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Purists outraged by proposal to redefine chocolate
April 28, 2007

WASHINGTON - Rarely do documents making their way through federal agencies
cause chocolate lovers to totally melt down. Then came Appendix C.

Accompanying a 35-page petition signed by a diverse set of culinary
groups - juice producers, meat canners and the chocolate lobby - the
appendix charts proposed changes to food standard definitions set by the
Food and Drug Administration, including this one: "use a vegetable fat in
place of another vegetable fat named in the standard (e.g., cacao fat)."

Chocolate lovers read that as a direct assault on their palates.

That's because the current FDA standard for chocolate says it must contain
cacao fat - aka cocoa butter - and this proposal would make it possible to
call something chocolate even if it had vegetable oil instead of that
defining ingredient. Whoppers malted milk balls, for instance, do not have
cocoa butter.

Chocolate purists, of which there are apparently many, have undertaken a
grass-roots letter-writing campaign to the FDA to inform the agency that
such a change to the standards is just not OK with them. More than 225
comments to the petition have been processed so far by the agency, and
chocolate bloggers are pressing for more. In the annals of bureaucratic
Washington battles, this is a sweet one.

"If this puts a smile on people's faces even though it's a serious matter,
that's what chocolate is meant to do," said California chocolate maker and
traditionalist Gary Guittard, whose Web site, DontMessWithOurChocolate.com,
has led the counter-assault.

Other proposals in the petition - e.g., to market cartoon character-shaped
pasta as macaroni - have not caused as much heartburn.

That's because chocolate isn't just food. It symbolizes passion, and for
its lovers, it borders on religion. They buy chocolate based on cacao
content - some desire 70 percent, others will go higher. The most demanding
examine labels to make sure it is from one region, not a blend, focusing on
production methods much the same way that coffee lovers home in on where
beans are grown. Even mass chocolate producers are trying to tap into this
spirit. There's now a Limited Edition Dark Snickers bar.

The industry has also been touting chocolate's health benefits - it
contains flavonoids, which may benefit the heart and arteries; cocoa butter
doesn't raise cholesterol levels; and chocolate doesn't contain transfats.
Mars has even launched a division called Mars Nutrition for Health &
Well-Being, which markets chocolate products with explicit health claims.

Guittard, whose family has been making chocolate since 1868, said some big
chocolate manufacturers favor the proposed change in regulations because
they want to keep prices down on key ingredients by using less expensive
vegetable fat, which can contain transfats, instead of cocoa butter. That
scares him. From the department of cooler heads comes Nick Malgieri, the
director of the baking program at the Institute of Culinary Education in New
York.

"I think a lot of people don't realize that this would be optional,"
Malgieri said. "No one is going to force a high-class chocolate maker to add
vegetable fat to chocolate." Asked if fine chocolate would just melt away,
he said, "Absolutely not."