Sunday, May 06, 2007
Corrupting the Land of Chocolate
Christian Trejbal
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From the RoundTable blog
People in the New River Valley need not travel far to find superior, fresh chocolate. The Chocolate Spike makes and sells melt-in-your-mouth cocoa goodness right here.
Genie Ranck, the Spike's owner, grew up with premium chocolate. "My mother was from Germany," she said. "She introduced me to chocolate at a young age."
In the late '90s, Ranck began selling chocolate at the Blacksburg farmers market. Her wares proved so popular that three years ago she opened a store in Blacksburg, followed quickly by a Christiansburg shop where she also does all the cooking.
Her background is in art and chemistry, a perfect combination for the rich, dark, bittersweet arts.
Whenever I drove by the Christiansburg shop, I figured the namesake "Spike" had to do with the nearby railroad. It doesn't. Spike is a sculpture Ranck made years ago that is now on display in the Blacksburg shop.
Most days she is in Christiansburg melting and mixing, adding flavors and shaping her signature sweets. Her top seller, Aztec Gold, is flavored with chipotle chili pepper, cinnamon, orange and lemon. It has a bit of a kick and is the sort of product that differentiates true chocolatiers from candy-aisle calorie purveyors.
I visited her shop last week to see the magic happen and pick her brain about a chocolate war raging across the Internet and in the halls of government.
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At the request of the Grocery Manufacturers Association and the Chocolate Manufacturers Association, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has proposed new rules for what counts as chocolate.
The FDA defines "chocolate" as a mix of sugar, cocoa butter, cocoa mass, vanilla, an emulsifier and maybe some flavoring or nuts. Milk is allowed in milk chocolate.
That's it. If manufacturers replace something, they have to call their products "chocolate-flavored," "chocolaty" or something else besides "chocolate."
The standards guarantee consumers know what they are getting.
Under the proposed FDA rules, lesser imitations would overrun the Land of Chocolate, fouling the chocolate river, springing up like weeds in the chocolate grass, polluting the chocolate chips that fall like rain and attacking yipping chocolate dogs. The FDA would allow chocolate makers to substitute vegetable fats instead of traditional cocoa butter and milk substitutes instead of milk products.
That has purists and high-end chocolatiers up in arms. Start swapping out ingredients, they argue, and you end up with cheap imitations unworthy of the name "chocolate."
It all comes down to money. Vegetable fats are less expensive than cocoa butter and are more shelf-stable. That would save manufacturers a lot of cash. They have a financial stake in downgrading their products while pretending they are still the real thing.
Consumers would notice the difference, though. Cocoa butter melts at human body temperature, hence the silky experience of eating chocolate. Vegetable fats typically have a higher melting point, which is why inexpensive Easter bunnies are waxy.
In the Oompa-Loompa-free kitchen of The Chocolate Spike, I asked Ranck about the brouhaha.
She has a reasonable take on it. In a perfect world, people would look at what they are buying. If they wanted real chocolate, they would seek it out. If they wanted what she called "compound chocolate," they would buy that.
"People need to read the labels," she said.
Yet, she opposes the new FDA rules out of practicality. "There should be a distinction because people don't read labels," she explained. Allowing faux-chocolate into the mix would dilute the value of her product.
Connoisseurs might know what to look for on a chocolate label, but many people see something brown shaped like a truffle and figure it is the real thing.
The FDA should keep its definition narrow, if only out of pity. Truth in marketing helps chocolate chumps like me. When we buy chocolate for girlfriends, wives, mothers and other chocolate fiends in our lives, we want to get it right without having to figure out the ingredient list.
Nothing says candy makers may not substitute for cocoa butter and milk right now. Just don't call it chocolate and confuse everyone.
At least we will know what we are getting at The Chocolate Spike.
Trejbal is an editorial writer for The Roanoke Times based in the New River Valley bureau in Christiansburg.
