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."
Re:There is already crud in the chocolate. (Score:1, Interesting)
Social Conscience Warning (Score:1, Interesting)
This seems like a possible solution, or free trade chocolate.
Nestle in particular is a nasty piece of work. They have a program that gives 2 months of baby formula to new mothers in Africa (long enough for their mamaries to stop producing milk) and then charge them exorbidant rates for the next 9-10 months of formula they will need, and their formula has serious health risks.
I know it sucks, I love chocolate too but ignoring it won't make it go away.
Re:Oh, great (Score:1, Interesting)
Re: There is already crud in the chocolate. (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [tava.com.au]
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
Re:FDA Attempt to Regulate Vitamins, Herbs as "Dru (Score:3, Interesting)
And they got the crap sued out of them for it. What's your point?
The crazy sad thing is that I agree with you about choice--that's my dislike of the government speaking though, and not my drinking your anti-corporate koolaid though.
Codex Alimentarius standards seem to match US (Score:5, Interesting)
The Codex Alimentarius [codexalimentarius.net], the international standards body for food, has a standard for chocolate [codexalimentarius.net]. They require >35% cocoa solids for "chocolate". And they limit other fats:
"The addition of vegetable fats other than cocoa butter shall not exceed 5% of the finished product, after deduction of the total weight of any other added edible foodstuffs, without reducing the minimum contents of cocoa materials. Where required by the authorities having jurisdiction, the nature of the vegetable fats permitted for this purpose may be prescribed in applicable legislation.
What are the numbers in the FDA proposal?
Re:Social Conscience Warning (Score:2, Interesting)
If I'm going to boycot Nestle and tell other people to follow my example, which I will if you can substantiate your claim, I prefer to have facts.
I googled 'Nestle "2 months" "baby formula" "new mothers" Africa' and didn't find anything that supports your claim about Nestle intentionaly trying to cause the women to not breast feed. I did find some articles that talked about when Nestle gave samples of powdered fomulae to women who did not have access to safe water and that the women also, in an effort to streach out what they had been given, added more water than was called for. There where deaths due to malnutrition (caused by the thinned formule) and dysentary (caused by the contaminated water) which considering that the women where likely malnurished, and therefore not lactating anyway, and drinking contaminated water it is hard to say without more info if the children died as a result of Nestle's actions as you insinuate in your comment. It apears that Nestle just showed poor judgment in not providing premixed fomula. There was no indication of criminally wrongfull intent by Nestle, nor was there anything about the fomulae itself being dangerous, they just wanted to get the women to use their product, they do the same thing everywhere.
I am not defending Nestle for their actions.
I am however asking you to substantiate your claims with facts and not rumor or inuendo.
The world already has enough people who act on rumors and inuendo, ignoring substantiated facts, they're called politicians.
Sugar and corn syrup industry (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:There is already crud in the chocolate. (Score:3, Interesting)
That's a good place to start. My kids like that stuff. Up here in Canadia eh we get the 85% in many many gas stations and one large chain of pharmacies ("Shoppers Drug Mart") carries a fairly extensive Lindt selection. Like 70%, 85% and 99%. Like the varietals: Cuban (which you yanks can't get), Ecuadoran and Madagascar.
The Ecuadoran is different, it's a diffferent kind of cocoa bean that is only grown in Ecuador and is more complex than the other kind which is grown everywhere. The Cuban does honest to goddess have a cigar vibe to it and the Malagasy does have a vanilla vibe to it.
The 99% is more like a drug than candy. It has a little brown sugar in it and the rest is cocao solids. It comes in the same cardboard package the other Lindt dark bars come in but instead of a 5mm thick bar wrapped in foil you get a plastic tray, sealed which you then open and find a 2mm thick bar inside that's scored into pieces the size of small postage stamps. I can easily eat a bar of any Lindt dark in one night but the 99% lasts sometimes up to a week. It is just that powerful that you eat one or maybe two squares and baby that's it. You just don't feel like you want any more chocolate. It's so powerful you can eat a square with a decent size piece of crystallized ginger and all you can taste is chocolate. With a decent espresso it makes one FUCK of a great breakfast. Yeah baby.
