Year 3, Day 56: Again No Walk & Chocolate Followup

It was really bone-chillingly cold today; an effect that can only be had when Monday is 80 degrees followed by Tuesday at 70 degrees. Normally, a 60 degree day in April is a delight, but the rain came and to top it off our property manager goosed the A/C yesterday and so it was FREEZING inside.

Breakfast
Kashi Go Lean!
Heritage Flakes
Strawberries
Blueberries
Banana
Unsweetened Soy Milk
Coffee

Lunch: Russo's ($5.17)
Romaine, red pepper, red onion, feta
chicken, broccoli, mushrooms
balsamic vinegar, pepperocini

Snack
4 Pieces Beef Jerky
1 Cameo Apple

Dinner
Fish
Cauliflower

FOLLOW UP FROM GUITTARD:

Fourth generation chocolatier challenges proposed FDA downgrades to
what makes chocolate what it is;
“Citizen’s Petition” proposal shortchanges consumers,
threatens taste, ingredients of America’s favorite food

(Burlingame, CA, April 11, 2007) – Forget the cola wars. The next struggle for American consumers’ hearts and minds is over a proposal to alter the “Gold Standard” for chocolate – the critical ingredients of what makes chocolate a food to die for.

A fourth generation maker of chocolate -- Gary Guittard, President of Guittard Chocolate Company of Burlingame, California -- is available for comment to discuss a grass roots fight against a proposal before the FDA to allow manufacturers of chocolate to replace cocoa butter – chocolate’s key ingredient – with chemically modified vegetable fats and still call it chocolate. The controversial proposal would allow
negative changes in the manner chocolate is made and the way it tastes, subverting a “Gold Standard” of manufacturing that has been in place for over sixty years.

Guittard is enlisting the public in a grass roots campaign -- “I want my chocolate to stay real chocolate” -- as the deadline for public comment to the Food & Drug Administration looms (April 25th), as he and his industry colleagues challenge a proposed number of content standards changes being considered by the U.S Food and Drug Administration (FDA). These changes that would negatively alter the composition and
thereby the taste of America’s chocolate.

Gary Guittard is joining with other chocolate manufacturers in asking the FDA to reject the proposed food standard changes that will affect chocolate products and to have regulators enter into a broader public dialogue with the chocolate industry, consumers, consumer advocates, retailers, nutritionists, health experts, and others with an interest in preserving the quality, taste and content of traditional American “chocolate.”

Says fourth generation chocolatier Gary Guittard: “The chocolate industry prides itself on delivering to the consumer high quality products. The industry adheres to strict Federal Standards of Identity that were first established in the 1940’s and have only been changed since to reflect new manufacturing techniques in 1993 and again in 2002 to establish a Standard of Identity for white chocolate.”.

“The proposed FDA changes as they apply to chocolate [and] if adopted would allow the current “Gold Standard” for chocolate to be changed in a way that will ultimately result in short-changing the consumer and changing what we know and love as traditional chocolate,” Guittard says. “There are no clear consumer benefits associated with the proposed changes.”

“My family has been involved in the manufacturing of chocolate for 139 years,” notes Gary Guittard. “Chocolate is not just my business – it is my passion and these changes would lead the way to the manufacturing of something entirely different...that would not be the traditional chocolate that most of us know and love.”

“Beyond positive health benefits, chocolate has long been a food Americans have said ‘they would die for’ -- now this great food is being threatened by some in the industry who would favor replacing cocoa butter with far cheaper ingredients, which would in reality cheapen chocolate’s great taste, all in pursuit of shortchanging the consumer and putting that change in their own pockets.”

“We’re enlisting the public to step forward and demand that the proposed changes to the “Gold Standard” of Chocolate be stopped immediately,” notes Gary Guittard. “No one can afford to sit back and eat bon-bons while America’s great passion for chocolate is threatened. “We’re asking the public to sign /send an email petition or to phone or email the Food & Drug Administration.”


To contact Gary Guittard directly:

Gary Guittard
10 Guittard Road, Burlingame, CA 94010
Telephone: 1-800-468-2462

E-mail: Gary@Guittard.com
Web Site: www.guittard.com information also at:
http://dontmesswithourchocolate.guittard.com/whatsthisabout.asp

Note: The deadline for submitting public comment to the US Food & Drug
Administration on the Citizens Petition of the Grocery Manufacturers Association is
April 25, 2007. Consumers can learn more at the Web site:
http://dontmesswithourchocolate.guittard.com/