Here is a horrifying concept few of us want to contemplate: Peak chocolate. (Via Steve Portigal)

  • http://twitter.com/kpkpkp Kevin Pierce

    The article leads off with, “Could the Appetite For Chocolate Exceed the World’s Supply” … Um., Yes!   This is called a “market condition” and they exist for everything bought and sold.  As for the mass market chocolaty candies that abound, fewer or higher quality may be better.  Many are just awful anyhow.  I suggest money be plowed into genetically engineering replacement cocoa instead of solving disease puzzles.

  • sethgodin

    Maggie!

    This is the one and only silver lining of that global warming conspiracy thing–hot and humid conditions are best for growing cocoa.

    • http://maggiekb.com/ Maggie Koerth-Baker

      Thank the lord! At least there will be chocolate in the apocalypse! 

      • http://twitter.com/trousertrumpets The Trouser Trumpets

        Achocolypse ?

    • http://twitter.com/kpkpkp Kevin Pierce

      … on the north pole

  • EH

    After shopping the article around, Good Morning America finally bites.

  • Alan Olsen

    Peak Chocolate will be used as an excuse for Fake Chocolate.  There are firms that want to produce chocolate that does not contain cocoa butter and still call it “chocolate”.  So far this has been a VERY unpopular idea, but I expect that those companies will force the issue using “economic scarcity” as an excuse.

    • http://twitter.com/kpkpkp Kevin Pierce

      Uncle Pumblechook approves!

  • benher

    According to my friend who works in food science, choco-reliant companies are putting unprecedented amounts of cash into R & D these days.

  • http://twitter.com/rvitelli Romeo Vitelli

    Don’t they already have a chocolate substitute?  It’s called carob. 

    http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/what-is-carob.htm

    • Antinous / Moderator

      Or you could just eat poo. Or thumbtacks.

      • http://twitter.com/trousertrumpets The Trouser Trumpets

        Apoopolypse?

      • oasisob1

         Or ‘white chocolate’. Because it’s right there on the list with poo and thumbtacks.

        • Antinous / Moderator

          Hey, let’s make a kind of chocolate that has all the flavor removed!

          • ocker3

             Seeing as the really good chocolate (to my taste, but also nutritionally) is the dark heavy stuff, I’m worried about this. Forget water, protect the cocoa beans!

          • dnebdal

            It’s not completely tasteless, mind you. Bad white tastes something like what old rubber smells like; good white has a mild but rather pleasant flavor. It’s nowhere near the taste experience of a good dark chocolate, but … it has its uses. (Admittedly, one of them is marbling or sandwiching with very dark chocolate.)

          • Antinous / Moderator

            Tastes like sweetened shortening to me.

          • dnebdal

             Admittedly a fair description. (Some good vanilla helps a bit – but that’s not a cocoa taste.)

  • jhertzli

    There’s also peak Marmite.

    • ocker3

       Or, they could, you know, import some? It’s not like Australia is running out of the stuff.