We have a lot of yurros up here and yurro food stores are common. There are all sorts of French and Belgian chocolate bars that aspire to be Lindt, but in a blind side by side taste test, none, not even both being Ecuadoran, can come close to Lindt.
There probably are better chocolatiers than Lindt. But I've never found any and I've spent an unhealthy amout of time and money on this, uhm, "research".
Since I found the cache of Lindt at Shoppers I've passed on all other chocolate. Cadburys? Shirly, you jest. Why bother?
Re:Oh, great (Score:3, Interesting)
Scharffen Berger is truly awesome stuff, though. I've only eaten one bar but it was clearly done right!
You're both right! (Score:4, Interesting)
Firstly you are correct when you say that the world before modern medicine was a pretty shi**y place. Almost anything could kill you, like, say a broken leg which could leads to loss of blood or infection. Brain trauma, giving birth was a particularly dangerous undertaking, and a chariot accident was no picnic either. Anything like that happens to me and or someone I care about and you'll see me taking them to the hospital without delay. Western Medicine simply has no equal at this kind of thing.
On the other side of the coin, we are living FAR longer than we ever did in the past (due mainly to proper nutrition and sanitation!) and Western Medicine has a far poorer track-record dealing with the new diseases of the affluent world; Cancers, arthritis, diabetes, joint deterioration and so on (you're getting old!). So our society is re-examining what it means to be healthy. Back in the day, the absence of disease or obvious injury was enough, now health is something that can be achieved to a greater or lesser degree. This means that no matter how healthy you are now, you can always strive to better your condition. (Stop eating all those fatty foods!) The UN now defines health something like this: The complete physical, mental, social, spiritual and (something-else-I-can't-pull-off-the-top-of-my-he
Dallas Food article (Score:1, Interesting)
http://www.dallasfood.org/modules.php?name=News&f
Re:Oh, great (Score:3, Interesting)
Overly oaked wine surrounded by an impervious wall of tannin is a very California Cab thing. I can't drink the stuff. There's zero fruit to the wine and no chance for subtleness because of the oak and tannins.
As for what the French buy in their local supermarket. It's crap. Your average French consumer buys their equivalent of "Gallo", just like the average American consumer.
The French make the best wine in the world. They also make the worst wine in the world. This may be because they are more willing to take chances. When it works, it's wonderful, when it fails, it's a disaster. While the Napa wineries want consistentsy (probably because American wine consumers expect the same taste from a specific label every year), so treat winemaking more as a scientific and manufacturing process. There are, fortunately, local wineries that are willing to take chances (let nature do her job) and produce some outstanding stuff when the weather cooperates. In those cases, our wines come close to French Bordeaux quality. Even surpassing them in an exceptional year.
BTW, on my last trip to the wine store (yesterday) I picked up two California zins, an Australian shiraz, a French Bordeaux, and two bottles of Hungarian Tokaji.
Re:Oh, great (Score:3, Interesting)
My personal favorite American chocolatier is Recchiuti [recchiuti.com], which is also based in San Francisco. Also, here's a good ranking of American chocolate companies [xoxtruffles.com]. I find that Richart's 49-flavor Petits Richart collection [richart-chocolates.com] is particularly tasty.
Re:There is already crud in the chocolate. (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Hotel Chocolat http://www.hotelchocolat.co.uk/ [hotelchocolat.co.uk] (a fairly new chain in the UK) do some 100% chocolate Hacienda Iara Organic Dark 100% £4.25 for 75g http://www.hotelchocolat.co.uk/productmixmatch.as
Break a bit off. Let it slowly dissolve on the tongue and savour that bitter chocolate taste unspoiled by added sugars and fats. (The very first time you eat it you can't really believe it's chocolate but once you've had a few bits you can only taste the impurities in cheap chocolate).
