Is chocolate a vegetable? Is a cocoa bean the same as a soybean?
We don’t think so. But the food industry seems to think that chocolate lovers won’t object if the chocolates that they buy are made with vegetable oils (like soy oil) and milk by-products instead of real cocoa butter and real milk.
Under current FDA rules, any product sold as “chocolate” must be made with cocoa butter and (for milk chocolate) whole milk powder. If producers substitute inferior ingredients, such as vegetable oil in place of some cocoa butter, the product cannot be labeled “chocolate.” Instead, it must be sold as “chocolate-flavored” or with some other prominent, qualifying statement to alert consumers that the product is not true chocolate.
But now, a group of food industry associations, led by the Grocery Manufacturers Association/Food Products Association (GMA/FPA) has petitioned the FDA to change this rule, and to allow manufacturers to falsely label products as “chocolate” even if they use non-chocolate oils or milk by-products in their products.
FDA is considering this change even though it can serve only one purpose: to promote profits for makers of cheap, inferior fake-chocolate products. If this change is adopted, producers of real chocolates will face an enormous and unfair disadvantage, since their true chocolate will cost more to produce but will be sold alongside the now-undetectable fakes. Of course, consumers will also suffer, since finding true chocolate will become difficult and they will often be misled into buying the foul, pasty-tasting, imitation product.
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