Climate Change Is Coming for Your Favorite Holiday Foods

Chocolate, vanilla, coffee, cinnamon: The ingredients for your favorite holiday foods are becoming increasingly harder to grow because of climate change.

For example, cocoa beans are grown in West Africa, which has been facing more days of extreme heat and drought, according to a recent report from The Weather Channel. “The crop doesn’t like it,” meteorologist Jennifer Gray explained.

And when cocoa production falls, consumers also feel the heat: Prices for chocolate have shot up over the last year, and were four times as high at the end of 2024 as they were in 2022.

Vanilla and cinnamon, key ingredients for holiday baking that are largely grown in Southeast Asia and Indonesia, are also under threat. “Because we rely on just a handful of islands to produce basically our world’s cinnamon, it is extremely vulnerable. These are also places that are facing climate extremes,” Gray said.

And for something like coffee, climate change is drastically shrinking the land where it can grow. Suitable locations could decrease by 50 percent by 2050, according to a 2014 study. Plus, the Trump administration’s on-again-off-again tariffs have shocked the coffee market, one that’s already reeling from landslides and floods in Vietnam.

That festive mocha latte looks like it’ll be getting a lot more expensive. Luckily, we’ll have a lot more heat waves, fires, and floods to deal with to distract us.