Some Hershey's Chocolate Using Cocoa Butter Substitutes, Not Real Cocoa Butter
The ingredients for Hershey's Special Dark® Chocolate, which contains cocoa butter. Others do not. Photograph by Robyn Lee.
About a year ago, a "citizen" petition was sent to the FDA, asking if chocolate manufacturers could replace cocoa butter in chocolate with "cocoa butter replacements" or "cocoa butter substitutes," while still calling the misbegotten product "chocolate." (I guess you can tell where I stand on that issue, and many of you have your own opinion.)
Believe it or not, despite the United States' bad reputation for chocolate, we're actually ahead of the European Union on this one. The EU version of this Standards of Identity (the documents that specify what ingredients can or cannot be in food, and what you can call them) allows manufacturers to substitute up to 5% of the cocoa butter in chocolate and still call the resultant—whatever it is but it's not chocolate as far as I am concerned—"chocolate."
That does not keep manufacturers from replacing the cocoa butter with other fats; they just can't call them chocolate anymore.
Hershey, for example, makes something called Special Dark® Chocolate. If you look at the label, you'll notice it's trademarked. Elsewhere on the label, there's the phrase mildly sweet chocolate, which means the chocolate conforms to the FDA Standard of Identity for "sweet chocolate." A look at the ingredients reveals the presence of milk fat and other dairy-derived ingredients, which enhance shelf life and contribute to the pasty texture.
Hershey has taken the next step in the process, replacing the cocoa butter in some of its chocolate with far less expensive vegetable oil. Of course, they can no longer call it chocolate or even milk chocolate, but they can call it "chocolate candy," or "chocolatey," or the even more obtuse and deliberately misleading: "made with chocolate."
Cybele May of Candy Blog says: "A lot of people don't notice it. The package looks exactly the same. I feel betrayed by Hershey's. They're giving me an inferior product and they're not even telling me. I call it mockolate, which is basically a fake chocolate product."
Consumer response to the changes is mixed in blind-tasting panels: some people prefer the new formulations over the old. When told about the changes, however, some consumers were alarmed, saying they felt "kind of cheated."
Perhaps more far-reaching in its implications is the fact that cocoa butter protects the antioxidant properties of the chocolate and does not raise cholesterol levels. From a calorie and fat content perspective, the mockolate may be similar to chocolate, but nutritionally, the reformulated products may fall short of predecessors. And consumers who read that chocolate is healthy, may not know the difference.
I have come to believe that manufacturers rely on the mental inertia of consumers. Once someone reads the ingredients and nutrition labels of a product (if they ever do) and decides the product is okay to throw in the shopping cart, they rarely go back and revisit the labels to determine if anything has changed. This is even the case when something is labeled "new" and "improved." New it may be, but does the "improvement" benefit the consumer or the manufacturer?
Do you prefer the new Hershey formulations to the old? Were you even aware of new formulations? Does a chocolate by any other name taste as sweet? Do you ever re-examine labels for products you've already decided are worth buying?
About the author: Clay Gordon has been a professional chocolate critic since 2001. His first book on chocolate, Discover Chocolate was selected as a finalist in the International Association of Culinary Professionals' 2008 Cookbook of the Year Awards. A serious chocolate educator, Clay has created and moderates an online community for chocophiles and aspiring chocophiles - The Chocolate Life.
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11 Comments:
Clay: In summation, I prefer real chocolate and real chocolate ingredients for many of the reasons touched-on by SEaters. I understand that it is the manufacturers responsibility to ensure they are using high quality ingredients and the label shouldn't mislead the consumer in any way. But there's always and thin line and it's really a judgement call all around. Consumers need to set their own personal standards as to what they are putting into their bodies. With what's been going on in health-related news lately--it should be wake-up call for everyone.
Read your labels carefully people!
hungrychristel at 5:39PM on 09/24/08
Indeed: read the labels. I'm struck by the fact that as a group people are concerned about the replacement of cocoa butter, but there wasn't any apparent group level concern about the Vanillin, other artificial flavors, PGPR and other ingredients in "chocolate."
