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AN innovative sweet brand which is planning to market its products in Bahrain is fighting a battle with European bureaucrats to call its treats chocolate.
The problem is that at present, kAAKAO bars aren’t considered ‘chocolate’ and EU law prevents the company behind the invention, Nordchocolate Oy, from using the term in any way, especially on the packaging.
The bars are made with cocoa, cocoa butter, coconut milk and sweetened with the Arab world’s favourite … dates. The ingredients are traditional, but they haven’t been used in chocolate making until now.
According to European legislators, ‘chocolate’ by definition is a combination of cocoa and added sugar. Dates – containing naturally occurring fructose and glucose – are not classified as sugar, and therefore kAAKAO is not chocolate.
The makers want its product to help drive revisions to EU laws which it claims are prohibitive to consumers’ demands for healthier choices.
Many confectionary experts suggested it was impossible to create a chocolate sweetened with dates. kAAKAO’s founder, Stephanie Seege, however, was determined to succeed, driven by frustration at the poor selection of products available for restricted diets.
She believed there had to be a way to make highly-indulgent chocolate that tasted the same, or better, than what was already on the market, free from traditional sugar, allergens and other ingredients.
The code was finally cracked together with a Swiss partner, paving the way for a new ‘not-chocolate’ category with the label ‘we fell outta love with sugar, but we’re not bitter’.
“An organic chocolate bar made with four premium ingredients that can’t be called ‘chocolate’ is a great example of how confusing current food labelling laws are,” Stephanie said. “How are consumers supposed to understand what we make? We want to change that.”
The UK-based company’s bars could soon be appearing in supermarkets and cold stores in Bahrain. “We are currently talking to a distributor but nothing has been finalised yet,” a spokesman said.
