So, it seems that people are in a real tizzy over this video from Good Morning America. Even my aunt asked me about it. I’ll give you the long and short of the video so you don’t have to watch it. Basically, Hershey got called out on replacing cocoa butter with vegetable oil, a cheaper fat. I’m a) not shocked and b) not offended. The FDA has very strict guidelines about chocolate standards of identity, so you can’t just go throwing anything into chocolate and still call it “Chocolate.” Once vegetable oil is added to chocolate, it is no longer considered to be chocolate and the product label must be changed. Hershey did in fact change the labels for their products right on the front of the packaging and if you just read the ingredients, it said veggie oil right there, plain as day. Everyone feels tricked and betrayed by their beloved Hershey. And to that I say, it’s f*cking hershey, get over it. It’s not a high quality product to begin with (still love it, though).
It’s hard right now for chocolate makers. Milk prices are soaring and so is the cost of cocoa beans. The most expensive product right now is cocoa butter, so of course in times of financial difficulty companies are going to try to figure out ways to save money without passing the cost onto their consumers. Hershey’s just trying to be profitable and it’s not like they used vegetable oil in their standard chocolate bars, they just used it in candies (kissables, almond joys, etc), which really shouldn’t have affected overall flavor a great amount. It would have changed the way it melts and the mouthfeel more than flavor. I just think this is a dumb thing to get worked up about, especially when so much food right now is making people sick. Can we focus on making and growing food that won’t give us E. Coli and forgive a little vegetable oil?
Man, I don’t know how to feel about this. On the one hand, I understand what you’re saying about Hershey’s not being high-quality chocolate, and a lot of people might not care as long as it tastes good.
On the other hand, I’m not a fan of processed food. Substituting something so basic to chocolate as cocoa butter with a hydrogenated veggie oil is so flawed. I can’t buy bread in a supermarket that isn’t pumped full of corn syrup, and I hate that.
I realize that my way would make a bar of chocolate cost a lot more, but I’m OK with that. What do you think of the trans fat bans in NYC and LA?
I agree the less processed the better, but in the bigger picture, there are more pressing matters than substituting one fat for another (true vegetable oil isn’t the same as cocoa butter from a health standpoint, but it’s still one fat for another).
I think a lot of companies are doing their own self-regulation when it comes to trans fats since the market is trending away from them. We can’t seem to depend on the FDA to look out for our best interest in food matters always, so I think that it’s a good thing when someone does. But, there are so many flaws in how and what we eat, it’s hard to know where to start and what the biggest cause for concern is.