FDA Considers Redefining Chocolate 939
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."
Import (Score:1, Informative)
There is already crud in the chocolate. (Score:5, Informative)
There is already crud in the chocolate. Any serious consumer of chocolate already knows to read the ingredients.
To write this post, I went to the trash can, pulled out a package of inferior quality candy that my wonderful but misguided wife had bought. I had thrown it away because of the crud in it. Under "ingredients", it says: "palm, shea, sunflower, and/or safflower oil". There is already whey protein in it also.
A little vegetable oil is not going to make a big difference. Over the last decade or two they have snuck palm oil in, and sometimes even wax, and most consumers didn't notice. Most of you won't notice the vegtable oil either, and those of us who do already read the labels.
Re:Oh, great (Score:3, Informative)
From Wikipedia....
In addition to large scale wineries, Napa Valley's boutique wineries produce some of the world's best wines. The producers of these wines include but are not limited to: Araujo, Bryant Family, Colgin, Dalla Valle Maya, Diamond Creek, Dominus, Dunn Howell Mountain, Grace Family, Harlan, Husic, Kistler, Jericho Canyon Vineyards, Marcassin, Screaming Eagle, Shafer Hillside Select, Sine Qua Non and Vineyard 29.
Today Napa Valley features more than two hundred wineries and grows many different grape varieties including Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Merlot, Zinfandel, and other popular varietals. Napa Valley is visited by as many as five million people each year, making it the second most popular tourist destination in California, second only to Disneyland.
EU has much higher standards for chocolate (Score:3, Informative)
This is the same FDA that in spring 2006 bowed to industry pressure to change labeling requirements for carmine coloring. Look at a bottle of Listerine Citrus Burst. It has an ingredient called cochineal extract. Sounds kinda exotic like vanilla extract. FDA proposed labeling standard requiring manufacturers to say "cochineal extract (insect derived)" but food manufacturers argued that would turn off consumers so they deleted the insect derived portion. Cochineal extract is a red food coloring derived from crushing pregnant cochineal beetles. They also use it in Wonka (Nestle) Pixy Stix. This isn't for health reasons or flavor enhancement. Cochineal extract (insect derived) is used purely for aesthetic purposes. Just remember the next time you rinse with Listerine Citrus Burst that you're swishing crushed dead pregnant beetles in your mouth.
FDA summary report (Score:5, Informative)
There is a reason the FDA's summary is so vague---the proposal isn't about chocolate. Well, not just about chocolate. The proposal is supported by a substantial range of food manufacturer's and distributors, touching on chocolate, meat, poultry, frozen food, and more.
The proposed changes affect divergences from standard labeling guidelines for a lot of reasons, including things like "improvements in nutritional properties", "use of safe suitable flavors and flavor enhancers", "alternate manufacturing processes", etc.
You can read the whole thing yourself (pdf warning) here [fda.gov]. See especially the last 4 pages or so.
Is the change in guidelines a good thing for consumers? I don't know. I don't know enough about food manufacturing to judge.
Re:How Chocolate is made: (Score:2, Informative)
The change would not be as significant as removing the cocoa liquor which is what makes chocolate... chocolate. The extra butter allows the chocolate to harden and become a solid, without it the chocolate is stuck melted.
milk chocolate would be further affected by the change with the whey protein vs the traditional milk. I don't really know what affects this would have on the chocolate, but I cannot imagine that it is good.
As for the vegetable oil change, I would not know how this would change the chocolate, but it is probably not very good either.
(for those interested, the Broma process is pretty much where they hang the ground beans from the ceiling in a warm room, the butter drips off the beans, it yields more butter than pressing)
Re:Real Chocolate: Scharffen Berger Bittersweet Da (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.thehersheycompany.com/news/release.asp
High pressure leakage (Score:3, Informative)
Herbal Medicine all laced with Pharma Medicine (Score:2, Informative)
As a dentist who is trained in pharmacology and who doesn't stand to benefit from pharma money, I would fully support the FDA regulating the wild wild west that is herbal medicine. FWIW I'm Asian and I grew up in an herbal culture.
buy local chocolate without the crud (Score:3, Informative)
If you were in England I would recommend a tasting at the L'Artisan du Chocolat factory in Ashford Kent. http://www.artisanduchocolat.com/ArtisanduChocola
Fine chocolate does not age well, does not travel well, and is wasted on an untutored pallet- just like fine wines, cheeses and scotch. There are many chocolatiers in New York, google for a factory-shop that does tastings.
