Getting in Hot Chocolate, Vegan Style

As any good revolutionary knows, never mind mother or marketing man, them with the best cakes will win. “Make Cakes, not War” … and if you don’t have cake, at least make sure you have chocolate.

From time to time the vegan movement tends to have its own, seemingly obscure and obsessive to non-vegans, storms in a teacup.

Or in this case … a storm in a hot chocolate cup.

Last year, Craig Sams’ celebrated ethical, organic and Fairtrade chocolate maker, Green & Black, announced that they were removing the Vegan Society logo from their dark chocolate. It sent bitter-sweet, sticky ripples sweeping out across the vegan internet.

The placement of the official Vegan Society logo had already caused concern and even outrage from within the vegan movement. It brought to light seemingly heretically changes in policy that allowed the vegan logo to be used on products that “may contain dairy products”. Changes necessary due to laws protecting vegans from 5 parts per million parts, potential dairy contamination. Microscopic but enough to trigger allergic and ethical reactions in some consumers.

One of the oldest vegan companies and long time supporters of the Vegan Society, Plamil Food Ltd (as in plant milk foods) withdrew their support for the Vegan logo and criticised the change. Plamil produce their own 100% vegan chocolate and carob bars.

Perhaps one of the reason the incident raise quite such attention was because Green & Black had actually been a Godsend for the vegan movement. A delicious, quality, ethical and organic wonder. Manna for a movement more used to food as punishment. Many thought Green & Black had apparently “sold out to The Man” … ‘The Man’ being a large multi-national corporation called Cadbury Schweppes. The world’s second largest, turned evil-capitalist, confectionery manufacturer†.

By definition vegan products contain no ingredients derived from animals within the recipe and this still remains true for Green & Black’s dark chocolate. However as our dark chocolate is made on the same production line as our milk chocolate there is some risk of cross contact. As a result, the desire for clearer allergen labelling now conflicts with the vegan statement and we have reluctantly decided to remove it from our labelling.

- Green & Black

What does this have to do with Japan?

Interestingly, the Sams Brothers found their first inspiration in a Japanese dietary teacher called Georges Ohsawa (桜沢 如一 or Sakurazawa Nyoichi), one of the founders of the Macrobiotic movement. The Sams Brothers, possibly more than any other individuals in the UK and Europe, took inspiration from the Japanese traditional diets to revolutionise the wholefood, healthfood, vegan and vegetarian markets, introducing new but traditional foods to a market place starved of diversity and nature since the industrial revolution.

Hearing tales in the 60s that the FBI had raided and burnt the books of the macrobiotic bookshop in New York, the counter-culture Sams were inspired by the idea of how “considering hamburgers and milkshakes to be bad for one’s health” could possibly be so criminal, “seditious and anti-American.” Whatever this Macrobiotic thing was, they wanted to be part of it.

Later, in 1968, the brothers opened ‘Seed’. The UK’s first organic and macrobiotic restaurant in a basement in west London, which was patronised by the likes of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. They went on to open ‘Ceres Grain Shop’ and ‘Ceres Bakery’, which they claim to be the UK’s first natural foods store and wholemeal bakery. These became not just epicentres for the alternative society but models for a nationwide … European-wide … movement. An industry and ‘lifestyle’ now worth billions of Dollars a year. From the 1960s onwards, they published the wholefood ‘zines, handspun in their own basements, and various books on the brown rice diet, building a fashionable public acceptance.

It is strange that the vegan movement might turn to bite such hands that fed them … and even fed them the best of fine chocolates!

The Sams, as Harmony Foods, continued to become the first wholesaler of macrobiotic foods in the UK, and by the mid 70s they had a 55,000 sq foot warehouse with 40 staff, shifting pallets of wholegrain, beans and pulses a day all over Europe. I know. I, personally, lifted tonnes of them.

The company, Whole Earth Foods, is still going strong today having introduced such staple products as sugar-free jam, peanut butter, baked beans and cola, and later the first commercial veggieburger mix. Brother Craig is current the chairman of the Soil Association, the organic food and farming campaigners.

The list of wholefood, and the personal effects of the way of eating that the Sams Brothers introduced, are endless.

They breathed life into the vegan, vegetarian, macrobiotic and wholefood movements which before them were limited to eating potatoes and shopping in white-coated, mock-pharmaceutical ‘health and hygiene’ stores.

It was all thanks to a little-known, little-respected, be-suited Japanese revolutionary … and his wife. Ohsawa, himself, a subject of persecution and book burning by the American Occupation Forces in Japan post-WWII.

So what were those vegan chocolate ripples all about?

Chocolate making machines cannot be washed with water. The same devices were being used to make both milk and dark chocolate. Although the machines were flushed with dark chocolate, which was then thrown away and wasted, there was no way – legally – to guarantee no dairy residue left. The recipe had never changed.

Of course, chocolate is not the only food produced in this way … merely the only one to hit the radars of the vegan movement in such a high profile manner. Most vegans turn a blind eye to the many other cross contaminated foods in their diets. And so the voice of the revolutionaries cried out …

“We don’t want more brown rice’n'dried lentils … we want posh chocolate, you fascist sell-outs!!!”

The good news is, that sometime later this year, it seems that 100% vegan Green & Black chocolate (the colours of the environmental and anarchist movements after all!) will be back … produced on machinery only used for vegan dark chocolate. ‘The Man’ was changed by ‘The Sam’. Start saving for your dentist bills, sugar still sucks … even if it is organic and fairtraded.

The stories of Craig and Greg Sams, Green & Blacks ‘Fairtrade’ impact and Whole Earth Foods are remarkable resources for the reality of what creating positive revolutions take. They are giants upon whose shoulders many are not just standing … but eating their way to health or make their millions.

* Meanwhile certain elements of the vegan movement, tear at each other like starved rats and destroy their movement for a two bit piece of action … and some soya cream off someone else’s cake.

† Cadbury was originally a Quaker company which sold drinking chocolate in the belief that alcohol was a main cause of poverty and chocolate an alternative. Quakers had high ethical standards. Prohibited from attending university by the church, their pacifist beliefs also kept them from joining the military. Quakers often devoted their time to social reform.

The original Cadbury company was famous for the advances in living and working conditions and the social benefits its workforce enjoyed and set new standards and so its purchase of Green & Black could be seen as a return to its roots.

However, that was a long time ago. And a lot of really second-class, tooth-rotting, environment damaging chocolate products ago.

It seems the corporation has been honorable in handling the organic fairtrade company as it was established by the Sams. If it will positively effect the rest of its activities remains to be seen. Craig Sams remains within the company and will have his effect. Let us see … and let more corporations follow his example.