London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972

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Hammersmith 1936

[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Hammersmith Borough]

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118
prepared from cocoa butter with milk and sugar (probably
added as sweetened condensed milk) with no fat-free cocoa
matter whatever. Chocolate, whether for drinking or
eating, has always been made from cocoa, not merely the
fat of cocoa, and in my opinion such a preparation as the
one under discussion is not entitled to be called chocolate.
Cocoa butter is a fat rather difficult of digestion and my
information is that this white milk chocolate has not been
a successful introduction owing to its having caused biliousness in children.
A chocolate syrup and a baking chocolate were genuine.
The latter was apparently intended for use in the coating of
home-made chocolate confectionery.
Of eight samples of chocolate confectionery five were
returned as adulterated; in four of them no cocoa whatever
could be detected, whilst in the other only 1 per cent. of
dry fat-free cocoa matter was present. Two of these were
chocolate-coated confectionery and curiously enough contained no cocoa at all where one would expect to find a
reasonable amount, namely, the chocolate coating. The
standard for the minimum content of fat-free cocoa matter
in this class of confectionery adopted by most analysts is
4 per cent. and in the better-class article much more than
this is usually found. From reports of cases taken to
Court in different parts of the country it appears that a
preparation is sold to bakers for making this confection
which contains no cocoa matter, but is merely a sweetened
and vanilla-flavoured solution of a brown colouring-matter.
The use of cocoa in the small proportion required would
be by no means an expensive matter and the substitution
of this preparation for it seems a particularly mean kind
of offence.
Proceedings taken against vendors of this type of confectionery resulted in substantial fines being imposed. Such
was also the case with samples of cream confectionery which
analysis revealed to contain fillings other than real cream,