Locally made, fresh, quality chocolate is something else. Hersey's is to Godvia as Godvia is to Michel Cluizel. There is a Michel Cluizel in NYC: http://www.chocolatmichelcluizel-na.com/about_us.
Vegetetable frickin' oil (Score:4, Informative)
It is poisonous bloody stuff. If you want to know why America (in particular) and western nations (in general) are all suffering out of control obesity and diabetes epidemics you need to look no further than the replacement of natural oils (peanut, coconut and butter), with so-called "healthy" polyunsaturates. Countries like India uses huge amounts of butter (ghee) and coconut oil and you don't see them with rampaging blood sugar levels, heart disease and all of the other side effects of eating crap like "Crisco" and margarines.
Ask yourself why these types of oils never spoil? If you leave margarine out of the refridgerator for a week, does it go off? Why? It doesn't go off because it is not bio-degradeable. If it is not biodegradable, then how is your body meant to metabolise it? Of course it can't, so what it does is "put it aside" and get on with the job of digesting everything else. After sufficient time of course your body will have put enough fat aside that you become fat. Fat builds up around the pancreas and voila, you've got diabetes.
So why do we eat this crap? Because US food interests want you to. The problem for US business interests is that most natural oils such as peanut, olive and coconut/palm oil are not produced in the US. The US does produce gobs of corn and soy however, not to mention that canola rubbish. The problem is that these crops do not produce much edible oil naturally, it has to be processed out of them. Another problem is that the resulting oils are quite unstable, meaning they react to oxygen (oxidize) quickly and spoil. This is a problem for the manufacturing, distribution and retail industries however, who really like long shelf lives and cheap storage (non-refrigerated). So what the industry does is to hydrogenate their oils, which means superheating the oil and passing it through hydrogen to fuse hydrogen molecules to the receptors that would normally fuse with the oxygen. This makes for an oil that is extremely stable but an unfortunate side effect is that it also becomes virtually undigestable. Sure you can eat it and you won't turn blue and die in a week, but then the same can be said for smoking too. Remember how corporate interests insisted that smoking couldn't hurt you until only a few years ago? Well the edible oil industry is no better than those criminals. They too use bogus science and massive amounts of money to produce a steady stream of lies and bullshit regarding the health benefits of eating processed vegetable oils. This began during the thirties and over time it has worked so well that the US is now the most overweight and unhealthy nation on earth, with other western nations scrambling to follow suit.
Now they want to stick that crap in chocolate. It's getting to the point that you wont be able to buy anything that isn't filled with this rubbish.
Essential reading:
The Oiling of America
http://www.westonaprice.org/knowyourfats/oiling.h
Other good sites;
http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/news/ng.asp?id=7
http://www.thescreamonline.com/essays/essays5-1/v
http://www.nexusmagazine.com/articles/DiabetesDec
http://www.jctonic.com/include/healingcrisis/12Hy
Re:Oh, great (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.wisdairy.com/AllAboutCheese/Cheesemaki
Carr Valley makes some of the best stuff out there. Try some Cave Aged Cardona and have your opinion of American cheese forever changed.
Go**amn it, tell what kind of diabetes!!!!!!!!! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Oh, great (Score:5, Informative)
No, it's a 150 year old chocolate company in SF that was bought by Lindt in 1998.
Weird how 3 of the best American chocolate companies are in the Bay Area... Ghiradelli, Guittard, and my personal favorite, Scharffen Berger (which really is one of the world's best, even if it was just bought by Hershey's last year
Re:chocolate, chocolatey,...chocolateyeyeyeyey (Score:3, Informative)
Re:FDA Attempt to Regulate Vitamins, Herbs as "Dru (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not going to bother to ask for a cite as that number is clearly made up. Next time make it, like, 97.2% or something.
