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Mark Thorson

[Reposted from rec.food.cooking.]

wrote:
>
> 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/...,2342362.story

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