Tim.
Re:SunnyD isn't orange juice.... ORLY? YARLY!! (Score:5, Interesting)
In the early 20th century Dutch government passed a law to forbid calling margarine butter (even the Dutch word for peanutbutter translates to 'peanutcheese' because of that law!). So why not keeping 'chocolate' real and invent something new for these industrial bullies. Like we can buy have 'Cocoa fantasy' flakes for on the bread.
Whatever. Already buying Euro bars (Score:3, Interesting)
If American manufacturers want to sacrifice purity with crap ingredients, that's just something else to buy elsewhere.
Re:Oh, great (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:Oh, great (Score:3, Interesting)
That said, we are waking up some. The groceries that cater to organics and health-conscious people often stock very good chocolates from around the world. My favorite (and I've eaten quite a few) is actually Green & Black's 70% dark chocolate. It's nice to know that the UK is not entirely a gastronomic wasteland.
Re:Vegetetable frickin' oil (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, I'm aware of that, but I've also seen studies that put that down to the, as you correctly point out, wealthier Indians using more expensive western oils on the basis that they are supposedly healthier.
"A study of more than one million males in India demonstrated that people in northern India consume more than seventeen times more animal fat than people in southern India. The incidence of CVD in northern India, however, is seven times lower than people in southern India. People in southern India consume much more vegetable oil than in the north."
Malhotra, SL., "Epidemiology of ischaemic heart disease in India with special reference to causation." Br Heart J, 1967; 29(6): 895-905.
This article is quite good too;
http://www.bullz-eye.com/furci/2006/fats_lipid_hy
Here is an excerpt, the site has full references for all the assertions made;
"Evolution of the unhealthy American
What's decreased?
* Animal fat consumption has dropped over 21% since 1910. [1]
* Whole milk consumption has decreased 50%. [15]
* The consumption of butter has decreased from 18 pounds per year to 4 pounds. [1]
What's increased?
* Over the past 80 years, cholesterol consumption has increased a mere 1%. [1]
* Vegetable oil consumption, including hydrogenated oils, has increased 437%. [15]
* Sugar consumption went from 5 pounds per year in 1900 to 163 pounds per year today. [16]
If animal fats (saturated fats) are so dangerous, and vegetable oils (polyunsaturated fat) are
so healthy, why are we so unhealthy as a nation? The scientific data of the past and present
does not support the assertion that saturated fats cause heart disease. As a matter of fact,
more than 20 studies have shown that people who have had a heart attack haven't eaten any
more saturated fat than other people, and the degree of atherosclerosis at autopsy is unrelated
to diet. [17] Saturated fats have been nourishing societies around the world for thousands of years."
There is a lot more evidence out there if you care to look. Such as a few years back when cattle farmers tried to use the saturated fats from coconut oil to fatten up their livestock for the Japanese market, only to find that their cattle LOST weight. They eventually solved the "problem" by feedign their cattle soy oil, which is allegedly less fattening.
Feel free to believe whatever you like, I really don't care. When Monsanto tells you that their patented seed stock is better than natural seeds I'm sure they only have your best interests at heart.
Re:Hydrogenated oil nonsense (Score:3, Interesting)
So you say, but you offer no contrary evidence.
"the second is not relevant,"
It most certainly is. When in doubt you should always follow the money.