The number is way off though. Before 1900 nearly all remedies were herbal; they've been in mankinds pharmacopia for about 7000 years according to recoded history and even chimps have been shown to know what roots and twigs to eat if they're sick.
Got a sore throat of a cough? Eat a teaspoon of tobasco or any hot hot thing. The heat numbs the throat instantly and expectorates the crap in your lungs. Or you can get guffenesin in a white pill. Same thing. Guess where it came from?
A Chinese remedy for "bad heart" is earthworm tea. Western medecine picked up on this a decade or so ago and calls it "Lumbrecin". It's still worms.
Of course there are bullshit herbal remedies, but there's lots and lots that actually do something. So I'm calling bullshit on the "95%" number. I too can pull numbers out of my ass.
You can't patent herbal remedies. Cogitate on that for a bit and understand big pharma pushes new drugs on doctors on a near daily basis. In fact if you look at the development of modern pharmocology you'll see that at the beginning of the 20th century we had mostly natural elixers and by the end these were gone in favour of "patent medecine" that now defines the western pharmocopia. To say most herbal cures won't work shows a remarkable lack of understanding of medecine. Many more work than do not. I don't know what the number is - but neither do you.
The placebo effect is quite reproducable - a friend did his thesis on this and the cure rate for it is 2-5% for all diseases across the board including cancer. (red ones work the best, green the least) In my mind this explains obvious bullshit lie Bach flower remedies and homeopathy.
But don't diss da 'erb, mon.
Re:Oh, great (Score:5, Informative)
Spinach Salad
Waldorf Salad
Apple Pie
Brownies
Fudge
Crabcake
Garbage Plate (yay Rochester)
TexMex
on and on and on...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_cuisine#The
Come on, we might be a country full of people from everywhere else, but we have our own style and cuisine.
Hydrogenated oil nonsense (Score:4, Informative)
The first statement is blatantly incorrect, the second is not relevant, and the third is clearly written by someone with no clue about chemistry. Hydrogenation has the purpose of transforming liquid oils containing unsaturated bonds, such as the peanut oil, into fats that are solid at room temperature (i.e. saturated fats). Saturated fats, which are completely natural, don't have any unsaturated bonds that can be oxidized either. A side effect of hydrogenation is that some unsaturated trans bonds are formed. How about reading a source with less bias and more scientific references? Trans fats on wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:
- Increased risk for coronary heart diseases: yes.
- Cancer: no scientific consensus.
- Diabetes: no scientific consensus.
- Overweight (compared to other fats): no scientific consensus.
No scientific consensus tends to mean that there are one or two studies that show a very small effect and other studies that don't show any effect at all. Even if such na effect exists, it is likely not significant compared to other health risks many people are taking (lack of exercise, smoking, breathing polluted air, to name a few).Re:Oh, great (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Vegetetable frickin' oil (Score:4, Informative)
You can make it on a stove with very little effort. Just melt unsalted butter over low heat and cook until it is a clear golden liquid. Spoon off any of the froth that appears on top. Continue to cook until it no longer froths. The milk solids will be at the bottom and the water should have all boiled off. The golden liquid on top is ghee.
Re:FDA Attempt to Regulate Vitamins, Herbs as "Dru (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Vegetetable frickin' oil (Score:3, Informative)
This article explains that India is actually having a huge problem with heart disease. This is partly related to the fact that more people can afford ghee and other unhealthy fats used there as India becomes more wealthy:
http://www.expresshealthcaremgmt.com/20041215/cri
Heart disease has actually been going down in the USA for decades:
http://www.crouse.org/WHA2/images/women%20&%20hea
"'Vegetable oil' is a synonym for 'heavily processed, hydrogenated oil which will kill you but makes good financial sense to the corporatised US food production industry'"
Vegetable oil in the USA is rarely hydrogenated anymore. "Vegetable oil" usually means soy oil, which accounts for 80% of national oil consumption. It is actually quite healthy compared to many other alternatives, and is arguably natural:
http://www.talksoy.com/FoodIndustry/oOil.htm [talksoy.com]
I agree that what the FDA is doing is wrong, but for a different reason - because I love chocolate, and I know this move will open the doors to even crappier chocolate replacing what we have now.
