NEW DELHI: Last week, WhatsApp users were busy circulating a video where a lady talks very authoritatively about cockroaches as a commonly added ingredient in chocolates. Because this video has been shared rampantly, it goes to show how easy it is to spread misinformation. As Winston Churchill once said, ‘a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on’.
Let’s explore the genesis of this misinformation in the case of chocolate. Cocoa beans, the main ingredient in chocolate, are like any other agricultural product and are prone to insect infestation. Insects and other pests attack our crop in the fields, in the storage houses, and even in our homes. It is also not uncommon to find them in the fruits and veggies that we eat. This is a perfectly natural phenomenon. But, of course, this doesn’t mean that we allow the pests to remain in the food that we wish to eat. Incidentally, cocoa beans also undergo the fermentation process during chocolate making.
This happens in carefully controlled conditions, ensuring that hazardous and unwanted substances don’t make their way into the product. The dubious video I mentioned is full of factual errors – typical of fake news communication. It cites that the ‘global authority on food standards’ (the FDA) allows for 4 per cent of the chocolate mass to be composed of cockroaches. The video also goes on to mention that at the rate of 4per cent, a 100g bar of chocolate will contain 16 cockroaches! I would think that cockroaches come in all shapes and sizes, so it’s suspect to mention that exact number of cockroaches.
Secondly, the FDA is not the global authority that controls food standards. It is the body controlling and regulating food standards in the US. In this capacity, the FDA can establish the maximum level of natural or unavoidable defects in foods for human consumption with no presenting health hazard. Every country has its own food regulatory body, and in India, it is the FSSAI (Food Safety and Standards Authority of India). The standards that chocolate manufacturers must adhere to have been clearly laid out by the FSSAI. One of the specifications is that the ‘material should be free from rancidity or off odour, insect and fungus infestation, filth, adulterants and any harmful or injurious matter’.
The Authority does not allow more than 2 per cent of the insect-damaged beans of the cocoa into a product. Perhaps this piece of info has been convoluted in the fake news video, which now implies that 4 per cent of the product can be the pest itself, cockroaches in this case. It may be true that the effects of climate change and the impending damage to crops, food shortage, and the ever-increasing population on the planet, may force us to eat insects for our survival but this is not happening for now.
Neelanjana Singh
Nutrition Therapist & Wellness Consultant