Hands off my chocolate, FDA!
The FDA may allow Big Chocolate to pass off a waxy substitute as the
real thing.
By Cybele May, CYBELE MAY is a writer who reviews candy on her blog,
candyblog.net.
Los Angeles Times
April 19, 2007
THE AVERAGE American eats 12 pounds of chocolate a year. That's about
a chocolate bar every other day. (I am above average, judging by the
fact that I eat enough chocolate to deduct it as a line item on my tax
return.)
To sum up so far: Americans eat a lot of chocolate.
That's cool, because we also make a lot of it. We make everything from
the inexpensive milk chocolate bars that you buy at the supermarket
checkout counter to the decadent, limited-edition chocolate bars made
from "handpicked beans from a single hillside in Venezuela," for which
there's a waiting list.
It's all basically made the same way: cacao pods are fermented and
then roasted and ground into a fine paste that can be separated into
two components: cacao solids (commonly called cocoa powder) and cocoa
butter. Each chocolatier uses different proportions but generally
blends sugar, cocoa solids and cocoa butter plus the optional
ingredients - emulsifiers, flavors (typically vanilla) and milk solids
(to make milk chocolate) - and molds that into a chocolate bar.
A little over 100 years ago, Milton Hershey created the nickel bar,
the first American chocolate bar for the masses. Today, these small
purchases of chocolate products add up to an $18-billion business.
Like all foods in the United States, chocolate is regulated by the
Food and Drug Administration to ensure that consumers get a safe and
consistent product.
But perhaps no longer. The FDA is entertaining a "citizen's petition"
to allow manufacturers to substitute vegetable fats and oils for cocoa
butter.
The "citizens" who created this petition represent groups that would
benefit most from this degradation of the current standards. They are
the Chocolate Manufacturers Assn., the Grocery Manufacturers Assn.,
the Snack Food Assn. and the National Cattlemen's Beef Assn. (OK, I'm
not sure what's in it for them), along with seven other food producing
associations.
This is what they think of us chocolate eaters, according to their
petition on file at the FDA:
"Consumer expectations still define the basic nature of a food. There
are, however, no generally held consumer expectations today concerning
the precise technical elements by which commonly recognized,
standardized foods are produced. Consumers, therefore, are not likely
to have formed expectations as to production methods, aging time or
specific ingredients used for technical improvements, including
manufacturing efficiencies."
Let me translate: "Consumers won't know the difference."
I can tell you right now - we will notice the difference. How do I
know? Because the product they're trying to rename "chocolate" already
exists. It's called "chocolate flavored" or "chocolaty" or
"cocoalicious." You can find it on the shelves right now at your local
stores in the 75% Easter sale bin, those waxy/greasy mock-chocolate
bunnies and foil-wrapped eggs that sit even in the most sugar-obsessed
child's Easter basket well into July.
It may be cocoa powder that gives chocolate its taste, but it is the
cocoa butter that gives it that inimitable texture. It is one of the
rare, naturally occurring vegetable fats that is solid at room
temperature and melts as it hits body temperature - that is to say, it
melts in your mouth. Cocoa butter also protects the antioxidant
properties of the cocoa solids and gives well-made chocolate its
excellent shelf life.
Because it's already perfectly legal to sell choco-products made with
cheaper oils and fats, what the groups are asking the FDA for is
permission to call these waxy impostors "chocolate." Because we
"haven't formed any expectations."
I'd say we've already demonstrated our preference for true chocolate.
That's why real chocolate outsells fake chocolate. Nine of the 10
bestselling U.S. chocolate candies are made with the real stuff. M&Ms,
Hershey Bars, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups -- all real chocolate.
Butterfinger is the outlier.
Granted, a change to the "food standards of identity" won't require
makers to remove some or all of the cocoa butter, it would just allow
them to. But really, why else would they ask?
But as long as they're asking, the FDA does have a way for other
citizens to voice their expectations. It's buried deep in its website.
Until April 25, the agency is accepting comments -- by fax, mail or
online -- on a docket with the benign-sounding name of "2007P-0085:
Adopt Regulations of General Applicability to All Food Standards that
Would Permit, Within Stated Boundaries, Deviations from the
Requirements of the Individual Food Standards of Identity."
I'm telling them to keep it real.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-may19apr19,0,2342362.story