Re:Oh, great (Score:5, Informative)
Personally, I think that most "wine experts" are overblown windbags who engage in the worst overuse of metaphors in modern language. However, I do happen to agree with them now and again: every single time I've had anything from Stag's Leap, it's been incredible. Wines, like many other issues of taste, are difficult to come to any lasting consensus. You would do well to continue to trust your own taste over anyone else's.
(If you're in the mood for advice, you would do yourself a favor to lose the bit about California wines not being world class. You just come across as uninformed.)
Regards,
Ross
Re:Oh, great (Score:4, Informative)
Also, there are some of the world's best chocolatiers in America, imo, such as:
http://www.moonstruckchocolate.com/ [moonstruckchocolate.com]
http://www.johnandkiras.com/site/Welcome_business
http://www.vosgeschocolate.com/ [vosgeschocolate.com]
Of course, some of the world's worst chocolatiers are in the US also. We like to be the best at everything, including being the worst.
most corner stores in the UK sell decent stuff... (Score:4, Informative)
We had the same battle here if you remember about 10 years ago with European Union food people trying to get huge numbers of British "chocolate" bars relabelled as not-chocolate, The Sun newspaper and the other red tops threw a wobbly. Shortly after that an American friend of discerning taste introduced me to proper chocolate (higher cocoa content) in France and then I realised yup, now I see why these food guys in Belgium and France wouldn't feed their dog on the stuff I've been eating.
US chocolate is pretty poor generally though in my experience, I think over there you have to go to expensive boutiques to find what you get in an average ASDA/Walmart or Tescos here.
Re:There is already crud in the chocolate. (Score:2, Informative)
...A little vegetable oil is not going to make a big difference.
Dude, that's horrible.
Palm oil is totally unsaturated and worse for your heart and arteries than lard. You bet that if you spend over 200 bucks a month on this stuff it is going to make a difference.
I'd switch to higher quality (Swiss or Belgian) chocolate if I were you.
Re:Oh, great (Score:3, Informative)
Godiva I do know well though. Its an excellent chocolate - if you buy it in europe (where its made in belgium)
The stuff sold in the states is terrible though, like most us chocolate, it leaves a nasty waxy taste in your mouth - as I understand it consumption grade parafin is allowed to be added in certain quantities there and it still legally count as chocolate.
Its not as if you have to buy luxary chocolate here to get anything decent - a dairy milk bar is fine - and is still far supierior to anything I tried from the supermarket shelves in the states.
While I do like going to luxary chocolate stores, you know there is something wrong when its the only way you can find decent chocolate - as is the case in the us.
A bit of clarification (Score:5, Informative)
I'm the technical director of a chocolate company. I've been making chocolate for many, many years.
The proposal from the GMA isn't directed just at chocolate, but would include it. It essentially calls for the use of 'all safe and suitable' sweeteners and oils. Chocolate has a standard of identity, which means that the government controls the definition of chocolate. That definition can be changed (white chocolate actually didn't legally exist until a few years go, at which time a white chocolate section was added to the CFR) - however it takes many, many years to do so (white chocolate took over a decade).
This is driven by a number of things, which include, but are not limited to:
1) the desire to be able to legally call sugar free products sugar free chocolate, when formulated to meet the other standards
2) the desire to harmonize global chocolate standards - most of the rest of the world allows the use of up to 5% CBE (cocoa butter equivilants - these are oils that are chemically the same as cocoa butter, but are usually - not always - more economical).
