When chocolate isn’t chocolate anymore...

VEERESH MALIK

In the US, one out of every three or four young children are now obese, and generals from the Armed Forces have represented that stricter controls need to be exercised over packaged foods of this sort. Here in India, we have the world’s largest population of diabetics, and much of it is caused by unhealthy eating

Somewhere in the hubris surrounding the Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC) circus, is a small sub-episode, played out for a short while onscreen—but extremely important all the same. It involves the handing over of a basket full of Cadbury products, important because it is not just one of the bigger sponsors, but also because at no stage does the venerable Amitabh Bachchan say anything about them being chocolates or even mentioning the brand.

This discretion is not accidental. Nor does it happen because the advertiser wants less airtime for her buck. The real reason is not shrouded in mystery but like a bad smell it is simply ignored.

Before one moves in-depth into the local Indian scenario with branded ‘chocolates’, it is important to point out that information from the ministry of food processing is still not very clear on the subject. Whether it has to do with cacao, cocoa solids, cocoa butter or any other combination thereof, it appears that the term ‘chocolate’ can be added on to almost anything sold in India, from slabs to bars to barfees to ice-creams and more, without demur—as long as the ingredients mention something to do with some form of cocoa. Sometimes, not even that. Of course, in another conversation held “off the record”, this correspondent was told by a senior functionary at the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) that often they follow the US FDA” classifications and standards. That is interesting, because much of the cocoa solids and cocoa butter controversy, in addition to the concept of changing the nomenclature of chemically altered palm oil to give it cocoa butter nomenclature and formulations as well as similarities, started there.

Chatting, separately, with a friend who works on vegetable oil carriers, a specialised sort of sea-going tanker ship which is designed to transport food-grade liquids in bulk across great distances and varying climatic conditions without damaging them, I also came to learn about a palm oil-based product which was now transported in bulk and is being used in lieu of cocoa butter—the main ingredient for most brands of chocolates and chocolate derivatives sold commercially. This sounded interesting—was the ship, then, always afloat in the brilliant aroma of fresh chocolate, certainly something which would match the fresh sea air?

Far from it, I was told—matter of fact, when moving into hotter areas like the Red Sea, the whole ship apparently smelt like cooking oil going bad on a roadside vendors stall off any random highway frying pakodas. Even the heavy oil and diesel fumes were less sickening, as the jokes flowed, after all—add liquor to the stuff in the tanks, and you have a Tia Maria? Food for thought, as we opted for the pink coloured stuff hopefully labelled ‘strawberry’, on the dessert rack.

On the way back home I stopped over at one of those 24x7 convenience stores attached to fuel filling stations, and on a whim and a fancy, asked the attendant to give me a variety of chocolates in the sub-Rs30 range.

With a basket full of ‘chocolates’ from Cadbury's, Nestle, Mars and a couple of other brands, I moved to the check-out counter and re-confirmed from the cashier—these are all chocolates, right? The young man behind the till looked up at me in surprise, then in wonder, and finally took pity and said, ‘of course’—and then added, “Cadbury means chocolate, no?”

How interesting. A story or report is developing, is the thought that went uppermost in my mind as I paid the sizeable bill, there was so much variety. Chocolates are Cadbury, generic, and other brands with similar products in the same shelf are also, thus, chocolates. When I asked the young man why they didn’t have Amul, however, I was told, oh, that’s milk, not chocolate. But then, Cadbury’s is almost a generic term for chocolates, and asking the sales person at a store for guidance on this is not of much use—anything and everything in the same shelves is, by default, also allegedly chocolate. Somebody will say—the sales person is really not the best person to ask for specific details. Valid point, but who else will you ask at a sales outlet, then? And doesn't that mean something—slightly more lucid labelling, for example?

So now we start with the research part. The retail part has already confused many. First road-block—you have to buy the stuff. Their websites, full of so much effort and detail for everything else, do not provide full details of what their products are made of. But that’s for the India websites—head for the same product, same company, but European and American websites, and you can get more details than you can handle. Try it. So, take a digital photo of the ‘chocolate’ wrapper, and expand it so that you can read it.

Yes, certainly, the list of ingredients and other important information is provided on the packaging. In an extremely small font size, and with special care to the colours used—what looks like dark blue or black on a purple background, for example. Or golden brown on darker brown... Which makes it almost impossible to read on the packaging, unless you go seeking out magnifying glasses and bright lights—or digitally enhance things.

In some developed countries, it is now a pre-requisite that what is not chocolate is not sold as chocolate. By and large, local variations aside, if it did not have at least 30% by way of cacao, chocolate, cocoa butter or solids, then it could not be called ‘chocolate’. Certain products, like ice-creams claiming to be chocolate or using related words, needed to have a “this is not chocolate” cautionary on the wrappers too.

