One of the many, many items on the List of Things That Are Turning Me Into a Grumpy Old Man™ is the fact that an entire generation of kids has grown up not knowing what Coca-Cola is supposed to taste like. That’s because, back around 1985 or so, the evil penny-pinching, bean-counting corporate stooges in Atlanta decided — without bothering to consult the consumers who would be buying and drinking the stuff, mind you — to replace the yummy, yummy sugar in Coke with this new-fangled, better-living-through-modern-chemistry (and, not coincidentally, cheaper) dreck called high-fructose corn syrup. The value of this change was entirely one-sided: the company saved money on the production side by using the cheaper sweetener, which of course boosted the stockholders’ portfolio. Coke drinkers, on the other hand, got shafted. They lost the flavor they’d enjoyed for a hundred years and were forced to either adapt to the new, less-pleasant (and possibly downright harmful, if you believe the bad press on corn syrup) Coke formula, or find some other beverage fix.

(For the record, I don’t generally buy into conspiracy theories, but I find it entirely plausible that the marketing disaster that was New Coke really was an insidious ploy to wean consumers off sugar-based Coke so we’d be more accepting of the corn-syrup formula when Classic Coke “returned.” I’m not saying I definitely believe that, only that I find it believable.)
The really frustrating thing about the Coke situation was that the battle was lost before anyone knew it was being fought. And the same damn thing is about to happen again with another beloved luxury food: chocolate.

I’ve seen this story on a couple of different blogs; the short version is that a number of chocolate manufacturers have quietly petitioned the FDA to relax the standards that define what chocolate is, so they can replace one of the primary ingredients — cocoa butter — with less expensive vegetable oils. Again, this is a deal that benefits only the manufacturers. What does the consumer gain? Not a damn thing that I can see. You can bet the chocolate companies won’t pass the savings along to us; we’ll be paying the exact same price for a lower-quality product.

(There’s another possibility, too: this LA Times article suggests that the real strategy is to split the market into a low-quality, lower-priced segment and a premium segment that will still be made the old-fasioned way, but will, of course, cost a whole lot more than we’re used to paying for a simple chocolate bar.)

I’m not an anti-capitalist by any stretch, but it drives me crazy that nearly everything we buy these days is of such poor quality, and it’s all designed to be that way. Stockholders are taking home obscene dividend checks earned, in large part, by cutting corners on manufactured goods and enforcing a wasteful paradigm of constant disposability, while consumers are stuck with furniture that doesn’t last five years, fragile electronic toys that need to be replaced every six months (by contrast, I’ve got my grandmother’s 1936 Zenith radio in my living room, and it still works), and clothes that fall apart if you wash them too frequently. Is it too much to ask that one of our simplest and most egalitarian luxuries — chocolate — remains unadulterated by corporate greed? I don’t think so.

If you feel the same way, check out Don’t Mess With Our Chocolate — a campaign organized by luxury chocolate manufacturer Guittard, a company that’s cool enough to value the traditional way of doing things — and follow the link from there to an FDA web page where you can leave your comments on the subject. Hurry, though; the comment period is only through tomorrow.

Don’t let The Man take away one of the last things in this world that remains pure and good! Go now and tell the FDA to tell those greedy bastards what they can do with their vegetable oil! And while you’re at it, see what you can do about getting me some original formula Coke!