Everyone knows how serious Europeans are about their food. After mad cow disease and genetically modified foods, chocolate is the latest controversy on the Continent’s menu.
In August, new chocolate legislation from the European Union slid onto European shelves while most concerned citizens were on holiday. For the first time in European history, chocolate is allowed to contain cheap vegetable fats like palm oil instead of the traditional cocoa butter. Traditional chocolatiers demonstrated against the new legislation but they lost. The new chocolate is now on the market.
“The whole history and value of chocolate are being put at risk,” says master Paris chocolatier Jean-Paul Hevin.
Hevin is a pastry chef who became a passionate chocolate-maker 15 years ago; chocolates from his three exclusive Parisian boutiques are regularly rated among the best in Europe. The new legislation appalls him.
“Cocoa contains antioxidants, like red wine, so consumed in moderation it’s actually good for you,” he said. “But now chocolate won’t necessarily be good for you because it won’t always contain the crucial ingredient of cocoa butter.”
Cocoa butter is pressed from cocoa beans; the dry cake that remains is processed into cocoa powder. Traditionally, chocolate makers use cocoa butter for flavor and to make their chocolate more fluid.
But the new legislation is all about cost. Chocolate giants such as Nestle and Kraft have been pushing for this change for years to bring down production costs. The newly legal ingredients of palm oil and other vegetable fats cost substantially less than cocoa butter.
In England, chocolate bars that contain vegetable fat have long been the norm, making English candy bars cheaper to produce than their European counterparts.
“Taste isn’t even the most important issue,” Hevin said. “The health consequences are much more serious! It’s difficult to guarantee that only 5 percent of such fats are being used. When you’re testing for percentages under 18 percent, you can’t be sure of precise measurements.”
A meltdown brewing
If all this sounds like a minor kerfuffle among the sweet-toothed, consider the statistics. Ever since Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortes drank that first cup of cocoa in Montezuma’s court, Europe has been obsessed with chocolate. Europeans consume roughly half the world’s cocoa crop: $15 billion annually, while the U.S. consumes another $13 billion and leads the world in cocoa bean importation.
This is no small hill of beans. The largest cocoa-producing nation, Ivory Coast, said it will lose up to $270 million with this change in cocoa butter demand. Master chocolate-makers like Hevin only have a minor impact on the chocolate market; the giant manufacturers control most cocoa sales. A drop in cocoa butter demand could have far-reaching consequences.
“We’ve already pushed these countries to the limit with our demands for a high-quality, consistent product,” said Hevin.
“Now we’re putting these countries at risk of total failure. They may even be driven to change their crop.”
The French have experimented with everything from vanilla to blue cheese in their chocolate, but until last month, vegetable fats were considered too lowly for chocolate.
Sylvia Kalin, spokesperson for the Swiss chocolate giant Lindt, points out that the law doesn’t oblige anyone to change their ingredients: “There’s no reason for Lindt to change the taste of our chocolate. That said, we do have to stay innovative. People’s tastes and lifestyles change. And like everyone else, we have to adapt, not because of some new law, but because of consumer needs and demands.”
Sneaky labels
The new ingredients will be difficult to spot until you put the chocolate in your mouth. To keep consumers aware of the change, traditional chocolatiers are using special logos to guarantee 100 percent pure cocoa butter. But labels can be manipulated: In England, chocolate bars containing other vegetable oils are labeled “family chocolate,” which is meaningless to most consumers.
American cookbook author David Lebovitz, who spent his formative years making pastry at the legendary Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif., is putting the finishing touches on his “Great Book of Chocolate,” due out next spring. He has been spending time in the chocolate aisles of Paris markets and worries that consumers will be misled.
“People in the U.S. will often buy artificial vanilla extract, for example, thinking that something labeled ‘vanillin’ is truly vanilla. Similarly, something labeled `family chocolate’ or even something labeled, deceptively, `chocolate-flavored’ can be very, very confusing for people.”
