Adulteration, Clean Ingredients and Transparency in Chocolate

Long before "ultra-processed" was a headline, Victorians were adding lead to wine and arsenic to sweets.

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150 years ago, foodies were bemoaning “adulteration” of food in much the same way foodies today bemoan “junk foods” and “ultra-processing”. The root causes are remarkably similar – new technologies, commoditisation, cost and time pressures. The fears, including around health consequences, are also similar – although, to be fair, even Sunset Yellow and the other infamous members of the “Southampton Six” seem rather less alarming than the nineteenth-century use of compounds containing lead, copper, mercury or arsenic to colour confectionery (and read on for even more horrifying examples). At the same time many of the proposed solutions are strikingly familiar too – more government regulation, greater scrutiny of labelling and ingredients, consumer education, nutritional fortification, etc.

What’s interesting is that two of the most important causes, and symptoms, of both 19th century food adulteration and 21st century ultra processing – a lack of transparency and ignoring the delights (and importance) of flavour – are so often by-passed.

Chocolate – coming full circle.

Chocolate was one of, if not THE, pioneer of food’s industrialisation. For example: one of the earliest examples of factory-line mechanisation in British food production was the Royal Navy’s manufacture of drinking cocoa (for sailors daily rations) at Deptford in the early 1800s (amazingly done via steam power). Likewise, the development of the hydraulic cocoa press in Holland at around the same time – separating cocoa butter from the cocoa solids and ultimately helping pave the way for chocolate’s move from drink to bar – was another remarkably early example of the industrial processing of food. (For the true background to the “Dutch” press – including how it was actually English, and based on technology invented by a locksmith to flush loos – see here). The invention of milk chocolate by Daniel Peter, arguably the pioneer of what we now call bliss point food (ie sugar, salt and fat) coupled with the extensive use of vending machines to achieve widespread distribution, positioned chocolate for its explosive growth in the 20th century too.

At the same time 19th century drinking chocolate / cocoa was heavily “adulterated” in the early and mid 19th century to make it cheaper and more digestible via the addition of starches, flours and thickening agents. This enabled Cadbury’s – on the back of a last-throw-of-the-dice investment in a Dutch press in the 1860s – to promote Cadbury’s Cocoa Essence, with the slogan “Absolutely Pure, Therefore Best” and build one of the UK’s first “food brands”. George Cadbury followed this up by then pushing for more food regulations, the publication of ingredient lists, and definitions of cocoa and chocolate based on sugar content. Undoubtedly this did help reduce “adulteration” in drinking chocolate. At the same time, it makes it even more ironic that Cadbury’s next adopted another van Houten technology – “dutching” – for their Bournville branded cocoa powder. “Dutching” involves treating the cocoa with an alkali such as potassium carbonate so as to reduce bitterness, acidity and increase solubility. Unfortunately it also strips out many of chocolate’s nutritional benefits such as the polyphenols/ phytonutrients and magnesium.

If you do want some great drinking chocolate that isn’t dutched or alkalised, try this from Pump Street or this from Bare Bones.

A critique of ingredients lists (and regulation etc.) as a panacea

Ingredients lists, and the insistence that they are consistently applied, are clearly important for food quality and general health. The instructions of Food writers and nutritionists such as Michael Pollan, Chris Van Tulleken, Tim Spector, Federica Amati and many others to “check the ingredients” and be wary of long lists of items you’ve never heard of is clearly sensible. And the recent emergence of apps like Yuka, that scan barcodes to assess healthiness via listed ingredients and nutritional information, are also useful tools for healthier eating.

But at the same time “clean labelling” isn’t a panacea. For starters manufacturers are great at finding ways around this. Joanna Blythman has a jaw-dropping example of the way that big cheese companies have argued that their use of aluminium salts is for processing purposes, and so they don’t need to list aluminium on their ingredients.

Even more importantly, all too few consumers take the time to review ingredients list. What’s on the front, branding, price, special offer, shelf location etc. are all seemingly far more powerful – and this doesn’t even factor in the likes of vending machines or delivery apps.

Even assuming consumers read the back of the label, there remains another intractable challenge: ingredients with the same name are not necessarily the same – and shouldn’t be treated as equivalent. For example, many supermarket dark chocolate ingredient lists are confusingly similar to those of many dark craft chocolate bars – cocoa mass, cocoa beans and sugar. But the beans (and sugar) in a craft chocolate bar, are grown, farmed and crafted in a completely different way to that of a supermarket bar with similarly “clean ingredients”. The environmental and social footprint are poles apart (see here for the shocking water use, and desertification of mass produced chocolate). And the impact on general well being of both farmer and consumer is similarly different (see here).

More transparency and more savouring

That’s why the loss of transparency and flavour via the industrialisation in the 1800s initially in the West and now almost everywhere in the world, remain so important. Before industrialisation, most people, for most of their meals, knew where their food came from and how it had been “treated” and prepared. Their supply chains were transparent and administered by neighbours. And they judged quality via flavour.

Industrialisation broke this transparency at all levels. In addition, commercial pressures tempted many to “adulterate” their products with disastrous consequences. Much as the media and blogosphere are (rightly) concerned about what ultra processing is doing to our health, 19th century food and drink adulteration was on a different level.

For example, to take some popular “treatments” highlighted in Fredrick Accum’s A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons:

Beer: Brewers used quassia and liquorice to economise on malt and hops, capsicum to give weak beer bite, and molasses to restore body and froth. Most alarming was cocculus indicus – sold discreetly as “black extract” – which was added “to impart an intoxicating quality to porter or ales”.
Wine. Spoiled cider could be transformed into “factitious Port wine” using beetroot juice, brandy, logwood and rhatany. Even age was counterfeited by coating the inside of bottles with an artificial crystalline “crust”. Far more dangerously, preparations of lead were used to arrest souring and render muddy white wines transparent.
Confectionery. Cheap sweets sold in the streets “for the allurement of children” were bulked out with starch and Cornish pipe-clay. Red drops were coloured with vermilion adulterated with lead, while green sweets were sometimes “rendered poisonous” with preparations of copper.
Cheese. Gloucester cheese was poisoned through a remarkably circuitous chain: the annatto used to colour it had been strengthened with vermilion, which the druggist had already adulterated with red lead. One diner suffered repeated attacks of violent colic, while a kitten became violently sick after eating the rind.

The response was government regulation, food standards and requirements for ingredients’ labelling. Later came nutritional information and fortification – replacing or adding particular nutrients to an increasingly industrialised food supply. These did temper many of the abuses of 19th century food adulteration (and to some surprising “repositioning”, such as that of margarine from being maligned as “adulterated butter” to a “healthier alternative”).

Without diminishing the positive improvements from these steps it’s important to note they were focused on addressing what was in the food. They did much less to restore transparency about where a food came from, how it had been made – or the role of flavour in judging its quality. And as the explosive rise of “junk foods” and ultra processing in the last 50 years has shown, there’s a long way to get back to knowing (and caring) where your food comes from, how it’s been prepared and why it’s so scoffable.

Closing the circle

This is where the circle can (hopefully) be closed — and more reason to choose craft chocolate. Craft chocolate is built on transparency: of sourcing, of crafting, of farmer pay, of environmental impact. It’s equally built around savouring and flavour. This makes it healthier for you, your family – and the planet and cocoa farmers.

And it’s another reason to visit the London Craft Chocolate Fair on the 17th and 18th October. You can come meet IN PERSON many of the UK Craft Chocolate’s pioneers chat with them – and savour some of their bars. Plus we’ve tastings, pairings, cocoa ceremonies and more.

Thanks as ever for your support – and hope to see you soon at a tasting or the fair!

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