Chocolate or Mockolate?
OK, this means war. Big Food has asked its lapdogs at the FDA to redefine chocolate:
The Chocolate Manufacturers Association, whose members include Hershey, Nestle SA and Archer Daniels Midland Co., has a petition before the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to redefine what constitutes chocolate. They want to make it without the required ingredients of cocoa butter and cocoa solids, using instead artificial sweeteners, milk substitutes and vegetable fats such as hydrogenated and trans fats.
Chocolate without cocoa? Sorry, that ain’t chocolate. It’s “mockolate.” As usual, money seems to be the motivating factor here:
Cocoa prices in New York have surged about 28 percent in the past six months on speculation that dry weather may impair cocoa production in the Ivory Coast and Ghana, the world’s largest suppliers of beans to make chocolate.
…
A pound of chocolate contains roughly 25 percent cocoa butter at a cost of $2.30, while vegetable oils are as little as 70 cents a pound, Guittard said. U.S. chocolate manufacturers used $1.4 billion of cocoa and cocoa products in 2005, according to the latest data from the Chocolate Manufacturers Association.
Nestle SA and Hershey could save a bundle of money by not putting cocoa in their chocolate and I’m just positive they will pass that savings on to the consumer. Ha ha, fooled you.
As usual, there’s more to the story. The chocolate industry has been in hot water lately over severe human rights abuses that have come to light in the harvesting of cocoa. Not surprisingly, Big Food–Nestle SA, Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill–have been accused of forced child labor in the manufacture of their product. Not exactly the “Willy Wonka” experience most folks imagine when they bite into their candy bar.
Activists have spearheaded “shame campaigns” to pressure these companies into reforming the cocoa trade, much as the “blood diamond” campaign did for diamonds. Boycotts of the Big Food companies and moves toward “fair trade” chocolate have been gathering steam. So, I’m sure Big Food would love to promote its new “slavery-free chocolate” that just doesn’t happen to have any cocoa in it.
Anyway, the FDA has been in some pretty hot water of its own lately. If you want your chocolate to still contain cocoa, I urge you to make some noise.