As for the third, you are right, I am not an industrial chemist. However, I'm not sure a wikipedia article is entirely credible either. As for scientific consensus, the same was said for many years in the tobacco wars. We all now know that the big money was lying through their collective teeth the entire time. I'm confident that due course we will all discover that things are no different here.
http://www.drz.org/asp/nl/NL_Hydrogenated_Oils_10
"Crisco made their first shortening through hydrogenation in 1911 ( What Not to Eat, Ron Lagerquist and Tom McGregor ). In the 1930s scientists at Dupont used the hydrogenation process to create margarine . Since then these hydrogenated products have infiltrated a large portion of our food. According to Tim O'Shea, DC "... genetically modified hydrogenated soybean oil (is) now present in over 60 percent of food items on the shelves of American supermarkets." ( Dr. Tim O'Shea )
Hydrogenation of oils is achieved by bubbling hydrogen through the oil in the presence of a metal catalyst, such as nickel, platinum, aluminum, at 248 to 410 degrees Fahrenheit ( Fats that Heal, Fats that Kill, Udo Erasmus ). Remnants of these metals stay in the finished product and are consumed. This can lead to an increased load of heavy metals in the body .
All of the natural enzymes in the oil are destroyed, making for an almost unlimited shelf life . Eating hydrogenated oils is very similar to eating plastic. In addition, the high temperature and hydrogenation mutates the molecules' configuration and it thus becomes a trans (formed)-fatty acid. "A very slight change -- the rotation of the molecule around a double bond -- twists a fatty acid from its natural cis-configuration into an unnatural trans-configuration, creating a trans-fatty acid." (Fats that Heal, Fats that Kill, Udo Erasmus) This changes the fatty acids properties and the way they affect our bodies. The body does not recognize that these molecules are mutated and uses them as if they were normal essential fatty acids.
However, the trans-fatty acid cannot perform the function of the essential fatty acid. This causes a short circuit in the electrical flow that controls the heartbeat, nerve functions, cell division and mental balance. They create free radicals that are linked to cancer and they increase the blood cholesterol levels . Because of this, and the metal ( nickel, aluminum) remnants, hydrogenated oils are a major contributor to cancer, heart disease, immune system dysfunction, osteoporosis, depression, chronic fatigue, Alzheimers, and neurological diseases . It has been estimated that over 200 million have died prematurely because of the trans-fatty acids in oils ( What Not to Eat, Ron Lagerquist and Tom McGregor) .
Some examples of where you find hydrogenated oils are baked products (breads, cakes, muffins, etc.), salad dressings, soups, potato chips, mayonnaise, cheese spreads, peanut butter, cake and biscuit mixes. Raisins are sometimes coated with it. You will find them in most processed foods.
Herbert Dutton, one of the oldest oil chemists in North America said: "If the hydrogenation process were discovered today, it probably could not be adopted by the oil industry." ( Fat that Heal, Fats that Kill, Udo Eramus) It is clear that we should avoid hydrogenated oil whenever possible.
Develop a strategy of shopping and cooking that is not based on processed foods. Read labels on all products before you buy (bring your magnifying glass to the grocery if you need to). Be sure to check your bread labels, or bake your own. Use less carbohydrates and use more vegetables and protein in your diet. When cooking or baking with fats and oils use only butter and cold pressed extra virgin olive oil . It is also recommended not to cook with oils at high temperature. The best choice for frying is butter as it contains little essential fatty acids that would be transformed by the heat of frying.
Re:SunnyD isn't orange juice.... ORLY? YARLY!! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:There is already crud in the chocolate. (Score:3, Interesting)
I know this may sound like blasphemy to a dark chocolate buff, but Valrhona Grand Cru Jivara Lactée is one of my favorite consumable substances on the planet. It's easily available at a local grocer. So why would I eat chocolate that, in comparison, is sub-standard? Easy: Cost. The Valrhona costs $11/lb on sale. Local producers make acceptable product for less than half the cost. Sure, I'll buy the good stuff and treat myself now and then, but I can't afford to eat the good stuff exclusively. I don't drink $50+ bottles of wine with dinner, or make Filet Mignon every time we have steak either.
You don't have to stoop to shitty chocolate. One step above shitty on the cost scale can get you significantly higher quality. (You have to be careful though... It can just get you marketing and shittier chocolate. I'll take Hershey's over Ghirardelli any day.)