Chocolate? Not always

Will it melt in your mouth or stick to the roof of your mouth?

Maybe they hoped you wouldn’t notice, but The Hershey’s Company changed the formulation for some but not all of their candy. The news broke in September, 2008. Now Hershey’s has changed the names of some of their products because they can’t call them milk chocolate. What’s that slogan again? Is it, “If it’s Hershey’s, you’d better read the label?” I am not sure I have it quite right, but it’s something like that. I’m afraid, we’ll just have to read the label carefully. With an American icon like Hershey’s, I shouldn’t have to do that. Some of it’s milk chocolate; some of it ain’t.

Chemists use the term formula to describe the mixture of particular materials (ingredients) and amounts that go into various products, especially those that are sold to the public. It might be food, paint, steel, medicine, paper, ink, glue, or plastic. The term formulation describes the process of putting it together. Every commercial product has its own formula.

By law you can’t call a product milk chocolate unless it contains cocoa butter. In 2007, according to the New York Times (and elsewhere) in spite of lobbying by U. S. manufacturers to cheapen the ingredients, the FDA held their ground on chocolate.

On Friday when I told a friend of mine about the recent changes in some chocolate-like candy, she talked about her perception of the difference between real chocolate and the chocolate-like candy that looks like chocolate but now lacks the name. She talked about the oily film that formed on the roof of her mouth with some products. We talked about some of the better chocolates including European chocolate. She asked me what brands. When I suggested Lindt’s as one, she happily showed me the Lindt chocolate her husband had given her for Valentine’s Day. Lately I have found European chocolates Lindt, Toblerone, and Ritter Sport and American chocolate Ghirardelli in a lot of local grocery stores.

Of course you can always find great chocolates at Chocolaterie Stam right here in Des Moines too.

If you see a little chocolate on the Purple Wren’s beak this week, it came from Chocolaterie Stam on Ingersoll.

Real chocolate costs a little more, but after all it’s not my lunch, it’s dessert!

photo by flickr by fensterbme and eszter

James is James G. Lindberg (Jim) is the Purple Wren’s sweetie and is a visiting chemistry professor at Grinnell College and retired from Drake University.
Email this author | All posts by James