ANY change would be required to be labelled, so no one would pull anything over on you, same as it is today. Mfr's would be able to choose to do this or not, it would not be a requirement, so it's not that all chocolate would change overnight. My take on it is that the GMA has written this petition so broadly as to be ridiculous, hoping that the FDA allows on a portion of what was asked for. It will likely take years before the FDA even acknowledges it 8-)
Re:Food = DEATH. (Score:3, Informative)
Now, there are a very few wines that do not contain added sulfites. Some are meant to be oxidized--primarily these are amontillado sherries; the only oxidized table wines I can think of are certain relatively obscure wines from the Jura region of France. Also, there is a burgeoning movement toward "natural" wines; the term is rather loosely defined, but is intended to go beyond organic and biodynamic wine-making, which refers only to the viniculture (that is, the farming), and also encompass a pure and "non-interventionist" approach to vinification as well. In general, "natural" wines are organically if not biodynamically grown, use ambient yeasts instead of cultivated yeasts (this is a big one), do not add sugar before fermentation to raise alcohol content, do not leach off excess alcohol, do not add or subtract acids, do not contain artificial additives to change color or taste, do not ferment or age with oak chips or dust or staves, do not add lab-synthesized tannins to round out their tannin profile, and do not undergo a process known as micro-oxygenation in which very tiny amounts of oxygen are pumped through wine to speed up the aging process and mimic the slow exposure to oxygen that leaks into the oak barrels in which many expensive wines are aged. (Yes, all of these techniques, and more, are very commonly used in the making of wine from all quality levels.) They typically do not add sulfites before fermentation (it would kill the natural yeasts). Some of them eschew the use of artificial temperature controls during vinification--they ferment at whatever temperature it is outside.
And some of them, very few, do not add sulfites after fermentation to preserve their wines. They are hoping that very careful vinification will protect their wine from bacterial contamination, and the proper preservative balance of alcohol, acidity and tannin will allow their wine to last a few years without oxidizing; they believe the lack of sulfites gives their wines a freshness and purity that is missing from other wines. (Note that this approach is pretty much only possible with dry red wines--dry so that ambient yeasts would not cause refermentation, and red because tannin is needed to stave off oxidation.)
As for the notion some people that the sulfites in wine give them a headache, this is poppycock. Almost always these people complain about red wines, while in fact whites have higher levels of sulfites, because they don't have tannins (which are also preservatives). Perhaps these people are reacting to something else in red wine (like tannin, or other anti-oxidants which are more prevalent in reds), or perhaps it's just psychosomatic. (Apparently studies have confirmed that Red Wine Headache really does exist in certain people, although the cause is not yet known. Additionally, some people really are allergic to sulfites, which is why the label is required, but this shows up as trouble breathing, not a headache.)
Finally, age-adjusted cancer rates in the US and across the developed world have come significantly down (once better detection is factored in), and indeed most types of "human health problems that we know of" are improving. This is primarily due to sharply reduced exposure to pollution, brought on by the Clean Air Act and other regulations, and by a shift in the labor market from more physically strenuous jobs which also often entailed exposure to a harmful environment, to office jobs. Having said that, I agree that overall the American food system is in a sorry state and that the FDA is completely captured by the worst elements of the industry they are supposed to regulate.
And if you see it any other way, I'm sorry, but you are a complete and utter moron with no knowledge about the topic.
Re:Oh, great (Score:4, Informative)
I might be a snob, but while I used to like Dairy Milk as a child, these days I think it's horrible.
The quality of chocolate varies enormously. I've tried Hershey chocolate, it reminds me of the description of the Nutri-Matic tea from the Hitch Hikers Guide - almost, but not quite, entirely unlike chocolate. I can fully understand why Americans taste Dairy Milk and rave about how good it is, if this is what they have for comparison.
Dairy Milk is many times better than Hershey but I now find it to be excessively sweet and greasy.
The bare minimum standard for me has become Green & Blacks milk. G&B milk contains 37% cocoa solids, whereas Dairy Milk is 22%. I tend to prefer darker chocolate now. The G&B dark with sour cherries can make my eyelids flutter, it's that good.
