Pure bliss, or ersatz chocolate food?

last updated 8 January 2015

Switzerland

Willy Boder

The Americans are woefully behind in matters gastronomical, said Willy Boder in Geneva’s Le Temps. It was fully four years ago that the European Union, after another Thirty Years’ War of sorts, finally agreed on the definition of chocolate. The U.S., alas, is just beginning its exploration of this thorny issue. The food industry in the U.S. wants the Food and Drug Administration to loosen requirements for how much cocoa butter a confection must contain for it to qualify as chocolate. “The question may seem academic. It is not.” At stake are the economies of cocoa-producing nations such as Ghana and Ivory Coast. Some 200 million people are completely dependent on the cocoa bean harvest each year. If the U.S. does what Europe, sensibly, refused to do, and confers the hallowed name of chocolate on “lite” concoctions in which vegetable oil substitutes for cocoa butter, West Africa could be devastated. If that argument doesn’t resonate with Americans, they should consider this: Offering an inferior “chocolate product” will only send consumers searching for the real thing—the smoothness, richness, and depth of flavor found only in Swiss chocolate.