ANd now they're after CHOCOLATE!

[SirNitram]

Link

The average American eats 12 pounds of chocolate a year. That's about a chocolate bar every other day. (I am above average, judging by the fact that I eat enough chocolate to deduct it as a line item on my tax return.)

To sum up so far: Americans eat a lot of chocolate. That's cool because we also make a lot of it. We make everything from the inexpensive milk chocolate bars that you buy at the supermarket checkout counter to the decadent, limited-edition chocolate bars made from "handpicked beans from a single hillside in Venezuela," for which there's a waiting list.

It's all basically made the same way: Cacao pods are fermented and then roasted and ground into a fine paste that can be separated into two components - cacao solids (commonly called cocoa powder) and cocoa butter. Each chocolatier uses different proportions but generally blends sugar, cocoa solids and cocoa butter plus the optional ingredients - emulsifiers, flavors (typically vanilla) and milk solids (to make milk chocolate) - and molds that into a bar.

A little more than 100 years ago, Milton Hershey created the nickel bar, the first American chocolate bar for the masses. Today, these small purchases of chocolate products add up to an $18-billion business. Like all foods in the United States, chocolate is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration to ensure consumers a safe and consistent product.

But perhaps no longer. The FDA is entertaining a "citizen's petition" to allow manufacturers to substitute vegetable fats and oils for cocoa butter.

The "citizens" who created this petition represent groups that would benefit most from this degradation of the standards. They are the Chocolate Manufacturers Association, the Grocery Manufacturers Association, the Snack Food Association and the National Cattlemen's Beef Association (OK, I'm not sure what's in it for them), along with other food-producing associations.

This is what they think of us chocolate eaters, according to their petition to the FDA:

"Consumer expectations still define the basic nature of a food. There are, however, no generally held consumer expectations today concerning the precise technical elements by which commonly recognized, standardized foods are produced. Consumers, therefore, are not likely to have formed expectations as to production methods, aging time or specific ingredients used for technical improvements, including manufacturing efficiencies."

Let me translate: "Consumers won't know the difference."

I can tell you that we will notice the difference. How do I know? Because the product they're trying to rename "chocolate" already exists. It's called "chocolate flavored" or "chocolaty" or "cocoalicious." You can find it on the shelves at stores in the 75-percent-off Easter sale bin, those waxy,greasy mock-chocolate bunnies and foil-wrapped eggs that sit even in the most sugar-obsessed child's Easter basket well into July.

It may be cocoa powder that gives chocolate its taste, but it is the cocoa butter that gives it that inimitable texture. It is one of the rare, naturally occurring vegetable fats that is solid at room temperature and melts as it hits body temperature. That is to say, it melts in your mouth. Cocoa butter also protects the antioxidant properties of the cocoa solids and gives well-made chocolate its excellent shelf life.

Because it's already perfectly legal to sell choco-products made with cheaper oils and fats, what the groups are asking the FDA for is permission to call these waxy impostors "chocolate." Because we "haven't formed any expectations."

I'd say we've already demonstrated our preference for true chocolate. That's why real chocolate outsells fake chocolate. Nine of the 10 bestselling U.S. chocolate candies are made with the real stuff. M&Ms, Hershey Bars, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups - all real chocolate. Butterfinger is the outlier.

Granted, a change to the "food standards of identity" won't require makers to remove some or all of the cocoa butter; it would just allow them to. But really, why else would they ask?

As long as they're asking, the FDA does have a way for other citizens to voice their expectations. It's buried deep in its Web site, www.fda.gov. Until Wednesday, the agency is accepting comments - by fax, mail or online - on a docket with the benign-sounding name of "2007P-0085: Adopt Regulations of General Applicability to All Food Standards That Would Permit, Within Stated Boundaries, Deviations From the Requirements of the Individual Food Standards of Identity."

I'm telling them to keep it real.

Bad enough the FDA has been slacking off lately. Now they want to take away proper chocolate!

[General Zod]

On this issue the FDA can go fuck themselves. It's almost as if the companies are requesting permission to lie about their product from the gist of the article.

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

I predict all the women in America will go after the FDA a la http://wantsome.ytmnd.com

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Americans are fat, stupid and lazy. Story at ten.

[kheegster]

But American chocolate is already inferior to European chocolate. I can't find anything remotely as good as my beloved Cadbury Flake anywhere in American grocery stores...and they want to degrade it even further???

[Spin Echo]

After getting starting on high quality Belgian and Swiss chocolate, I can't eat American"chocolate" anymore. The texture is already waxy, even in the stuff still using cocoa butter, and don't get me started about the rancid flavour they add to the chocolate.

[Uraniun235]

Americans are fat, stupid and lazy. Story at ten.

Did you post in the wrong thread? Because this seems more applicable to the "rar consumerism bad!" thread than this thread.

[Ghost Rider]

So time to either buy more expensive shit or just quit eating and making the love of my life one very very angry woman.

Yeah, thanks morons.

[Elaro]

Is there some way you can, y'know, fight back?

[The Spartan]

Is there some way you can, y'know, fight back?

Don't buy the shit chocolate. Stick with the good stuff. Unfortunately, the good stuff is more expensive.

[Dalton]

Americans are fat, stupid and lazy. Story at ten.

Go fuck yourself.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Americans are fat, stupid and lazy. Story at ten.

Go fuck yourself.

Yeah, he's a tool.

It's "Film at eleven", not what he said.

On the topic, I don't see how Americans can eat what chocolate they make anyway. It's, for lack of a better term, garbage. Choosing between a "I *heart* NYC" mug or a jumbo bar of Hershey's chocolate as a business trip gift off my dad, I went for the former. It actually tasted better.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Americans are fat, stupid and lazy. Story at ten.

