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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."
Did you ever know a "chocoholic"? One of those folks who just can't get enough chocolate? I bet there's at least one in your home or workplace. At my house, it's my wife Emily. She's got to have her little bowl of Hershey's Kisses in the living room. She can't go shopping without bringing home some chocolate ice cream or a chocolate-cake mix. She's even got a funny little sweatshirt that says, "My Name Is Emily, And I'm A Chocoholic."
To be honest, I'm a bit of a chocoholic myself. Except for one small detail. You see, instead of being addicted to chocolate, I'm addicted to booze. Yep, from dawn to dusk, there's one thing on my mind: booze! Beer, liquor, wine, all that stuff!
When my wife gets one of her cravings, she reaches for a Baby Ruth or Mars bar. With me, it's Icehouse beer. My refrigerator is always stocked with plenty of it. I also have a little flask of whiskey in my desk drawer at work. In fact, if you can keep a secret, I even keep some booze in my car in case of traffic jams. I just can't stand to be without booze for too long!
I'm a lot like that Cookie Monster on Sesame Street. Only it's more like the Booze Monster. When I walk into a party and see that they have booze of any kind, it's like, "Whoa-hoa! All bets are off! Lemme at that booze!"
I remember this one time, there was no chocolate in the house. Emily was going out of her mind, trying to scrape up some sort of chocolate fix. In the end, she resorted to drinking a cup of hot cocoa. It was so cute! Sort of like the time I drank all her hairspray because there was no booze in the house. Or that other time with the rubbing alcohol. Or the Nyquil. Or the Aqua-Velva.
Another time, I was completely out of booze, and all the stores and bars were closed, so I drove 45 minutes to find a place that would sell me some beer or something. I was kind of embarrassed, because here it was late Monday night, and I had to work the next day, and I'm driving around looking for booze. But, hey, that's just how things are when you're a "booze-oholic" like me! I finally found a huge all-night liquor store. You should have seen how I loaded up! Cases of this, fifths of that. It was 5 a.m. when I finally got home, so I just said, "To heck with work!" and had my own little improvised holiday. I called it Booze Day! I'd been working hard, getting to work on time almost every day for two weeks, so I figured I'd earned what wound up being the rest of the week off.
Sometimes Emily and I think we should cut down a little-you know, health concerns and all. But there's always some special occasion that gives us an excuse to go off our "diets." Halloween was Emily's last big bender. We only got three trick-or-treaters the entire night, so the whole big bowl of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups went straight to her. (Or straight to her thighs, as she said!)
My most recent bender was today. There was a good movie on TV, and I figured, hey, I'll need steady hands to change the volume. Of course, it all went straight to my liver, but what are you gonna do?
For my birthday, Emily gave me the funniest coffee mug, perfect for Irish coffee. It has a little teddy bear on it with a "don't mess with me" look on his face, and it says, "Hand Over The Booze And Nobody Gets Hurt." I laughed so hard! That bear was just like me when I robbed the party store earlier this year! Also, the mug is really big, so it can hold a lot of booze... another plus!
Yes, those chocoholics are a funny sort. But they won't hurt you-as long as they have their chocolate, that is. Or, in my case, booze!
- lifted from The Onion
Yes, but this move will allow the government to increase the chocolate ration to 20 grams per week.
I hope this doesn't fly ...
You got your peanut butter in my chocolate-y flavoured vegetable oil! ...
You got your chocolate-y flavoured vegetable oil in my peanut butter!
F*ing gross, dude! I ain't eating that sh*t
Not to mention the "anal leakage" you'll get from eating too much "vegetable oil chocolatey junk".
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.
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.
REVOLUTION!!!!!!
First they came for my fats, and I said nothing. Then they came for my carbs, and I said nothing. Then they came for my sugars, and I said nothing.
But NOT MY FUCKING CHOCOLATE!
(insert Star Spangled Banner here)
One nation. One struggle. One destiny.
I had a dream! A chocolatey dream!
Just remember the next time you rinse with Listerine Citrus Burst that you're swishing crushed dead pregnant beetles in your mouth.
And every time you eat beef, that comes from cows! Those cute, fat horses!
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.
