Toblerone to change design under ‘Swissness’ rules
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Lies to sell products are still lies.
I also agree that places should in general be able to protect origins in some way.
A bit like the US, Australia has had issues with things like cheese. “Feta” must now be Greek, with local feta-style stuff either called “fetta” or just something like “Greek style cheese”.
But there are lots of cheese styles in Greece, and the Australian cheeses are often very good (not always) exemplars of a feta style cheese.
It’s very hard to see where exactly the line should be drawn.
On the other hand Nürnberger Bratwurst (basically sausage) has a trade union suing anyone within their reach for daring to associate their sausage with the city of Nürnberg if not certified to do so.
There might be a somewhat similar situation going on with Parma ham. What I heard is that the meat simply needs to pass Parma in a truck or train to qualify as coming from there. Probably a partly sarcastic take on their hypocritical approach to quality control.
The value is for the label, but the logistics are still shipping the weight of a ton of water
No, it doesn't mean it's worth shipping water from an island across the ocean. In any case, my favorite water of all time is "El dorado springs", which happens to be sourced very close to me here in boulder, co.
Buying bottled water is its own insanity anyway and I know the Fiji is marketing but still.
Also, they don't have to (doubt they do) bottle it in fiji.
By your logic global trade itself is a waste of fossil fuels. This sort of utopian impractical thinking does more harm to the cause of reducing climate change than actual fossil fuels. Can you not transport goods with renewable energy powered ships and trucks? Can you not use glass or tin cans for bottling like some brands do? Of course you can! Yet you and others want the burden to be on consumers or the actual product people want and you're surprised when people don't give a shit about climate change.
The specific taste of fiji water could be replicated without too much effort by analyzing and replicating the mineral content, but people aren't buying the taste they're buying the romance of the idea of tropical water.
And yes, much of global trade IS a colossal waste of fossil fuels.
waste discussion aside sounds like you have no idea what you are talking about. tons of waters taste differently and that comes fro the traces you find in it precisely because taste and smell work at the ppm level
It was the most amazing, refreshing, delicious water ever. While there was almost definitely a psychological component to the initial taste (we were used to iodine flavor, were tired after about 3 days of hiking, and the area was beautiful/it looked like something out of a commercial for mountain water), we were there long enough and it continued to taste good enough that I'm positive there was something else going on. I think it had something to do with the rocks, a light amount of healthy bacteria(?) and it being fresh snowmelt.
I'm in no way advocating for shipping water across the planet, and I don't think you can bottle that up or recreate whatever was going on there at scale, but there's definitely a legitimate, big range of difference in water quality. I'd bet good money most double blind taste testers could easily distinguish between legitimately fresh cold mountain water and refrigerated water that's been sitting in an aquifer and then a plastic bottle for a while, even if you matched the salt content. But you'd have to go up a mountain to do that test properly. I think it has to be like right out of the stream to make the biggest difference.
Also, the people of fiji benefiting from this I am sure will not agree with you about it being wasteful.
Actual soda fountains are fun to think, they make the stuff there on the spot from water supply, co2 and syrup... Minimising transport distance.
Unfortunately, articles on the issue are usually over a decade old and the new ones source the old ones. One of them presented information that a significant number of people gained access to clean water in the 2010s and then used the improved number as a slight to Fiji without information on how it progressed. If the official sensitivity to bad press remains that could be a contributing factor.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/08/fiji-spin-bottl...
How does Fiji compare to Voss?
I am not a water sommelier, but I used to work at a place that stock a set of premium bottled waters, and Voss was one that was more sought after relative to other bottled waters.
My head hurts.
> "‘Gruyere’ can be used to describe US cheeses, court rules"
> A US appeals court has ruled that the word “gruyere” is a common label for cheese and cannot be reserved just for the kind made originally in France or Switzerland.
This will cause trouble for trade deals between the EU and USA, since Europe wants to protect their regional 'brands' in a similar way to trademarks.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/04/gruyere-desc...
In some places for some things, a regional description might be interpreted by people to mean “in the style of”, and for others it may be presumed to mean “originates from”.
There are ton of examples of things that would be assumed to be one or the other. Neither are a “wrong” use of language. The problem is when the descriptors are used in a way that deceives purchasers.
It also isn’t just about the origin. "Gruyere", "Cantal" or "Champagne" aren’t only about where the thing is made, but also how it is made, and using what.
It also isn’t just about consumers. Those who stand the most to loose from deceiving bad actors are the other producers.
Like what happened with cheddar. Most people know it as a pleasant and yet tasteless plastic-encased slices of yellow whatever that they put in their burger. When it actually is a nice and tasty cheese.
The real crime of those slices is calling them cheese.
You can get process cheese that is actually cheese from brands such as Boars Head. The "process" part just means there's an emulsifier added so the cheese doesn't break when it melts. Despite the sciencey name, there's nothing bad about emulsifiers.
