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 ($2.30/lb.), and whey protein for dry whole milk. There are already standard terms to differentiate these products from chocolate, such as 'chocolatey' and 'chocolate-flavored.' The change was requested by the industry group Chocolate Manufacturers of America. Leading the resistance to this change is high-end chocolate maker Guittard, with significant grass-roots support from the Candyblog. The FDA is taking consumer comments until April 25. Here is the FDA page on the proposed change, which oddly enough does not say what the proposed change is."
Oh, great (Score:4, Insightful)
How Chocolate is made: (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Oh, great (Score:3, Insightful)
I am someone who like pizza and beer, and I know there are lots of good pizzas and beers to be found out there. Of course, everyone's definition of a good beer is different, but I've come across a lot of really good stuff in America, from John Harvard's house brews in Boston to Sierra Nevada and Anchor Steam in Frisco.
And apparently there are some good American wines out there, though I don't really give a shit about wine. I believe something called Screaming Eagle has quite a good reputation and is from California.
As for the FDA decision, well, I'm all for stricter standards in food naming, generally speaking, even when it's a luxury food.
FDA "accepting" comments (Score:5, Insightful)
After which time they will toss them out and make a re$pon$ible deci$ion.
No! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:FDA Attempt to Regulate Vitamins, Herbs as "Dru (Score:5, Insightful)
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. (Score:5, Insightful)
Real Chocolate: Scharffen Berger Bittersweet Dark (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a healthy and damn tasteful alternative to "corporate chocolate": Scharffen Berger [scharffenberger.com] 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 [wholefoodsmarket.com].
Re:Oh, great (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:EU has much higher standards for chocolate (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:FDA Attempt to Regulate Vitamins, Herbs as "Dru (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
File a comment against it if you like chocolate... (Score:3, Insightful)
--
+1 for low user id
Re:Oh, great (Score:2, Insightful)
As if American chocolate wasn't bad enough as it is...
Sheesh. You do realize that the USA is a really, really big place, right? There are literally thousands of chocolate makers. I assume this insightful comment is based on sampling each and every one of them, right? (I know this is insightful because, after all, Slashdot moderated it so).
In other news, America makes great beer, wine, cheese, ice cream, meat, etc, etc, etc -- and also awful examples of the latter products, depending on the price you want to pay.
Re:There is already crud in the chocolate. (Score:4, Insightful)
Why eat shitty chocolate when you can have good stuff? My SO finds that if we buy crappy chocolate, she just eats more of it and isn't satisfied. Good chocolate like the above satisfies her in an ounce or two (or three) serving size, so she eats less and enjoys more.
Re:This... (Score:5, Insightful)
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:As long as the Swiss and the Belgians (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:EU has much higher standards for chocolate (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:FDA Attempt to Regulate Vitamins, Herbs as "Dru (Score:3, Insightful)
The world before modern medicine was a pretty shitty place if you got sick. Sure, there are local herbs etc that have been used--with HIGHLY varying success--in every part of the world, forever. This is as true of America and Europe than it is of China, though I take your obsession with China means you're "one of those" who think we can look east for all our answers, and believe this with near religious fervor. Do you HONESTLY believe that "Chinese herbs" have a better track record than Western medicine... REALLY?!
Vitamins--PURE NATURAL VITAMNS (that means they're good, right?)--can at most cause a "tummyache" you claim. Let's see... this is all from a VERY quick google.
Overdoses of...
Vitamin A -- "can lead to liver damage, hair loss, blurred vision and headaches."
Vitamin B3 (niacin) -- "Niacin can have life-threatening acute toxic reactions" (wikipedia)
Vitamin D -- "can cause the buildup of calcium deposits that can interfere with the functioning of muscles, including heart tissue"
Ok, so you admitted diarrhea, nausea, upset stomach etc as vitamin sideeffects, from the list above we can add liver damage, and in some cases death. Well dang, what a SHOCK, those are almost the exact possible side effects you listed as coming from BIG SCARY PHARMA!!!
How ludicrous can you get. Really, I would think slashdotters should be able to be a little more questioning of things...
Incidentally... tobacco.. natural, bad DRUG. Marijuana? Natural drug. Alcohol? Natural drug. I think it's safe to say that natural things can have bad side effects, and can be called "drugs," friend..
Re:Oh, great (Score:3, Insightful)
Living here, indeed I do, and I realize I wasn't exactly verbose, but I was referring to commodity chocolate, the kind of stuff you might find at a gas station. I know you can find incredible chocolate at specialty stores and the like.
However, if we're just talking about off-the-shelf style candy, I'll take the European stuff any day. For some reason most Americans seem just fine with the brown wax misleadingly known as "chocolate", but anyone who has tried candy from abroad knows what we're missing out on.
Re:There is already crud in the chocolate. (Score:3, Insightful)
My personal theory on this and more is, that if you have to mention something you're probably trying too hard to get people to notice it.
Re:FDA Attempt to Regulate Vitamins, Herbs as "Dru (Score:5, Insightful)
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. [iol.co.za]
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.