Also, among the already mentioned items, there is a lot of pesticides in it:
[P]esticide residues routinely turn up in chocolate products sold in the USA5 and Europe.6 For as long as the leaders in the chocolate industry refuse to acknowledge that a pesticide problem exists, we have no hope of finding (or even looking for) a realistic solution to that problem.
see: http://www.tava.com.au/article_chemicals.html
I first ran into this in the book Diet for a Poisoned Planet. Peanuts and Chocolate were among the most contaminated foods in the American diet. Chocolate was high because it is imported from a lot of countries that do not have as tough of laws as we do (and ironically, they buy a lot of the chemicals from us!).transporter_ii
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
And here I thought chocolate was a candy, an indulgence, a culinary luxury to be enjoyed for it's own smooth deliciousness. Who knew that I should be conditioning myself to tolerate only pure "Cacau" bars, just as I might do with fish oil, so I can rest smugly in my chocolate snobishness.
But wait, processing the bean discards much of the natural taste and benefit. Better to eat the beans whole, directly from the tree, than to pollute them by the touch of man or machine. This is truly the way of the chocolate elite.
And I hear that chewing the leaves is enjoyable, too. I especially like the leaves!
--- A man with a briefcase can steal more money, than any man with a gun. [Don Henley]
Twinkies don't have a shelf-life, they have a half-life.
It's sad when choosing an installation directory on your own qualifies you as an "advanced user."
Let's try someone who knows food, then. The entire Cajun cuisine, for example, is essentially new. Chowder (there's more to chowder than clam and corn) is an entirely American practice, as are Burgoo, Chioppino and Bouillabase. We invented recirculated roasting (no, it's not the same as a dutch oven.) The number two prepared food on earth is an American invention, despite its foreign name - whereas China beat us to rice with egg, we invented the Hamburger. We're responsible for nachos, hard tacos, chili con queso and chili con carne (look it up.) We're why Mexico loves cumin now. Basically anything you eat that you think is mexican food that has yellow cheese on it instead of white is America's fault.
The current state of Barbeque is entirely an American thing, though the Dutch independently reinvented it in South Africa later under the name "braai." (This is unfair to foreigners, as we use the word "barbeque" very differently than they do; a Briton hearing that word will think of the situation we think of as "grilled," and when they hear grill, they think of what we think of as stove-top burners. I do not know what foreigners call what we call Barbeque, though I know Australia uses the word the way we do.) We also invented Pit Barbeque (yes, we mean something different by that phrase too, sorry.) There's also Saint Louis Barbeque, Kentucky Barbeque and Louisiana Barbeque, all of which are substantially different (one's stewed in sauce, one's over a grill range open fire and one's surrounded by coal heat in a brick pit.)
We invented Chop Suey and General Tso's Chicken. Indeed, anything you see on a purportedly Chinese menu involving cheese, mango, brown/whole rice or tomato is our fault. Rangoon puffs (not crab rangoon) are our fault. What we call Egg Foo Yung is nothing like what the Cantonese call Fu Yung Egg. Spring rolls are Chinese; egg rolls are not. What we call beef with broccoli is supposed to use a relative of broccoli called gailan; however, the leafy parts are used, not the stalks and not the clubs, so it might as well be asparagus, it's so different. We invented Jibaritos and Jigaritos.
We invented the tri-tip steak. "You can't invent a steak, it grew in the cow that way!" Actually, no it didn't. We also invented cheesed steaks. (No, not Philly cheese-steaks; we didn't invent those, we just perfected them.) If you don't know what a cheesed steak is, look up what "new york strip" actually means; it's not a cut, like sirloin or delmonico. They're aged and molded. There's a reason they're that tender.
America includes several areas whose cuisines developed on their own before they were called America, such as Hawaii, Alaska, the Texarcana area and the pan-Florida area (Florribean food is awesome.) We're the country that merged Burmese and Oaxacan cuisine. We're about the only country to grill frog legs (the french batter them, the chinese boil them and the italians and thai fry them.) Chicken Vesuvio is ours.
We have a spectacular history of invention in the field of alcohol. I probably don't need to beleaguer this.
Americans use the phrase "fried chicken" differently than other countries, so when I say "fried chicken is ours," please understand that I mean something more specific than chicken which has been fried. We mean bone-in chicken ribcage halves and drumsticks which are larded, spiced, battered, breaded, deep fat fried and re-spiced, in that order. Furthermore, it involves a specific set of spices; it's a little like talking to the British about Shephard's Pie. You just have to know.
There are a lot of people who believe that the current popularity of the sandwich is largely due to their upsurge in use in America during the l
StoneCypher is Full of BS