Chocolate is comfort food for many people. That fact has long been established. Comfort foods are foods we eat to…well, feel comforted. They bring out positive emotions. That’s what they do. However, they are also known to stir up feelings of guilt afterwards.

In a study of American comfort food choices, men leaned more toward warm, hearty, meal-related comfort foods like steak and soup. On the other hand, women opted for foods that were snack related, yup, like chocolate. Also, the study showed how younger people tend to like snack-related comfort foods more compared to people over 55.

And now, that guilty feeling you get after indulging in chocolate would might not just stem from the calorie-fest, it will also come from the fact that you’ve just burned a hole in your pocket. For almost 2 years now, cocoa prices have been skyrocketing. And it’s actually just beginning.

The world renowned Hershey's recently announced they were raising their prices to compensate for abnormally high global cocoa prices. The commodity spot prices for ingredients they use in their chocolates, such as cocoa, dairy and nuts, have drastically increased. Around an 8% price increase will be effective immediately.

Cocoa is not the only thing that dictates the price of chocolates; everything is factored in. Sugar, milk, packaging, processing, and shipping costs all add up to the final consumer price. These factors also happen to be the things that chocolate manufacturers can expect to fluctuate, considering they are rather volatile.

Count on it. Global chocolate demand will shoot even higher in the coming years, and cocoa farmers are not certain to keep up with the world's growing appetite for chocolate.

If one of the chocolate giants deems it necessary to adjust its chocolate prices, and specifically mentions the increasing cocoa price, that simply implies the industry is expecting a gradual and sustained increase, instead of the usual rise and fall.

It’s just how it is, right? You know what they say, change is the only thing constant in this world. So, how do you deal with it? Are you going to cut back on chocolate? Or are you willing to sacrifice other things in your life just to sustain your daily chocolate runs?

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Joanna Maligaya

Staff Writer/Content Developer at Chocolate University Online

Ever since she can remember, Joanna has always considered chocolate as the ultimate food for her soul. She believes in the saying, “9 out of 10 people love chocolate, and the 10th always lies.”

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