The U.S. FDA defines the standard which requires chocolate manufacturers to use approved ingredients in making chocolate. Currently there is a proposal in front of the FDA which would change the accepted ingredients to allow other (read: cheaper) substitutions, such as vegetable fats in place of cocoa butter.

What this means to you ... All those crappy "chocolate-flavored" items on grocery store shelves would now qualify as chocolate. And candy manufacturers could change their recipes to use inferior ingredients to make "chocolate" and save money on the deal to boot. Think the chocolate will taste just as good or better? Hell no! Think they will at least pass those savings on to the consumer? Hell no!

How you can help!

This change was submitted to the FDA by the Chocolate Manufacturers Association, whose members include Hershey and Nestle. I make this promise to you, Internets: if the FDA changes the standard, I will never purchase another Hershey or Nestle product.

Join the Don't Mess With Our Chocolate movement.

Thanks to my hosting provider, who "upgraded" the servers last month, my blog got blown away, so I've spent the last few weeks re-creating every entry. Now I'm back in action, to bring you all the stuff you missed due to my absence.

First up: Fast food ads vs. reality. This is exactly what you think it is. Photos of fast food products (big mac, whopper) as purchased in the store compared to images of the same products as shown in advertisements. Sounds scandalous, right? But it's not really. You'd have to be brain dead to think you are going to get the exact same product as shown to you in an advertisement. The point of advertising is to make the product look as appealing as possible, just short of out-and-out lying to the customer. On that scale, most of these products fair pretty well, I think. The "famous bowl", and the whopper are probably the products that appear least like the advertisement.

Served crocoKid dinner tonight.  Chicken with catsup for dipping.  And some strawberries on the side.

Does it go without saying that she dipped the strawberries in the catsup and ate them?  Well she did.  And she loved it.

Barf.

The Girl Scout cookies have arrived!  Between crocoWife and myself we have eight boxes.  She ordered 4 from the girl DOWN the street, I ordered 4 from the girl ACROSS the street. I received the delivery of my cookies last night (next time I'm ordering from the girl DOWN the street, because she delivered crocoWife's cookies a week and a half ago).  Two of my four boxes will be empty by tomorrow morning.

My sister sold Girl Scout cookies when we were kids, now she sells everything else under the sun: Mary Kay cosmetics, Pampered Chef, Tupperware, illegal firearms ... hell, I don't know what she's selling nowadays.  The point is, I think the whole Girl Scout cookie business is nothing more than an indoctrination to a lifetime of door-to-door salesmanship.  Fucking cult.

Dateline NBC aired an undercover hidden camera segment the other night on the topic of fast food restaurants.  (Who doesn't love this brand of investigative journalism, by the way?)  All the restaurant filth you could hope for, captured on film!  My favorites are when they send a rookie intern to actually work undercover for a week to capture all the damning evidence.

Anyway ... this latest segment featured a dude who apparently swallowed a hairpin while eating his "breakfast sandwich meal."  That is one gluttonous motherfucker.  Hairpins are like 2 inches long, how do you not notice when you gulp a 2 inch piece of metal?  Did he swallow his sandwich whole like a forest ogre?

He said he felt heartburn and pain about 20 minutes after eating it.  Well ... yeah.  Chew your fucking food, fat boy!

Why are people obsessed with pickles?  I hate 'em.  Every hamburger and sandwich in America has pickles on it, or is served with pickles on the side, or has pickles instead of meat and cheese.  I'm sick of pickles, no more pickles!

I can't order the simplest grilled sandwich without some clown tossing a pickle into the box.

I was eating some chips at lunch the other day when one of my lunchmates pointed at something on the back of the bag.  Not sure why he was inspecting my bag of chips, but anyway ...

There is a quote on the back of the bag, part of which reads, "for the rest of your life."

Wow.  That's quite a commitment for a bag of fried potatoes to be requesting.  I'm not sure I'm prepared to commit my life to these chips.  I don't think I can eat these chips anymore.  Nice try, Frito-Lay!  Your plan backfired!

"Fun" holiday dieting tips.
crocoPuffs Feature: Stuff your fat face