FDA Considers Redefining Chocolate

shewfig writes "The US Food and Drug Administration is considering redefining 'chocolate' to allow substitution of vegetable oil ($0.70/lb.) for cocoa butter ($2.30/lb.), and whey protein for dry whole milk. There are already standard terms to differentiate these products from chocolate, such as 'chocolatey' and 'chocolate-flavored.' The change was requested by the industry group Chocolate Manufacturers of America. Leading the resistance to this change is high-end chocolate maker Guittard, with significant grass-roots support from the Candyblog. The FDA is taking consumer comments until April 25. Here is the FDA page on the proposed change, which oddly enough does not say what the proposed change is."

Comments

Oh, great

[nmb3000]

As if American chocolate wasn't bad enough as it is...

Re:Oh, great

[kklein]

Um, Northern California is one of the world's most-renowned wine regions. And the American microbrew explosion has been producing international-awards-earning beers for well over a decade. And pizza IS American food (as in, it is not the same as the original Italian food from which it is derived). And there is a growing number of excellent cheese companies in America. I'd be the first to admit that American-made chocolate (as in, they MADE the chocolate, from scratch, instead of just buying it from France and repackaging it--cough No-Ka cough) is nothing to write home about (unless the text of the missive was "It sucks."), but seriously, American gourmet has come a very long way in recent decades. Just, you know, to be clear... I know it was a joke and all, but... You know.

FDA "accepting" comments

[grasshoppa]

The FDA is taking consumer comments until April 25.

After which time they will toss them out and make a re$pon$ible deci$ion.

Re:FDA Attempt to Regulate Vitamins, Herbs as "Dru

[TodMinuit]

Chinese medicine (herbs, acupuncture, etc.) has been around for thousands of years. People have been curing themselves long before Big Pharma pushed all of their drugs on us.

Couple hundred years ago, draining blood was considered a cure for just about anything. Lets bring it back. Next time you have a headache, slit your wrists.

God, you "all natural" medicine freaks are about as bad as those Scientologist.

Re:There is already crud in the chocolate.

[Razed By TV]

Over the last decade or two they have snuck palm oil in, and sometimes even wax, and most consumers didn't notice. I noticed the wax. It's called Hershey's.

Real Chocolate: Scharffen Berger Bittersweet Dark

[SpecialAgentXXX]

I absolutely stay away from the Big Corporate chocolate: Hershey's, Cadbery's, etc. It's all shit. High Fructose Corn Syrup and other crap in there. Ever had fine, European chocolate? The taste and texture is so much better.

There is a healthy and damn tasteful alternative to "corporate chocolate": Scharffen Berger Bittersweet Fine Artisan Dark Chocolate. I buy the 70% and 100% Cacao bars. You can really taste the cacao beans in the 70% but it's not completely bitter. The 100% takes a bit getting used to but once you've enjoyed these high quality chocolates, the "corporate chocolate" tastes like the shit that it is. I buy these bars at Whole Foods Market.

Re:FDA Attempt to Regulate Vitamins, Herbs as "Dru

[CosmeticLobotamy]

This is very important. The Big Pharmaceutical corporations have been trying to get natural medicine banned for years. Instead of taking herbs, vitamins, minerals, and other natural and very inexpensive remedies, Big Pharma wants to drug everyone.

You can mix dandelions and dog spit in a jar and sell it as a cure for baldness and impotence as long as you put a tiny thing on the bottom of the screen that says it's not intended to treat or diagnose anything. 95% of the herbal medicine market is an obvious scam. Thank God they're finally trying to do something about it. It drives me crazy watching those damn commercials. If I want a placebo for my erectile dysfunction, I'll eat a bull penis like anyone sensible would.

Re:This...

[CosmeticLobotamy]

For those who haven't read the book, the message is: WHO FUCKING CARES? IS THIS REALLY WHAT YOU IMAGINE YOUR TAX MONEY SHOULD BE PAYING FOR?

Abso-fricking-lutely. When I buy chocolate, I want to know that if someone wraps dog feces in aluminum foil, they can't say, "No, that's what we call chocolate. No refunds, you already ate three-quarters of it." Enforced accurate labeling and definitions is absolutely what I want the government to be doing.

Re:FDA Attempt to Regulate Vitamins, Herbs as "Dru

[Michael Woodhams]

The multi-billion dollar "Big Pharmaceutical corporations" are evil, lying and care for nothing but profit, whereas the multi-billion dollar "alternative medicines" industry is love, truth and fluffy bunnies?

How about Matthias Rath? He has convinced many in the South African government that AIDS is not caused by HIV, AIDS should be treated by vitamin supplements (which he just happens to sell) and antiretroviral medicines are a worse than useless, and advocating their use is genocide.

AIDS is killing 900 people per day in South Africa. A sizable fraction of those deaths can be laid directly at the door of "alternative medicine" in general, and the South African government and Rath in particular.

Big Pharma need someone to stand over them with a big stick to try to keep them honest. So do alternative medicine peddlers. The difference is that, occasionally, the big stick gets used on Big Pharma, but the snake-oil salesmen opperate with impunity in Alternative Medicine, playing Russian Roulette with other people's lives for their own profit.

Don't ban the 'remedies' - but do ban the lies and unsupported wishful-thinking published about them.

SunnyD isn't orange juice.... ORLY? YARLY!!

[Dogtanian]

Have some SunnyD fruit cocktail! Made with real fruit juice*! *5% fruit juice from concentrates They might not be able to get away with calling Sunny Delight itself "fruit juice" in the UK (nor, I suspect from your phrasing, in the US either), but that didn't stop countless stupid parents buying it in the deluded belief that it was anyway, probably because it was sold in the chilled section.

There was a huge "scandal" about it when Sunny Delight was popular here in the late 1990s and all of a sudden it was all over the papers when someone realised "OMG!!!! IT'S NOT REAL JUICE, IT'S JUST SQUASH!!!!11111". Like, you don't say.

(Then there was even more scandal when there were reports of kids turning yellow through drinking the stuff. I know it's crap, but how much of the damn stuff were these parents feeding their kids?)

I hate all those crappy "juice drinks" that come in fruit-juice like packaging, but contain (at best) 25-50% fruit juice, with the rest made up from citric acid, sugar and God-knows-what. For what it is, it's fine, but I'm willing to bet that they're designed to fool countless morons into thinking they're fruit juice (and that they succeed).