A small bag of fresh chocolates from the local chocolatier (shipped from Belgium) was a weekly treat until my wife developed a conscience about child slavery on cocoa plantations. They beat out any boxed chocolate that I'd tasted before. I'm spoiled for the mass-manufactured brands now, I can really taste the difference in flavour, which I attribute to nasty synthetic ingredients and preservatives.
The absolute best chocolate I've ever had was sourced from a chocolatier in Purbeck, UK [chococo.co.uk]. Never mind that they claim to be ethically sound, their chocolates are inspiringly good. Alas, the price is a little prohibitive - I think I shall be restricting my custom to less than once every two months.
My wife can still enjoy Dairy Milk, even if she does appreciate the finer stuff, but I shall never buy it again.
Not Traditional (Score:1, Informative)
Not so, it's added as a glazing agent to make the chocolate more appealing and shiny. It hides the powdery crystals that badly made chocolate has.
http://www.jobyandmartys.com/sg347.php [jobyandmartys.com]
Joby and Martys all natural chocolate:
Dark chocolate (sugar, cocoa butter, chocolate liquor, soya lecithin - an emulsifier, vanilla) non-hydrogenated palm oil, soybean oil, peppermint oil, white non-pareil seeds (sugar, corn starch, confectioners glaze and carnauba wax*) and green non-pareil seeds (sugar, corn starch, spinach powder, and carnauba wax*)
Whats confectioners glaze?
Confectioners glaze is an alcohol based solution of various types of Food Grade Shellac.
Whats Shellac?
Shellac is a brittle or flaky secretion of the lac insect Kerria lacca, found in the forests of Assam and Thailand.
Yum bug droppings.
Re:Oh, great (Score:1, Informative)
Re:most corner stores in the UK sell decent stuff. (Score:1, Informative)
Chocolate is deadly for dogs, especially good chocolate (it's the cocoa that's the problem).
Re:Oh, great (Score:5, Informative)
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 laying of rail. Whereas we certainly didn't invent the sandwich, it turns out that we invented most individual sandwich recipes; in many cases they're just adaptations of a traditional dish to work inbetween bread, so that we wouldn't have to let our workers stop working for food (because we're jerks,) but still, if you're going to say pasta's different than chinese noodles, then you'd better damned well believe that pretty much anything you eat between two slabs of starch came from us or the Count of Monte Cristo.
Benedictine (the cheese, not the alcohol) is ours, as is what Americans call "mock turtle soup." We derived that recipe from the Welsh, but it's been wholly replaced since; Kentucky mock turtle soup would not be recognized in Wales. Queen City Chilighetti is ours, unfortunately, as are scrapple and polenta mash (though polenta mash has existed several other times seperately.) People will tell you that Hominy Grits are the same thing as polenta or as farina; in both cases they're wrong, and America gets the credit for grits.
Anything involving cranberries is ours, which is why you've never eaten mossberry stuffing or drank fenberry juice. We've put things into Pierogi that the Poles never thought of. Corn, wild rice, tomato, pork and lam gan? It's gotta be from Chicago. For that matter, Chicago Deep Dish is not pizza, and Chicago Hot Dogs aren't frankfurters or wieners. Shrimp de Jonghe and the oddly-named "Italian Beef" are ours. We invented the Coney Island Dog, as well as their derivative, the Corn Dog. The Juicy Lucy is ours. We made Honeycrisps and Betty Crockers.
Soul food is ours. If you don't know what soul food is, don't bother looking it up.
Ice cream in its current form is an American invention. I don't know whether foreigners use that word in its traditional form or in the form that Americans currently use. However, if you hop into a time machine and go back 150 years, you can't get what we call Ice Cream at all. You could get what we now call frozen custard, which is as similar to ice cream as tortilla is to bread.
