TheChocolateLife::LIVE – Mass Balance & Other Cautionary Tales

What is Mass Balance?

Do you know what it is? What the implications are for certification and claims of traceability? Why it’s one of the no-nos to that will get a company added to the wicked list?

For reference, here is the description on the Rainforest Alliance website. What do you think? Innocuous practice or black hole of deceptive marketing ... or something else?

What is Mass Balance Sourcing?

There are multiple ways to source certified ingredients for consumer products. When companies keep the ingredients purchased from a certified farm physically separated from non-certified ingredients throughout the whole supply chain, we call it a “segregated model” of sourcing. When companies opt fo…

Rainforest AllianceIn 2020, 79%of our income supported sustainability programs. Learn More »

How would you feel if the “certified” #chocolate bar you purchased actually contained NO #certified #cocoa? Believe it or don’t this practice is condoned – if not bragged about – under the common practice of Mass Balance used by many certification programs.

— Discover Chocolate – The Original (@DiscoverChoc) March 17, 2022

Cautionary Tales – Audacious Marketing Claims

Read the comments as homework for the live stream. Come prepared to ask questions voice your own thoughts on this – and related topics on similar marketing claims.

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A post shared by Clay Gordon (@discoverchoc)

Can You (Legally) Label it Milk?

The link is to the US code of federal regulations and the section on cacao products. This is here following the discussion (which grew out of the plant-based discussion) on what constitutes “milk” chocolate. Scroll down the §163.130 for the answer.

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-21/chapter-I/subchapter-B/part-163

Bad money chasing bad money

HP Indigo and The Hershey Company Bring Women’s Stories to Life, One Chocolate Bar at a Time

In celebration of International Women’s Day, HP and Hershey unveil a new film to value female talent.

Printing News

Rather than spending unspecified amounts of money on label printing on stories written to convince people that Hershey’s is making a difference in the lives of women farmers (the Corporate Accountability Lab lawsuit in which The Hershey Company is a co-defendant along with the Rainforest alliance suggests otherwise) ...

... the money would be far better spent in cocoa-producing countries actually addressing the issues.

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Live Stream header image original by Jason Rosewell / Unsplash

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About the Featured Image

The face was a fun excursion in NEO using the new Transform tool after cropping to exaggerate the perspective on the face by elongating it. I have included a copy of the face on its own so you can see the exaggeration. NEO also has a FaceAI tool, which I used to exaggerate the eyes by whitening the whites and enlarging them and smoothing out the skin after applying the digital equivalent of a key light to brighten the face. The changes are easy to see if you click on the original in the gallery and then use the arrow keys to move back and forth between the two images.