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Waldenbuch / Stuttgart (dpa) - Can a chocolate without conventional sugar actually be called chocolate?
The manufacturer Ritter Sport caused irritation with the announcement that it wanted to bring a chocolate onto the market that could not be formally designated as such in Germany.
According to the Federal Ministry of Food, the state consumer protection ministry responsible for food monitoring in Baden-Württemberg also contradicted the representation of the company based in Waldenbuch near Stuttgart on Thursday.
Two lawyers questioned by the German Press Agency, in turn, supported the company's argumentation, which itself did not want to deviate from its position upon request.
Ritter Sport announced on Monday that a new chocolate-like product called Cacao y Nada was made only of cocoa and did not contain sugar.
Instead, natural cocoa juice is used to sweeten it, which is obtained from cocoa pods on a plantation in Nicaragua.
However, the German ordinance on cocoa and chocolate products from 2003 states that a product can only be called chocolate if it contains ingredients such as cocoa mass, cocoa powder and cocoa butter as well as “types of sugar”.
The regulation specifically states that chocolate is a “product made from cocoa products and types of sugar”.
In addition, the paper - a kind of statutory recipe book - states: "Sugar types within the meaning of this ordinance are also products other than those listed in the Sugar Types Ordinance."
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The cocoa plant is not mentioned in the sugar species regulation, but in an EU implementing regulation from November.
The company refers to this: With this new paper, the juice of the cocoa pod is now approved as a food in the EU.
However, the sweetening product obtained on the plantation does not contain the required sugar content, which, according to this ordinance, would be necessary for food law recognition as a type of sugar.
The consumer protection ministry from the southwest contradicts this interpretation.
The decisive factor is the Cocoa Ordinance, in which there is no clear definition of the term “types of sugar”.
"Sugar types within the meaning of this ordinance are also products other than those listed in the Sugar Types Ordinance," the ministry also announced.
Since, according to the manufacturer, natural cocoa juice is used as a sweetening component in the product, the product can also be sold under the name of chocolate "according to our assessment and that of our experts and based on the information we know about the ingredients".
The Federal Ministry of Food had already made a similar statement earlier.
The Hamburg food lawyer Andreas Schulte told the dpa, however, that Ritter Sport's legal assessment should be correct.
"In my estimation, the company is probably not allowed to call its product chocolate."
The consumer thought is important in this context - “and people think that chocolate must contain sugar, among other things”.
The Hanoverian food lawyer Katharina Gitmann-Kopilevich assessed the situation in a similar way.
If the sweetener from Ritter Sport does not contain the minimum sugar content specified in the EU regulation, then by definition it does not fall under a type of sugar.
"In this respect, Ritter Sport rightly assumed that it was not allowed to call the product chocolate."
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Ritter Sport itself also stuck to its legal interpretation on request on Thursday.
A spokeswoman rejected the accusation of having done a PR gag.
Of course, the case was examined “very intensively” in advance before going public.
After reviewing all the regulations, it was concluded that the new product should not be called chocolate.
Nothing has changed in this view.
Ritter Sport chocolate is sold in more than 100 countries.
The company had to cope with declines in sales in the past two years, had sales of 470 million euros in 2020 and employs around 1,650 people worldwide.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210204-99-306615 / 2
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German cocoa regulation
EU implementing regulation on "Sugar from the pulp of the cocoa plant"
German Sugar Types Ordinance