The beautiful, but critically endangered sapphire-bellied hummingbird lives in the Columbian rainforest only.

After having seen the latest episode of
‘ZDF besseresser’ – a documentary show about the food industry – I get the feeling that xylitol is a very environmentally friendly sugar substitute. According to this documentary series the industry wins xylitol from discarded by-products, like empty corncobs, waste products from the wood industry, paper-ish waste or agricultural waste won from rice or sugarcane. While I don’t approve of the current rice, corn or sugarcane industry as a whole I think it’s a good thing to make use of their waste instead of throwing by-products away.

The newspaper ‘Agrarheute’ says that all around the world the price of sugar is going to increase this month – not just in Germany or even just in the EU, but all around the world. This is gonna be good for this country’s economy, but Columbian farmers and child-workers may still not profit from this.

And back to Columbia and its role in the production of sugar-based food: ‘Gesundheitsblatt’ says that food that contains too much sugar or salt actually causes reactions in our body that are similar to how the human body would react to an infectious disease. The result is exhaustion for several hours.

Finally I got some news that are not related to Columbia’s chocolate production: The monthly newspaper ‘Dein Spiegel’ says that the number of Venezuelans fleeing to Columbia due to the unbearable economical situation in Venezuela still increases rapidly. Columbia however doesn’t have the means to provide all of them with even just the most basic bare necessities. Some refugees literally have nothing in Columbia.

The German informative TV-show ‘marktcheck’ says that a glass splinter has been found in a hazelnut-chocolate bar. As this product contains many products usually produced or harvested by children – sugar, hazelnuts, cocoa – they think that one of these children perhaps didn’t pay enough attention and accidentally also picked up a small piece of glass while picking up for example hazelnuts.