Re:EU has much higher standards for chocolate (Score:1, Insightful)
Who cares about America these days? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Oh, great (Score:0, Insightful)
But I can't really blame most Americans for not knowing any better.
Re:FDA Attempt to Regulate Vitamins, Herbs as "Dru (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:FDA Attempt to Regulate Vitamins, Herbs as "Dru (Score:3, Insightful)
Really? I was under the impression that today's life spans are remarkably longer and medicine substantially more effective than not only anything in recorded history, but definitely more than so-called "natural" medicine you see nowadays.
That's because the FDA doesn't regulate herbs and vitamins, which is where the requirement for listing adverse side effects comes from. If all of a sudden the FDA stopped regulating pharmaceutical drugs, would you somehow think they were better because of a lack of warnings? Of course not.
Even though you're throwing evolution around in your argument, you obviously don't understand a goddamn thing about science. We are not "f'ing" with mother nature. We are fixing the system. Our evolution is not perfect. There is no such thing as "Mother Nature". You are a complete fucking idiot. Herbal healing is just another long line of ideas that claim that science is going too far and we need to resort to the traditional ways of thinking, be it Christian Science, acupuncture, or any number of other bullshit ideologies.
The only way to know the truth of how drugs affect our bodies is through science. I know that there is scientific evidence for specific herbs' uses in medicine, and that's fine. Herbs certainly have valid uses. But to claim (as you seem to be doing) that traditional herbal medicine is superior to modern medicine simply because of some adverse side effects and lobbying power by pharmaceutical companies is to ignore nearly the entire body of scientific study on medicine! You can't cherry-pick which scientific ideas you want to accept, simply because some conflict with your pre-conceived view of the world.
If you're going to try and be conservative at least extend the effort to remove any and all references to scientific ideas from your post. That's what the "smart" conservatives do. I wish I could find language to explain the contempt I feel for your ideas. No matter how venomous my words may seem they will not project the absolute hatred I have for whoever has convinced you that this bullshit is anything remotely resembling the truth.
Re:EU has much higher standards for chocolate (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:EU has much higher standards for chocolate (Score:2, Insightful)
We eat shrimp, lobsters, and crabs all the time. Insects belong to the same family of animals (arthropods). Thus I don't quite get the insectaphobia. I think it is perhaps the association of insects with dung and scavengry that turns us off.
Re:FDA Attempt to Regulate Vitamins, Herbs as "Dru (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:EU has much higher standards for chocolate (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:There is already crud in the chocolate. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm Belgian. Belgium has great chocolate. When I visited NYC this was something that I noticed a lot. The chocolate sold in stores there was awful. Even the absolute best tasting brand (according to the US friend I was staying with) tasted worse than average belgian chocolate.
I guess the US chocolate manufacturers went for profit at the expense of quality.
Re:FDA Attempt to Regulate Vitamins, Herbs as "Dru (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason they aren't regulated as drugs is historical and political. Many were "grandfathered" in as GRAS when early laws such as the Pure Food and Drug Act were passed. When the FDA attempts to regulate them, the manufacturers can point to the law and scream to their congressmen that the FDA is breaking the law -- which it is.
Of course, not all herbals work as claimed. There is no shortage of crooks pushing bogus cures or impure formulae, and they're going to congregate where legal oversight is the weakest.
Some examples of herbs that work are too obvious to be successfully denied. Willow bark contains salicylates, providing the same mechanism for pain relief that the chemically related aspirin provides. Peppermint relieves indigestion. Foxglove provides digitalis, a heart medicine.
Re:Oh, great (Score:2, Insightful)
Reading over what I just wrote I realize that I come off a bit harsh. But Anchor Steam Ale. Argh. Still gets me.
It can't be compared to such heavy hitters from across the sea as Aventinus Weizenbock, Thames Welsh Bitter, Coniston's Bluebird Bitter, Fuller's Porter, Paulaner Salvator Dopplebock, Spaten Optimator, Affligem Tripel, Caffrey's (sadly gone?), Tetley's, Duvel, Corsendonk, Franziskaner Hefe Weiss, Beamish, etc., etc..
We're getting better, though. I hear Saranac now has a Double Bock.
Re:Oh, great (Score:4, Insightful)
>
> Anything I listed there might have been of influence from elsewhere, but it has a different spin.
> If that makes it "bad" in your mind, then fine. Pizza, as we know it, is based on an italian dish,
> it's still American. You can say we didn't invent the concept of dough baked with toppings, but neither did the
> italians.
Indeed, as my (Chinese) wife keeps reminding me
I'm not sure of the validity of your claim though - how far back do you go? Can you really 'invent' something like food? Like I said, how different does it need to be before it becomes original?
I haven't noticed any difference between American Apple Pie and that I know from England. Predictably, it's somewhat more sugary, and a little different 'style' on the top, but it's too simple to be very different. Similarly with pizza - how different can it be?
Re:EU has much higher standards for chocolate (Score:2, Insightful)
Possibly some unknown properties???? Name me something that doesn't 'possibly' have unknown properties!!! Including lying in bed with the windows closed!!
