Institute for Cacao and Chocolate Research

🎧 The latest episode of The Chocolate Conservatory podcast touches on education for chocolate professionals. Penn State University Emeritus Professor Greg Ziegler and Cacaolab Executive Director Claudia Delbaere share lessons learned from teaching generations of students in established institutions, as well as the constraints that the ever-changing supply chain imposes on chocolate manufacturing and the mastery of confectionery formulation.

🔉 https://feeds.captivate.fm/choco-conservatory/ Listen at this link or search for the podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or the podcast app that you prefer.

🍫 Sign up for the upcoming Penn State Chocolate Short Course, June 22-26, 2026: https://web.cvent.com/event/d930b4b6-9877-4b62-8bd4-df82b22bd1d9/summary

✨ Learn more about educational opportunities at CacaoLab (online and in-person): https://www.cacaolab.be/training

Heirloom Cacao Preservation Fund

📢🍫 Learn from two ICCR experts in a course at Stanford Continuing Studies! José López Ganem and Carla Martin will co-teach the 8-week online class called "Chocolate: From Commodity Crop to Ephemeral Luxury" from June 30 to August 18. Registration is now open.

This virtual course is for people who seek to be more confident in their ability to navigate chocolate products and who want to be more thoughtful about their chocolate consumption. It is appropriate for anyone who is interested in learning more about the world of cacao and chocolate, as well as for aspiring or current industry professionals.

Details here: https://continuingstudies.stanford.edu/courses/liberal-arts-and-sciences/chocolate-from-commodity-crop-to-ephemeral-luxury/20254_FD-03

🎧 In the latest episode of The Chocolate Conservatory podcast, Cornell University Professor Alex M. Nading, a medical anthropologist, joins Carla Martin to discuss the epidemic of chronic kidney disease of nontraditional causes (CKDnt) among Nicaragua's sugarcane plantation workers. We hope that you will join us in listening!

🔉 https://feeds.captivate.fm/choco-conservatory/ Listen at this link / in bio or search for the podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or the podcast app that you prefer.

📚 Find Dr. Nading's book via Duke University Press: https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-kidney-and-the-cane
Or in a library near you: https://search.worldcat.org/

🎧 In the latest episode of The Chocolate Conservatory podcast, Hawai'i meets Puerto Rico for a discussion of cacao production in the United States! Dr. Viviana Medina of V.M.R. Consulting and Dave Elliott of O'ahu Resource Conservation and Development Council join host Jose Lopez Ganem. We hope that you will join us in listening!

🔉 https://feeds.captivate.fm/choco-conservatory/ Listen at this link / in bio or search for the podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or the podcast app that you prefer.

Who is allowed to grade cocoa quality, to be remunerated for and benefit from this work? Who is thought to be capable and worthy of training and investment to develop sensory acuity? Put simply: Who gets to learn how to taste like a pro?

In our new peer-reviewed chapter, "A Golden Ticket to Taste: On the Current State of Cocoa Quality Education," ICCR team members Carla D. Martin and Jose Lopez Ganem detail the current state of cocoa quality education, challenging common industry assumptions about who can and should attain expertise in sensory evaluation. We show that the bar to entry to learn how to evaluate cocoa quality as a professional is extraordinarily high, and it is virtually impossible for those who steward the principal raw material needed in chocolate manufacturing: cocoa producers. Inevitably, this system of exclusion also disenfranchises chocolate consumers from engaging in meaningful discussions of taste.

The takeaway: the current system of cocoa quality grading is designed to allow for consumers and cocoa producers to be observed by the ruling few quality graders from on high, watched, disciplined, and controlled through this mechanism of power and diagram of political technology. The thousands of cocoa producers with whom we have worked understand completely that they are excluded from this discussion and, importantly, disagree with the status quo.

This research involved true interdisciplinary, socially engaged collaboration with stakeholders over a period of nearly a decade.

The full paper is available at the link / in bio: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/404347994_A_Golden_Ticket_to_Taste_On_the_Current_State_of_Cocoa_Quality_Education

🎧 In the latest episode of The Chocolate Conservatory podcast, Professor Peter Roberts, an economic sociologist, joins Carla D. Martin to discuss the commodification of specialty coffee producers and the industry's obsession with a narrative of supply and demand. We hope that you will join us in listening!

🔉 https://feeds.captivate.fm/choco-conservatory/ Listen at this link / in bio or search for the podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or the podcast app that you prefer.

Pre-order Professor Roberts' essential book here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/from-supply-and-demand-to-numbers-networks-and-narratives-9780198871460?cc=us&lang=en&

🎧 In the latest episode of The Chocolate Conservatory podcast, ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences Professor Tilo Hühn describes his career in food technology innovation and the ways in which Switzerland remains a center of leadership in education and entrepreneurship in chocolate. We hope that you will join us in listening!

📢https://feeds.captivate.fm/choco-conservatory/ Listen at the link (in bio) or search for the podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or the podcast app that you prefer.

🎧 On the first episode of The Chocolate Conservatory podcast, Harvard historian Emmanuel Akyeampong and Fuad Mohammed Abubakar of Ghana's Cocoa Marketing Company join host Carla Martin to discuss how Ghana's cocoa pricing developed and the challenges and pitfalls of navigating farmgate pricing in a volatile futures market. We hope that you will join us in listening!

🔊https://feeds.captivate.fm/choco-conservatory/ Listen at the link above (and in bio) or search for the podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or the podcast app that you prefer.

🙏 Our gratitude goes to ICCR's Executive Director José López Ganem and producer Sophia Mills, and our generous patrons A Priori Specialty Food & Distribution, Caputo's Market & Deli, CocoaSupply, Grocer's Daughter Chocolate, and República del Cacao.

🎄 May your holidays be merry and bright ✨ Thank you for a wonderful year of learning together 🫶
- The ICCR team

🎧 We love history podcasts! 🫰 It was an honor for our Board President, Dr. Carla D. Martin, to be interviewed, along with our colleagues Catherine Higgs and Shadrack Osei Frimpong, on the history of labor in cocoa and chocolate, covering hundreds of years and thousands of miles in 52 minutes. We celebrate their team's focus on getting the facts right and treating all subjects of their research, especially unfree laborers, with dignity. Thanks to all who listen + share 🙏

Link in bio / https://www.npr.org/2025/12/04/nx-s1-5631795/the-bitter-history-of-chocolate

What are your favorite history podcasts? A few others we enjoy: , , , Ben Franklin's World, Afripod