Chocolatey Coating: The Biggest Chocolate Lie

You ever wonder why sometimes a candy bar claims to be covered in milk chocolate and while others claim to be wrapped in a chocolatey coating? Well the difference is huge. Sure a fanatical chocolate connoisseur would know the difference and most of us are familiar with the difference between milk and dark chocolate, but what is that “chocolatey” terminology all about?

It’s ruse. By law “they” (the violators) cannot use the word “chocolate” because the coating is made with vegetable fats instead of cocoa butter, thus making it a chocolate like substance, not actually chocolate.

BOOOOOO!

Now, before we string the violators up completely, let’s visit a list of offenders and see if we feel any differently:

Charleston Chew

5th Avenue

Clark Bar

Butterfinger

While I will admit to enjoying several of those varieties, the waxy, oiliness of that particular chocolatey coating isn’t amongst my top favorites. Even less so is the move in 2007 by several large chocolate manufacturers who lobbied the US government to call this stuff “chocolate” even though it contained hydrogeneated vegetable oil in place of cocoa butter.

Luckily consumers weren’t fooled and in response the FDA stood by it’s stance that “Cacao fat, as one of the signature characteristics of the product, will remain a principal component of standardized chocolate.”

Damn straight. Long live “chocolate”!