By Alister Bull

DURANGO, Colo. (Reuters) - Chocolate may be a comfort in troubled times but even this affordable luxury is feeling the pinch of slower economic growth in the United States.

"Chocolate tends to be a recession-proof business but we're not immune to the consumer," said Bryan Merryman, chief operating officer of Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory Inc, with 292 stores nationwide and 38 in Canada.

Chocolate may be a good barometer of the way many U.S. businesses probably feel about the current economic climate.

It is made from imported cocoa, whose price on world markets has surged as the dollar has weakened. It is costly to distribute, and those expenses have climbed with rising fuel prices. And it is a pure consumer good sold to customers feeling the pain of precisely the same pressures.

All of which adds up to a simple and sobering verdict about the real state of the U.S. economy.

"We started into recession -- I don't care what the government calls it -- in our fourth quarter," Merryman told directors and staff from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City this week during a visit to the chocolate factory, located on a mountainside in this popular ski resort.

Technically speaking, the U.S. economy has so far not suffered two consecutive quarters of contraction that is the traditional hallmark of a recession. But it faces serious headwinds from the weak housing market and higher energy and food costs, and may yet stumble.

U.S. retail sales rose only a disappointing 0.1 percent in June, despite billions of dollars of tax rebates siphoned to households in an emergency government stimulus package to prop up growth.