Of course, if they're unknown, they're just as likely to be beneficial as damaging. So perhaps this synthetic petrochemical dye will double the size of your dick, or give you undreamed-of super crime-fighting powers? You never know with "possibly unknown properties (TM)"!!
Long live the precautionary principle!
Way too Late... (Score:4, Insightful)
so try and replace peanut butter with Peanut-Vegetable Margarine and then try to stomach it..double points if both use olestra.
Storm
Re:Oh, great (Score:2, Insightful)
I've had american cadbureys before, and hersheys, and lindt, and UK cadbureys and rowntree products, and their AUS counterparts, hell I've even had a wide selection of swiss chocolates (highly recommended); but NEVER have I seen the kind of product that is sold in the high-class chocolate boutiques here in Belgium.
For those of you who are interested and live in the NYC area, I'd recommend looking for a Pierre Marcolini boutique that recently opened there.
Re:Oh, great (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:EU has much higher standards for chocolate (Score:3, Insightful)
It IS a different product. It should be labeled as such. As other posters have mentioned, would you buy something labeled as beef if you knew it was actually mostly soy? Businesses need to be kept in check to, god forbid, PROTECT THE CONSUMER'S INTERESTS.
SunnyD isn't orange juice.... ORLY? YARLY!! (Score:5, Insightful)
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).
Re:FDA Attempt to Regulate Vitamins, Herbs as "Dru (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:SunnyD isn't orange juice.... ORLY? YARLY!! (Score:4, Insightful)
One thing the US totally lacks is consumer protection.
Chocolate here is waxy and a far cry from what Europeans think of as chocolate to begin with. Even the horrible Cadbury chocolates are miles from the wax tablets that Hershey and other US companies foist on US consumers. And even if you try to buy a European brand, it's most likely remade to an American recipe, presumably to save money because Americans can't tell the difference anyhow. US produced Godiva, for example, is (like almost all US chocolate) mostly made with corn syrup instead of sugar.
It's quite telling that Americans consider "Lindt" a gourmet brand, when it's one of the worst commercial produced chocolates in Europe.
Re:Food = DEATH. (Score:3, Insightful)
"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.)....."
was exactly what I was talking about. A friend of mine was fired from a vineyard for exposing exactly this practice. Sulfites are primarily added to lesser wines. So, though you are far more informed than I am on this topic, my original point seems to be corroborated by the facts, even as you present them. A truly good wine would not add them because it would be made in a clean environment avoiding bacteria.
As for white wine: Who actually drinks that noxious crap?
Heart disease, cancer, and obesity are on the rise, or already at all time highs. Last I checked those were three of the main killers in this country.
For those other critics who wanted some numbers:
American Heart Association estimates for the year 2004 that 79,400,000 Americans have one or more forms of cardiovascular disease (CVD). So 80 million of 300 million of us have heart disease. That's about a quarter of us, or one in four.
From a Harvard study: Obesity is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality, causing some 2.6 million deaths worldwide each year.....In 2002, the corrected prevalence of obesity in the U.S. population was 28.7% for adult men and 34.5% for adult women, more than 50% higher than previously estimated. So one in three of us is obese and will die sooner (probably) as a result of that.
From the Cancer cure foundation: Over much of the 1990s, deaths from cancer declined slightly in the US, but the number of Americans diagnosed with certain cancers--including breast, skin and liver cancer--inched up. So less people are DYING of cancer, but more people are being diagnosed with it, and probably living shorter life spans.
From a report issued by the Center for Disease Control: Cancer is the second leading cause of death among Americans. One of every four deaths in the US is due to cancer. In 2006, about 1.4 million Americans will receive a new diagnosis of invasive cancer, and 564,830 Americans will die of this disease. These estimates do not include the more than 1 million cases of
So, yeah, I think public health has diminished and PEOPLE ARE DYING because the FDA is not protecting them from carcinogens in the food, and other toxins that lead to heart disease.
And if you see it any other way, I'm sorry, but you are STILL a complete and utter moron with no knowledge about the topic.
Re:Oh, great (Score:3, Insightful)
When it comes to chocolate it really does suck to be an American
The biggest problem is that it has been a problem for so long that the majority of us don't know any better.
Well, a) this is all relative, and b) there is certainly chocolate in America that will measure up to any standard in the world. Here [mrchocolate.com] is one example.
I've been to Europe, and quite frankly, the stuff you get in grocery stores there is no better than Hershey's. If you want to compare high end chocolate, then you've gotta compare apples to apples - you can't compare boutique chocolate in Europe to mass produced chocolate in the US. We've got boutique chocolate just as good as Europe, and they've got mass produced chocolate just as bad as us.
And a lot of countries have it worse, even in mass produced chocolate. Japan has awful chocolate, for one example. It's waxy and nearly tasteless - it's like that really cheap stuff they put in chocolate easter bunnies here. This is almost universal there; it's not a particular brand. It's just what people are used to. My wife (who is Japanese) never liked chocolate before she moved to the United States - now she can't get enough of it, even if it's just Hershey's, but especially if it's something like Jacques Torres.
So you don't know how good we've got it.
Re:SunnyD isn't orange juice.... ORLY? YARLY!! (Score:3, Insightful)