I'm also not sure that any sort of health based argument having to do with antioxidant levels in milk chocolate hold up. That is, I don't think there's a positive health association with milk chocolate as there might be with some antioxidant rich darker chocolates without other junk in them.
ccbweb at 6:35PM on 09/24/08
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Hershey's chocolate has always been an inferior product. This is simply another step down.
buffy at 6:55PM on 09/24/08
First, I am appaled that a portion of cocoa butter is being replaced with lower quality fats. I am also appalled at the other crap in this Hershey's bar - vanillin and PGPR. Blech.
With that said... Cocoa butter actually doesn't protect the antioxidants in chocolate. The antioxidants (flavonoids) are polar molecules which are not lipid-soluble. However, cocoa butter is 60% saturated fat and protects LDL from becoming oxidized. This is a good thing because oxidized LDL is what's deposited in arterial plaque. So, removing cocoa butter and replacing it with vegetable oil (which is unsaturated, and more prone to oxidation) is a bad thing.
@ ccbweb: Actually, milk chocolate does have health benefits but they are less than in dark chocolate. Milk chocolate has about 1/3 the flavonoids as dark, and the addition of milk may reduce the amount of flavonoids that are absorbed but the jury is still out on that. A 40g serving of milk chocolate has an average of 80 total ORAC, whereas a 40g serving of dark chocolate has an average of 227 total ORAC. (ORAC is a measure of antioxidant activity; higher numbers are better) Source: Gu et al. Procyanidin and catechin contents and antioxidant capacity of cocoa and chocolate products. j Agric OD Chem 2006;54:4057-61.
ilovebutter at 7:08PM on 09/24/08
Oops - I mean J Argic Food Chem
ilovebutter at 7:24PM on 09/24/08
why would be so surprised? most of corporate america has sold out to
cheaper, inferior substitutes.....
it's the american way....
all sizzle and no steak....
pooch at 10:40PM on 09/24/08
Preach on pooch.......I don't find it to be so much the American way... I would hate to think I served my country for it seems a life time to imagine that the statue of liberty isn't holding a torch anymore but a dollar...I guess I can look at wall street see my answer...sorry rant over
Markbb at 8:51AM on 09/25/08
@ ilovebutter - with respect to cocoa butter protecting antioxidant levels I was following the lead in the article that prompted me to write this. Thanks for citing a source that clears this up.
For thos who don't know, PGPR = Polyglycerol Polyricinoleate = an emulsifier made from castor beans which reduces the viscosity of chocolate and similar coatings and compounds. It is used at low levels (fractions of percents). PGPR is a yellowish, viscous liquid composed of polyglycerol esters of polycondensed fatty acids. (It may also be polyglycerol esters of dimerized fatty acids of soya bean oil.) PGPR is strongly lipophilic, soluble in fats and oils and insoluble in water and ethyl alcohol. In chocolates it is used as a viscosity reducing agent. It is usually paired with lecithin or another plastic viscosity-reducing agent. It can also be used as an emulsifier in spreads and in salad dressings.
Vanillin can be natural or synthetic. Here are some sources on vanillin.
Wikipedia
University of the West Indies (Jamaica)
I prefer what Chantal Coady long ago coined, "real chocolate." Only cocoa butter, only natural vanilla, and - preferably - no lecithin or other emulsifier.
Clay Gordon at 11:03AM on 09/25/08
I conducted a blind taste test locally with new and old kissables, just to make certain my biases weren't causing the results to be skewed, and the old formula (my last bag *sob*) won, hands down. I'd noticed a few months ago that the ones I'd purchased at a new store weren't tasting like they used to, but I chalked it up to possibly being stored improperly at the store and thus changing texture slightly - until I heard about the change on candy blog a month or so ago. I'd already stopped using them in my baking and out-of-bag candy consumption since something wasn't right with them, I suppose it's good to know for sure now. Disappointing though, especially since when I called Hershey's last month about it I was given the runaround and a party line of 'we as a company are always striving to evolve and meet the consumers needs and desires with our products'. Yeah right.
sylphon at 11:27AM on 09/25/08
Wow. Learn something new every day :) Thanks guys
hungrychristel at 5:46PM on 09/25/08
My husband was eating a chocolate bar the other day which was odd because we rarely eat sugar but I told him some chocolate companies are taking out the cocoa butter and relpacing it with veg oil and I really burst his bubble as he ate the chocolate bar. He said it was like telling a 3 yr old there is no santa!
joanpieroni2 at 9:27PM on 09/25/08