Is your milk chocolate the genuine article?
Milk chocolate is a favourite in the holiday season, and thanks to a
new measurement method developed by the European Commission's Joint
Research Centre (JRC), consumers in Europe will be sure of what they
are getting. This is a serious matter for a continent which accounts
for up to half of the annual consumption of chocolate worldwide. The
method has been accepted by the International Organization for
Standardization (ISO), making it an international standard.
The standard has been developed to enable the enforcement of the
so-called 'Chocolate Directive' (Directive 2000/36/EC), which defines
the key elements of products which can be legally sold as 'chocolate'.
Negotiating the Directive was time-consuming and difficult, partly
because of different definitions of chocolate in countries with widely
varying recipes and ingredients such as milk.
Prior to the development of the JRC measurement, no validated
methodology existed to check whether manufacturers were correctly
reporting the amount of vegetable fats other than cocoa butter in milk
chocolate. The chemical composition and physical properties of the fats
and butter are very close, making them extremely difficult to quantify
or even detect. This left the door open for potential disputes and
uncertainty as to whether or not milk chocolate products could actually
be listed as 'milk chocolate' on packaging.
The Chocolate Directive allows the addition of up to 5% of
vegetable fats other than cocoa butter in chocolate products. When
these fats are added to chocolate, laws require that consumers be
informed by appropriate labelling of the product. This can affect
product sales, since consumers are more likely to buy a product
described and marketed as 'milk chocolate' than something using an
alternative description. The 5% level is also an essential requirement
for milk chocolate products to move freely within the internal European
market.
Scientists at the JRC have been working on the problem since the
entry into force of the Chocolate Directive in 2003, in close contact
with the European Commission's Directorate-General for Agriculture and
Rural Development. The JRC submitted its milk chocolate testing methods
to the ISO in 2007. After a two-year independent peer review process,
the method has been adopted as standard ISO 11053:2009.
To help analytical chemists implement the testing methods for
chocolate products, the JRC's Institute for Reference Materials and
Measurements (IRMM) has also developed a set of so-called toolboxes.
These include the method descriptions, electronic evaluation sheets,
and links to the appropriate cocoa butter reference materials.
Two other JRC methods to determine foreign fats in dark chocolate
were previously adopted as international standards in 2007. This new
method for milk chocolate took longer to develop because of the
increased complexity of the measurement, as the milk fats in milk
chocolate interfere with vegetable fats.
'The adoption of the JRC's testing method at international level
confirms the EU's leading role in the worldwide fight against food
fraud,' said Krzysztof Maruszewski, director of the IRMM.
Toolboxes for cocoa butter calculation
Source: Community R&D Information Service (CORDIS)