Go fuck yourself.

Yeah, he's a tool.

It's "Film at eleven", not what he said.

You're right, it was a knee-jerk reaction on my part. I'll try to avoid such in the future.

[Pick]

Actually, I normally dislike chocolate. The only exception is really ritzy shit. Namely, obscenely dark high-quality chocolate and old-fashioned dark chocolate.

There is one kind I really like though, but it's the most expensive sort I've ever seen outside those kick-your-ass level gourmet shops. It's fair-trade dark chocolate from some South American nation, completely grown, produced, and packaged there. Apparently the technology of the farmers isn't so great, so they can't get the temperature high enough to melt the cane sugar crystals, so it's a gritty dark chocolate (sometimes flavored with ginger or cinnamon) in a big, segmented, but otherwise unadorned bar. It's amazing; the texture adds a hell of a lot and the taste is absolutely fabulous. A real treat.

[The Spartan]

Pick, what kind is it?

The best I've ever had is El Rey, but I couldn't tell you the history of where the beans come from, how they're grown etc. I only know that there was cocoa butter in the chocolate because it wasn't the waxy stuff you get in cheap easter chocolate.

[Keevan_Colton]

Actually, I normally dislike chocolate. The only exception is really ritzy shit. Namely, obscenely dark high-quality chocolate and old-fashioned dark chocolate.

There is one kind I really like though, but it's the most expensive sort I've ever seen outside those kick-your-ass level gourmet shops. It's fair-trade dark chocolate from some South American nation, completely grown, produced, and packaged there. Apparently the technology of the farmers isn't so great, so they can't get the temperature high enough to melt the cane sugar crystals, so it's a gritty dark chocolate (sometimes flavored with ginger or cinnamon) in a big, segmented, but otherwise unadorned bar. It's amazing; the texture adds a hell of a lot and the taste is absolutely fabulous. A real treat.

I can understand disliking chocolate if you mostly have exposure to american chocolate...european chocolate is a world apart...try something from Thorntons if you ever get the chance.

[ThatGuyFromThatPlace]

There are these things I found in Mexico once that are pretty much cocoa butter balls powdered with sugar and cocoa powder.
Now that was the good stuff, I don't even now how I can still eat any other 'chocolate' product.
Maybe because I've never seen them again

[phred]

Oh come off it. Hersheys may not be top of the line but it isnt the plastic you all seem to think it is either.
As for th OP, that needs to be smacked down hard.

[Vendetta]

There is one kind I really like though, but it's the most expensive sort I've ever seen outside those kick-your-ass level gourmet shops. It's fair-trade dark chocolate from some South American nation, completely grown, produced, and packaged there. Apparently the technology of the farmers isn't so great, so they can't get the temperature high enough to melt the cane sugar crystals, so it's a gritty dark chocolate (sometimes flavored with ginger or cinnamon) in a big, segmented, but otherwise unadorned bar. It's amazing; the texture adds a hell of a lot and the taste is absolutely fabulous. A real treat.

99p in Sainsburys

I'm fairly sure you can get Green & Blacks in America though, which is good Fairtrade chocolate, with no muck in it, and is actually pretty cheap for it's quality. (attach a Swiss or Belgian brand name to the same quality product and you'd add half again to the price).

There are these things I found in Mexico once that are pretty much cocoa butter balls powdered with sugar and cocoa powder.

I doubt that's actually what they were. Cocoa Butter is almost tasteless, and only smells faintly of cocoa. What you're describing would be basically balls of pure fat coated in cocoa powder.

The reason, though, that your yankee chocolate is rubbish is that it has a low cocoa solids content. The FDA's minimum is 10% for milk chocolate. In Europe, it's 25%. Really good milk chocolate wants to be about 30-35%.

[General Zod]

I'm fairly sure you can get Green & Blacks in America though, which is good Fairtrade chocolate, with no muck in it, and is actually pretty cheap for it's quality. (attach a Swiss or Belgian brand name to the same quality product and you'd add half again to the price).

I think they actually sell that chocolate brand across the street from where I work at a store called the Vitamin Cottage. . . .which I think is a national chain.

[General Zod]

I'm fairly sure you can get Green & Blacks in America though, which is good Fairtrade chocolate, with no muck in it, and is actually pretty cheap for it's quality. (attach a Swiss or Belgian brand name to the same quality product and you'd add half again to the price).

I think they actually sell that chocolate brand across the street from where I work at a store called the Vitamin Cottage. . . .which I think is a national chain.

Ghetto edit: And it turns out the Vitamin Cottage does, in fact, carry Green & Blacks in a variety of flavors. Though it's a whopping $3.15 per bar.

[kheegster]

Oh come off it. Hersheys may not be top of the line but it isnt the plastic you all seem to think it is either.
As for th OP, that needs to be smacked down hard.

Hershey's doesn't melt in the mouth very well, and leaves a horrid aftertaste.

But on the other hand, most American don't eat chocolate per se. The OP mentions Americans eating a bar of chocolate per day, but I'm pretty certain that's counting stuff like Snickers and Reese's Peanut Butter cups, which is essentially fat and sugar with a light coating of chocolate.

[LadyTevar]

Where do I write to protect my chocolate?

[Dartzap]

Where do I write to protect my chocolate?

I personally think you should pay to get Nit's folks to send you a massive pack of the Best of Cadburys in a cooler, just to see if you could could ever survive after eating such an awesome combination I know damn well alot of European choccy is better (having been around a few Choc factories whilst on the Continent) but dammit, it's always expensive compared to our Cadburys *goes to munch on a milk chocolate nut bar*

[Keevan_Colton]

Where do I write to protect my chocolate?

Belgium.