More 'Chocolate' Candy Bars Now Include Vegetable Oil

Chocolate Lovers Pained by Candy Changes
More 'Chocolate' Candy Bars Now Include Vegetable Oils Instead of Pricey Cocoa Butter

The Cocoa Question
While a "handful" of the company's products do include vegetable oils other than cocoa butter, he said, "we continue to make Hershey's, Hershey's Kisses, Reese's peanut butter cups with pure milk chocolate as we have for over a century."



Ingredients for Whatchamacallit bars include palm kernel and soybean oil and may also include sunflower or safflower oil, according to the candy's wrapper.

That defense -- that there are Hershey's products that still contain pure milk chocolate -- isn't enough for Leitner.

"To me, shaving out the cocoa butter in the less-popular products kind of says that if you like Whatchamacallit [candy bars] you're less deserving of quality ingredients than say, someone who likes Reese's cups," she said.



Cocoa Butter
Cocoa butter is fat derived from cocoa beans. Like other commodities, cocoa prices have skyrocketed in recent years. In 2006, one metric ton of African cocoa butter cost less than $4,000. Today, it costs more than $8,100, according to Judy Ganes, the president of J. Ganes Consulting in Katonah, New York.

Ganes, whose company specializes in research on tropical food products, said that a combination of growing global demand for chocolate and problems in cocoa-producing countries -- heavy rains in Indonesia and civil war in the Ivory Coast -- have driven prices to peaks not seen since the 1970s.

"It certainly has hurt manufacturers," Ganes said.
Ingredients: Truth About Food Labels
In the United States, when a so-called chocolate bar doesn't include cocoa butter or includes other oils, it can't actually be labeled chocolate.

"According to the Food and Drug [Administration's] regulations for chocolate, cocoa butter is the required fat for chocolate," said Susan Smith, the spokeswoman for the National Confectioners Association.




Take 5 used to be Sharon Leitner's favorite candy bar. But the Cincinnati resident says that Take 5's current blend of ingredients -- which, according to the candy's pacakaging, includes "palm, shea, sunflower and/or saffron oil" -- doesn't please her taste buds.

In 2006, there was a challenge posed to this standard and to other standards for U.S. food products. The Grocery Manufacturers Association, the trade group representing the food, beverage and consumer products industry, petitioned the FDA to "modernize" its regulations.

GMA spokesman Brian Kennedy said that the goal of the petition was to accommodate innovation in the food industry.



Both consumers and small chocolatiers decried the proposed changes. In 2007, Mars Inc., the No. 2 chocolate-seller in the U.S. and the maker of M&M's, broke ranks with industry peers and also came out against the petition.

Read Full Storey From ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/IndustryInfo/Story?id=5689239&page=1