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Wait, We've Been Pronouncing Tony's Chocolonely Wrong All This Time?

tony's chocolonely
We've All Been Saying Tony's Chocolonely WrongTony's Chocolonely

Today, we were absolutely shocked by the news that we've been pronouncing Tony's Chocolonely wrong all these years.

It is not, as commonly thought, Tony's ChocoLONEY but Tony's ChocoLONELY. LONELY.

Well, we feel a bit silly now.

But why the lonely chocolate name? Well, according to the Tony's Chocolonely website, the name came about after Dutch founder Teun van de Keuken (Tony is the English equivalent of Teun) decided to make 5,000 Fairtrade chocolate bars himself. AKA lonely.

Teun decided to go on this mission after discovering during his time as a TV journalist that slavery was prominent in the chocolate industry. He (quite rightly) was outraged, and tried to discuss the issue with large chocolate makers. Apparently they ignored him, so he decided to go it alone and create slavery-free chocolate bars all by himself. He says the chocolate industry was a lonely place to be for anti-slavery crusaders like himself.

While we're uncovering mysteries about the Tony's Chocolonely bars, we may as well address why they're unequally divided. We love the unequal chunks, but it is a strange way to divide up a chocolate bar, and it's definitely not the norm. Well, Teun says it's because there's so much inequality in the chocolate industry.

The uneven chunks serve as a reminder that the profits in the chocolate industry are not split fairly, and don't benefit the workers themselves. Fair dos.

There's another meaning about the design of the chocolate bar too. The bottom of the bar represents the equator, then from left to right you have Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo and Benin, Nigeria and part of Cameroon.

Who knew the name, shape and design of a chocolate bar could carry so much meaning! We definitely fancy a big chunk of Tony's ChocoLONELY now...