Next, we start with those popular products which don’t have aspirations towards being called ‘chocolates’, but won’t hesitate in giving themselves airs as well as using confusing buzzwords. Cadbury Oreo, for example, uses the term ‘chocolatey’. What does that mean? If you look closely at the wrapper, you will see that it means that the ‘creme’ part contains refined sugar, vegetable fat and emulsifier. The ‘biscuit’ part, however, does claim to have some cocoa solids—though not enough for even the manufacturers to tell us how much.

Moving on, we take a closer look at the flagship brand from Cadbury, called ‘Dairy Milk’. Gets interesting, because the Rs5 and Rs10 packets containing slabs or éclairs don’t even claim to be chocolates, or have any in them. These are, simply, refined sugar in vegetable fat. But the packaging, font, colours used—even the glasses of white liquid shown that could be milk being poured into the ‘I’ are the same—as with the costlier ‘Dairy Milk’ bar which cost Rs25-Rs30 and more—and have “rich classic milk chocolate” written on them.

Coming up next is something called Galaxy Smooth Milk, manufactured in Dubai, exported and imported by Mars in India—and over-printed with the line “smooth and creamy milk chocolate”, as well as with a strategically placed sticker placed over the ingredients part. This sticker says “no vegetable fat in chocolate”, but when you peel the sticker away carefully, you learn that the non-chocolate part of this product does contain—vegetable oils.

Nestlé’s packaging appears to have their own strategies too. KitKat says that it has crisp wafer fingers covered with ‘chocolayer’. The milk chocolate bar says that they are Swiss chocolate makers since 1904, but the ingredients take you through the usual storyline of going coy about its ingredients—‘nature identical’. Best, of course, is their Milky Bar, sold in the same chocolate shelves—it gives up, doesn’t even claim to have any chocolate in it, and goes into partially hydrogenated vegetable oils. Of course, the fonts used and the labelling are deceptively similar to their chocolates, but then, that’s par for the course.

The ‘chewy’ chocolate bars, they have their own stories—5-Star by Cadbury is “yummy chocolaty”, Bar-One by Nestle is “delicious chocolayer” and Snickers by Mars is “covered in chocolate”. But all of them, without exception, have their share of vegetable fats and oils. Of course, that’s never part of the advertising or marketing strategy.

Because, simply put, it would not pay to tell buyers the truth. That what they are getting, largely, is chemically altered and modified vegetable oils—especially palm oils. For whatever reason, and one reason is that the process of converting palm oil into cocoa butter brings it very close to the next step where they all end up as industrial plastic sludge, even house flies and blue bottle flies don’t sit on these confectionary item when you unwrap them and put them out on a balcony,

So when and how did cocoa butter morph into something that came out of palm oil?

The chemically re-formulated palm oil is just one step away in the world of chemistry from being converted into a form of industrial plastic. Even in this shape, it has many shared properties, for example—flies and other insects won't come near it.

Try it. Get hold of an imported packet of chocolates, sold in Europe or North America. Unwrap them, and put them out on a balcony in plates, along with other plates that have Indian ‘chocolates’ of the sort mentioned as well as cut fruit like bananas. And watch where the flies and other insects head for.

Why don’t the flies head for the Indian ‘chocolates’, the ones with palm oil cocoa butter in them?

If we had to eat sweetened vanaspati mixed with refined sugar, we didn’t need FDI from abroad to come and do it for us, and tell us it was chocolate. Even the worst of local sweet and sweetmeat manufacturers would never have sold us this sort of garbage.

Out there in the US, one out of every three or four young children are now obese, and generals from the Armed Forces have represented that stricter controls need to be exercised over packaged foods of this sort. Here in India, we have the world’s largest population of diabetics, and much of it is caused by unhealthy eating of this sort.

Is it too much to expect from these companies, with their ‘brand values’ and all the rest of it, to be honest about what they are selling? No wonder Amitabh Bachchan just handed over the package full of Cadbury whatevers. He is now a grandfather, again, and is probably concerned about what that child will eat when she grows up. Certainly not refined sugar in vanaspati.

The above has been written by Veeresh Mallick in November, 2011, for Moneylife and may be readon http://www.moneylife.in/article/when-chocolate-isnt-chocolate-anymore/21628.html.

I suggest all of you who have a weakness for Cadbury, Nestle and other brands of chocolates should think twice before buying them.

No wonder mu daughter-in-law and grandchildren who are presently in the USA find the taste of chocolates different there. They say the chocolates are much bitter there now we know why.

Because they contain cocao, which is bitter.