Let's see if I've got this right: in the name of progress, our food police want to feed us tasteless cheese and watered-down chocolate.
Regulators at European Union headquarters in Brussels, in an purported effort to promote food safety, are insisting that the raw milk used in traditional Camembert be pasteurized, which would kill bacteria that give it a unique flavor. Big producers are thrilled, artisan producers are aghast.
But before we castigate the EU, let's save a bit of outrage for our own Food & Drug Administration, which is about to allow the production of chocolate candy with less chocolate. Again, big producers are thrilled, artisans (like Seattle's own Theo Chocolate) are mortified.
(Quite parenthetically, all this on the same day that the Tokyo fish market almost runs out of real tuna, thanks to overfishing. Some sushi chefs say they'll substitute deer meat. Yup, looks like Bambi will be the new toro.)
Because, for the big guys, it's not about the real thing, it's about making something that looks like the real thing...as cheaply as possible. Remember when Coke was the "real thing"? Well, even then, sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup, it wasn't.
We want, we want, we want it all. But we don't want to pay, so we get what we deserve: shinola.
Posted by Ronald Holden at June 25, 2007 10:01 PM