• The Washington Post , Friday, April 27, 2007 11:30 AM

Chocolate purists have undertaken a grassroots letter-writing campaign to the Food and Drug Administration protesting a proposed change to food standard definitions that would let manufacturers use vegetable fat instead of cocoa butter in the production of chocolate products.

The change is proposed in an appendix to a 35-page petition signed by a diverse set of culinary groups--juice producers, meat canners and the chocolate lobby. More than 225 comments to the petition by chocolate lovers have been processed so far by the agency, and bloggers are pressing for more.

If the change is approved, products would still need to contain chocolate liquor, the ground-up center of the cocoa bean. But a confection such as PayDay Chocolatey Avalanche--which doesn't contain cocoa butter--would be able to call itself PayDay Chocolate Avalanche.

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