is in the conversations. Mainly for professional reasons and because they do still invest in the kinds of science that my partner and I do, and I have many colleagues there and some family near Rio.
The other is Tahiti, because I've got a pretty substantial Vanilla production operation going at this point, which was kind-of the entire point of why I moved to where I did. I also have access to EU citizenship through my mother, and I as far as a visa to live and work in the country, I think that part should be straight forwards since its basically France. My partner and I also have some connections to the university, University of French Polynesia. My partner has also previously worked for CNRS in Toulouse, although briefly. Buying land might be out of reach because its ridiculously expensive, but I can imagine various ways of making it happen.
We're seriously considering some option at this point, but its very tough because we moved to where we live because this is where we wanted to live. We've also got a wide range of "things" going on that are difficult, but not impossible, to disentangle ourselves from.
Big warning on moving to Brazil for science. Getting lab materials takes forever to get delivered and frequently just never arrives. I had a roommat do her last year of PhD research in the us because work was so much faster here due to how much better and more reliable logistics are.
I mean thats a great consideration. Luckily for me, I'm more on the pure computation/ analysis side of the house. I don't really do wet chemistry any more, although my partner does.
Good info. France and Norway are appealing, I have a friend with family over there who likes me. The Netherlands is on my list as well, I've been there a few times and they don't currently have any political drama that I'm aware of.
Oh boy, there is political drama here in the Netherlands right now.
The most right wing party in the coalition stepped out of the government because the other parties refused to sign its "strictest immigration policy ever", so we're heading towards elections again. Meanwhile parliament approved a law making being an illegal resident or helping one a crime. It needs to pass through the senate yet, but still. The minister of agriculture was found by a judge to abuse her power to obstruct freedom of information. There's still no plan to solve the nitrogen pollution crisis, leading to building projects being on hold throughout the country. Against their promise of not drilling for gas in the northern province of Groningen anymore they've allowed it again, leading to more earthquakes. A singer was accused of antisemitism by politicians because he refused to play at a gig that had posters promoting Zionism, which led to him having to flee the country with his family because of death threats. Don't speak out against Israel here either. There were border patrols done by a group of "activists" looking for illegals ("we found no brown people or anyone looking like that" they said), which were small and luckily stopped, but still. Then there are the government cuts in all social sectors, killing all services slowly over the years. Public transport, education, healthcare, municipal services, welfare, it's all going downhill. And while the government still has to pay back thousands of parents it had wrongly accused of daycare fraud, the next screw-up was discovered a few months ago and they now also have to pay thousands of people on welfare for being sick because they had underpaid them for years.
The election campaign is probably gonna be a bunch of screaming matches about immigrants and refugees and name calling again even though there are far more pressing issues going on. It's not as fascist here as it is in the US yet, but that's only because we have a more reasonable electoral system.
Cacao is a national treasure, and America floods Mexico with Hershey's, Snickers, and other subpar "chocolate" and destroys local competition with cheap prices.
Fun fact:
The word "chocolate" is derived from the Nahuatl word Xocholatl (chikola-tl).
Try chocolate that wasn't made in America...
Then imagine living a country with some of the best ingredients for chocolate making, and only seeing American chocolate on your store shelves...
If capitalism is breaking stuff, the government is pretty much the only ones that can fix it. Though when the government is the thing that capitalism is breaking, I can see why you might not want them to do more than they currently do.
Government is supposed to be about pooling money so it can be more efficiently and effectively spent. Economies of scale. Even if the government only half does what you want and half does stuff you don't care about, you are still getting better bang for your buck than if you tried to use your own tiny amounts of money to buy the half you do want.
I'm actually very fond of the US but the chocolate is absolute filth, sorry lads. I was so excited to try Hershey's and holy moly was it an earth shattering disappointment.
Born and bred in America and won’t eat American chocolate - literally tastes like vomit. And I do mean literally - Hershey’s chocolate goes through a process called lipolysis that breaks down their milk some and introduces butyric acid, which gives Parmesan, sour cream and other pungent dairy foods (and vomit) their smells.
When they perfected the process so it didn't happen anymore, people stopped buying their chocolate as it 'tasted funny' now and they started adding it artificially
Literally stockholm syndromed into enjoying the flavor of vomit...
No wonder our country is fucked, it was founded by morons
Right.... Well that's some insight. Thank you . I heard a rumour that it was down to it being popular during a war where cocoa was in short supply but that makes sense too.
There is. That's fair, and some of it was decent and that's not to say that all American chocolate is bad because that would be stupid of course, as you say. And I'm sure there's top notch American chocolate. Of course there is.
But, the dominant chocolate, the one that foreigners associate with the US, was shite IMO. That's all.
And tbh I do like an oul' mackers. I wouldn't call McDonald's the Hershey's of burgers.
This is all subjective and I'm not being a cunt. I just was expecting sparkles in my mouth and I got.... Hershey's.
american here. it was an epiphany the first time i had foreign chocolate and our domestic chocolate will never be good enough again. idk how we got to where it's this fucked up, our chocolate really does suck.
Mexico has been trying a lot to reduce obesity through various product labeling. This looks like a step in that direction; a snack that uses an indigenous ingredient (chocolate) in a manner that complies with federal guidelines.
They could be making their businesses “eat” the tariffs, but instead their people are eating good chocolate? That’s it, I’m heading down there, I’m sold.
I don't follow Mexican politics closely, but this could be part of an effort to curb obesity. I've heard they introduced taxes on sugary drinks for this, so this might be another avenue.
If people are wanting cheap snacks, and private companies are only making unhealthy ones, you can introduce regulations to micromanage what they can produce, or you can introduce a complex taxation process to disincentivize sugar snacks. Or you can introduce your own product that meets a perceived unmet demand in an underserved market.