Jason Vale - Chocolate Busters - The Easy Way to Kick It!

TWO BILLION DOLLARS EVERY YEAR JUST ON M&Ms!

M&Ms, although first made in 1940, were virtually unknown in Britain until a few years ago. When we wanted some round brightly-coloured sweets with chocolate centres it appeared that only ‘Smarties had the answer’ – which is quite funny as Smarties were first produced in 1937, three years before the now mighty M&Ms. M&Ms are owned by one of the biggest drug-food giants in the world – Mars Inc – a true superpower in the world of chocolate.

Mars Inc is a company that produces enough Fun Size Milky Way every year literally to reach the Milky Way. In fact, the huge amount of those little, sorry, I mean ‘fun-size’ choc bars, made every year are enough to circle the globe – TWICE! In the UK we buy 17 million Bounty Bars annually, once again a bestselling confectionery made by – yep, you guessed it – Mars Inc. It is no wonder then that the Mars Inc company are the largest sweet manufacturer in the world. What may come as a surprise though is that Mars, in financial terms, are now bigger than McDonald’s with an unbelievable $20 billion a year in sales from various interests.

Chocolate, like most products these days, has big guns globalizing the industry. In 1945 there were roughly 6,000 firms producing the stuff. It is estimated that by 2010 that the number will be as low as 150 worldwide. Mars Inc, in my opinion, are the McDonald’s and Marlboro of the chocolate world. And just like the fast-food and nicotine trades, the chocolate industry also has its Burger King, Silk Cut, Wendy’s, Benson and Hedges, and Wimpy in the forms of Cadbury, Nestlé, Rowntree, Green & Blacks, Lindt, Thorntons and, in the US, Hershey. In fact, in the US if you mentioned Cadbury they would wonder which planet you’re from, but say, Hershey and they immediately know what you mean. That’s because in the US Hershey are a very big player in the chocolate world – it even boasts its own town! The battle between Mars and Hershey has been going on for years and it echoes that of Pepsi and Coca-Cola, each company battling for number-one spot. At last count, Hershey was winning the US battle, but, by the time you read this, in the cut-throat, back-stabbing, idea-pinching world of chocolate, that could have easily changed. However, whatever the chocolate company, just like their nicotine, caffeine and fast-food cousins, each, on a financial front, are doing just fine and dandy thank you very much. And this is why chocolate is now one of the most traded commodities in the world, and to the villagers on small farms in places such as West Africa, and on plantations owned by wealthy land barons in other parts of the world, cocoa is as important to the economies of these countries as oil is to the Middle East.

Cadbury, Britain’s leader in the land of the chocolate, aren’t too far behind. Despite their ‘local brand’ impression – Cadbury are a major global player. Two billion bars of Cadbury’s chocolate are bought every year. If just the creme eggs it produces each year were stacked on top of each other they would be 900 times higher than Mount Everest, and if the Crunchies eaten in the same length of time were lined up they would stretch from Birmingham to Bangkok. On top of that, just like Hershey in the States, Cadbury even has its own town – Bournville, or as they like to describe it, Cadbury World.

Chocolate has also been written about in some of the most famous children’s stories ever told, from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to the modern day phenomenon which is Harry Potter. Major blockbuster films have not just featured it but have even been based on and named after it – Chocolat being the obvious example. There are few items in the world that do not have a chocolate version of them somewhere. You can get chocolate televisions, chocolate typewriters, chocolate hats, chocolate houses, chocolate cigarettes, chocolate body paint, chocolate love toys (I didn’t say all chocolate was bad!) and there is even a place that will make an exact replica of your good self carved entirely from chocolate!

It has been linked to every emotion we possess and the Global Organization of Drug-food Suppliers (GODS) have managed, through clever advertising, to make us believe it can genuinely help our moods, act as a catalyst to the land of the bliss and, more recently, that it is actually good for us (this point will be covered in depth a little later). They have also managed to make it perfectly normal to start children on this stuff from an extremely early age. In fact, they have so brainwashed and conditioned us that if we don’t give children chocolate, especially if they have been ‘good’, we are the ones who are seen as the bad guys!

So how have we reached the stage where so many people believe that life wouldn’t be the same without a mass of drug-like substances entering their bloodstream on a regular basis? Why do we automatically think of chocolate when Valentine’s Day comes around, or Mother’s Day, or Christmas Day, or Easter Day, or a birthday – or, let’s face it, any day? Why do we continue to eat this stuff even though we nearly always feel sick and ‘Oh, I wish I hadn’t done that’ afterwards? Why is it so strongly linked to love, comfort, joy and, of course, PMS? Why does it seem to take such an emotional hold unlike any other ‘food’ on the planet?

A Derren Brownie to be precise (well, Derren Brown actually). Anyway, I don’t know if you’ve seen this guy, but he is known as a ‘mind control expert’ and he is exceptionally brilliant at what he does. I watched a programme of his once where he took two advertising ‘geniuses’, people who prided themselves on being the best in the business; able to come up with unique ideas super-fast. Derren Brown arranged transport for these men to meet him in a hotel room. Once there he unveiled a large stuffed bear as their brief. Yes, they had to do an advertising campaign for a taxidermist and they had just half an hour to come up with it. Derren Brown placed a stuffed cat on top of a sealed envelope. He told them under no circumstances were they to touch the envelope. When he returned half an hour later the two quick-thinking advertising gurus had indeed managed to come up with a catchy advertisement. Now please bear in mind they had a blank page and could have put just about anything. As you may have guessed, when Derren asked them to open the envelope he had predicted the exact logo and, as near as damn it, advertising slogan as the two guys. At first they tried to dismiss it (I think their pride was a tad hurt) but in the end they had no explanation as to how on earth he could have predicted their choice of thoughts.

The reason why he was able to predict their thoughts was simply because he had already placed them there. What I’m saying is that the advertisement and slogan were never their idea at all – it had been cleverly planted in their subconscious mind on the cab journey over. How? Quite simply by placing both the ad and slogan many times at several stages along the route. For example, at one point the taxi stopped at a crossing and about 20 people, each with t-shirts printed both back and front with the ad and slogan, crossed the road. The ad and slogan were shown many times in this manner throughout their short journey. Derren even arranged that as they entered the hotel, a man holding a newspaper would be leaving. And what was the headline on the paper? Yep – the ad and slogan. So what the hell has that got to do with chocolate? Well, bucket loads actually.

Up till now, your buying and consumption of chocolate literally has been in the hands of the GODS. They are the ‘mind controllers’ of the chocolate world and it’s their job to make sure that you continue to buy, buy, buy. Like our two advertising people, what you believe to be your idea – to buy chocolate in this case – is often anything but. The hard reality is the GODS have been planting images and catchy slogans throughout your journey through life with the sole purpose of getting you conditioned to buy the stuff – most of the time without even knowing what made you do it. This is why a massive 90% of all chocolate sales are what is known as ‘point-of-sale’ or ‘impulse’ buys. Yes, surprising as it may sound, according to the chocolate companies themselves only 10% of chocolate sales are actually pre-planned (ie, gifts for Mother’s Day, saying, ‘I love you’ and so on); the rest are made on ‘the spur of the moment’ – or are they?