Say "NO!" to chocolate without cocoa butter

Its blasphemy, really. Chocolate is meant to have cocoa butter in it. If you don't want to gain weight, don't eat as much. If global economic and political issues are causing prices to rise, we as consumers will have to suck it up and pay more. But we SHOULD NOT allow a main ingredient to chocolate to be replaced.

From "Chocolate Wars" in Conde' Nast Portfolio:
"There is a regulatory dustup over whether the traditional standards for making chocolate in the United States ought to be changed. It revolves around the question of whether a simple and elegant ingredient known as cocoa butter, which gives chocolate its creamy smoothness and texture, can be replaced, at least in part, by cheaper ingredients.
The disagreement involves the Food and Drug Administration, the federal arbiter of food standards, and has pitted mass candy manufacturers such as Hershey and Nestlé against smaller, higher-end chocolate makers such as 139-year-old Guittard Chocolateand See’s Candies...

Here’s the issue: For as long as chocolate has been made, it’s been smoothed out with the elixir called cocoa butter, an emulsified form of cacao that gives the finished product its silky texture. In the United States, the F.D.A. mandates that a product can’t legally be labeled as chocolate unless cocoa butter is part of the formula. But because of a drought and political violence in Ivory Coast, a major source for cacao beans, the price of cocoa butter has skyrocketed. This has prompted some of the major chocolate makers, Hershey among them, to lobby the F.D.A. by way of a trade-group petition for a change that would let them substitute such cheaper ingredients as vegetable oil and dried milk for cocoa butter and still call their products chocolate..."

Warren Buffet (owner of See's) said it best, "“If you’ve got recipes that people like, you don’t change them.”

Amen brother!

This is just more bullying by the big candy makers. We loveHershey's,Nestle,M&M/Marsand Cadbury...but they already dominate the grocery and convenience stores. They should not further squeeze the already tight margins of the higher end chocolate makers.

Check out Guittard Chocolates

See's Candies website

Read the whole article.

Read more about the Legislation.

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Read More in: Cadbury | Candy News | Guittard | Hershey's | M&M/Mars | Nestle | See's Candy

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