We make a dish called "toasted ravioli," which isn't actually toasted at all; they're breaded and fried filled dumplings, and they're as close to pierogi as they are to ravioli. Fish boil (burbot,) fish fry (eelpout,) loose meat sandwiches, pasties, primanti sandwiches, Pittsburghers and sugar cream pies: the midwesterner's fantasy mystery buffet. Cheese curd is American, no matter what those rat bastard Canucks tell you (they call it poutine.) Loaf gyro is ours. Ponyshoe, persimmon pudding, pea salad and pot pie. Johnny Marzettis and Sweet Corn Kruellers. If it contains something called a ramp instead of a leek, it's probably American. Just about anything involving turkey or blueberries. Most anything involving tomatos, corn or bell peppers came from one of the American continents; cross out anything in the list that looks even vaguely spanish, and you've got a huge list of American foods.
Oh, and by the way, THE ITALIANS DO NOT EAT SPAGHETTI AND MEATBALLS. Yes, we really invented that. Similarly, we do some stuffed peppers that are like salsiccia, some like cradoré, some like what the French call stuffed peppers, but we do a whole bunch that are entirely our own.
We invented jello, even though gelatin is long since well known. You think it's obvious to add fruit juice to boiled cow bones, color it green and hand it to kids? Then how come France never did it? What Americans call meatloaf is a long ways from the French dish of its origin.
Despite what all the cluetards say about American cheese, we're actually doing pretty well on cheese.
The Italians have a bread called Muffuletta. The word in New Orleans applies to an entire sandwich. We didn't invent the bread, but the sandwich is ours.
What a New Yorker would call "sunday gravy" is still kind of similar to Atsa Napoletana, but it's different enough that every time I made it for an Italian, they asked me what it was.
If it's got yams, sweet potatoes, morning glory, coconut, breadfruit or banana, you can attribute it to Hawaii. If it's got spam in it, it's probably from Hawaii or Wisconsin, though we can blame the really bad ones on Britain. Kahlua is Hawaiian, as are essentially all derivative dishes (if you don't know what Kahlua Pig is, go find a Hawaiian resteraunt.) If it's called Ahi instead of Tuna, it's either Hawaiian, or an Americanized Japanese resteraunt trying to make their Tekka Make seem more exotic to Americans too dumb to know how win Tuna is. Poi, Saimin, Plate Lunch, Loco Moco and Poke are Hawaiian. The tragic reformulation of Musubi and Onigiri to involve spam are Hawaii's fault.
Pemmican. Succotash. Most things involving squash and pumpkin. Asi (which is not the same as black drink) and Xocolatl (the famous Aztec chocolate/hot pepper drink) both come from what's now the Texas area, though they're from the indigenous peoples.
New York City alone is responsible for Waldorf salad, Eggs Benedict, Steak Diane, the Egg Cream, Vichyssoise, Ice cream cones, the Bloody Mary, Pasta primavera, Chicken à la King, Lobster Newburg, Delmonico steak, General Tso's chicken, malomars and the idea of putting ice cream into a rolled waffle (which eventually turned into ice cream cones.) NYC is probably the only place on Earth where you can get an Arepa, some Gyoza, a potato knish, a pretzel, shwarma and a kebab on the same city block.
Do I need to keep going? I haven't even started in on any of the parts of the country I've lived in, yet.
America has the third largest population of any nation on Earth, as well as way too much money and way too much food. We have a higher service store count per population than any other country. Do you really believe that with all those in our favor, we'd have invented nothing?
Why it is that people confuse ignorance with absence is beyond me.
I can't think of a civilization which has had the potato for more than a hundred years and hasn't figured out to shred and fry it. As far as I know, this practice begins in ancient Persia. However, since you're pretending to be familiar with Swiss food, let's go for Rösti, which are a thousand years old. Latke are two thousand years old, and in some cultures the potato is only riced, leaving what amounts to a potato pancake (which, amusingly, is what the Dutch have called them for 500 years.) The Irish do it, the Italians do it, the Carthagensians do it, even the Canadians do it, and the Canadians don't even have fire.
Re:SunnyD isn't orange juice.... ORLY? YARLY!! (Score:3, Informative)
And, despite your use of "juices" in quotes, none are actually identified as "Juice".
They are all identified as "fruit drinks". Which kind of undermines your point about drawing a comparison of what you are allowed to call "juice".
Re:Oh, great (Score:3, Informative)