Via
Specifically: At the request of the Chocolate Manufacturer's Association, the Grocery Manufacturer's Association, and the Snack Food Association the FDA is considering whether products that contain cocoa but no cocoa butter can be labelled Chocolate. As it stands, such products are referred to as "Chocolate Flavored."
If the FDA were to approve this, chocolate makers could use vegetable oil substitutes in place of cocoa butter and still call their product chocolate. This likely won't have any impact on upscale chocolate makers; your Guitards and your Ghirardellis will likely to continue to sell real chocolate made with cocoa butter. The people this will really impact will be the folks who buy mass-market chocolates from the likes of Hershey and Nestle. Given a chance, do you think either of them would hesitate in an instant to switch from cocoa butter to a cheaper, inferior substitute?
Tomorrow is the deadline for public comment on this issue. You can go here to submit your comments directly to the FDA.