It’s just that all around the world American Cheese is now often, although wrongly, mistaken for cheddar. And most people have no idea what actual cheddar looks or tastes like.
Which is precisely what these stringent and sometimes somewhat absurd rules try to prevent.
One of Europe's prime exports is its "culture". People pay a lot of money to vacation in various European locales to taste "authentic" whatever where it was originally produced, even if they couldn't tell the difference between it and something made down the road in an Illinois industrial park. Without location-based brand enforcement those locations would lose a big income stream, never mind the "authentic" mark-up they get on their exported products.
As for cheddar, you can buy fancy imported cheddar at Walmart, never mind Whole Foods and the other upmarket chains that will have entire dedicated sections to fancy cheeses imported from all over the world. The reason it got the reputation you describe is simply cost. Same reason Folgers and Maxwell House are still on the shelves despite the insane variety of better coffee available these days.
If I offered you a perfectly functional car, but added an unnecessary kill switch that prevented you from starting it without my express and arbitrary permission, would the deciding factor in your purchasing decision be the build quality of the engine, or that kill switch?
Without the rules on what is and isn't Champagne or Napa Valley wine, we can be sure manufacturers would be putting the label on other products to deceive purchasers.
[1] https://agriculture.ec.europa.eu/news/new-geographical-indic...
Re: Champaign: it was long used as a descriptor of a style of wine in the US and consumers are familiar with that usage here. And to this day, it is still used that way on wines that are on the shelf, and aren’t made in France at all. Politically, there were some concessions made, but it wasn’t anything to do with consumer protections.
As an example of where the US system seems to work, you can buy "parmesan" which seems to be some kind of a sawdust-based product, or "reggiano parmegiano", which is a cheese.
There's also a thing where many regional names are used as descriptions of foods: I don't expect Neapolitan ice cream to be made in Naples, I just expect the Strawberry/Chocolate/Vanilla pattern. In general I think this tends to be a lot more controversial in Europe, with specific DPO categorizations, then in the US, where the standard is a lot more literal (ex: Americans interpret "Champagne" to be a claim about the style, while Europeans interpret it to additionally include where the product was made).
Toyota sells a range of trucks in the USA named using North American geographical names. Perhaps it’s a Japanese thing?
Really? Because it genuinely seems like a claim about where it's from to me. IN this case are you sure you're not just so used to being lied to that you expect the lie?
That said, your point about Neapolitan makes sense to me. Like - I know full well the "New york pizza" place near me is not shipping pizzas from new york, it's meaning "new york style". Not sure how to distinguish between geographic style references, which I have no problem with, and false implications about a product's origin. But it'd be nice if we could.
You're probably American (where presumably these laws won't be applicable anyway, though I have no idea concerning US-Swiss Trade agreements). Europeans have been conditioned at least to some degree to associate chocolate with cows running around pristine alpine pastures to give the milk that makes Swiss chocolate so unique.
You're correct that European geographic origin tends to be more of an issue in Europe than the US. Reason being: European law does not automatically apply in the US. Otoh, to call something "Tennessee Whiskey" it must have seen Tennessee at least briefly.
I have to contradict your claim that the American interpretation is more "literal" though. "Champagne" is _literally_ the name of a region in France were a type of sparkling wine was invented.
Maybe not the best phrasing, sorry! But I do think there's a difference here. When Americans buy "Colby" cheese we don't expect it to be from Colby WI, and we don't expect "Buffalo sauce" to be from Buffalo NY. Those regional names have become part of the name of the food. On the other hand, in "Tennessee Whiskey", "Wisconsin Cheddar", or "New Jersey Blueberries" the location is mostly just telling you where it was produced. No one is misled by "Colby cheese" from California, but they would be misled by "New Jersey Blueberries" from Massachusetts.
I'll buy the store brands of colby cheese and muenster cheese, but "New Jersey Blueberries" are still a niche NJ product.
That's why companies are fairly protective of their brand names and insist that you use phrasing like "Scotch Brand adhesive tape" and avoid using the verb "to google".
Terms like "Escalator" and "Zipper" fall under that category.
On the other hand, even though you may think "Kleenex" is a generic term, good look trying to sell facial tissues under that moniker.
Yes because it's made from buffalos.
Buffalo sauce is actually the sauce which you put on buffalo wings, which by law must come from winged bison.
Oh. I'd been under the impression they use a very large garlic press style thing instead.
Sounds like it's a non-destructive measure after all?
They should really put that info on the bottles. :)
[/s if that's not obvious]
Virgin baby oil is extracted using a press.
Bog standard baby oil basically uses a blender, and then a centrifuge to get the last of the oil out.
Fun fact Johnson and Johnson is so called because it only used boys, under the mistaken belief that girl oil may make boys weak. Obviously in today's enlightened age such sexism is a thing of the past.
I doubt the French expect their creme anglais to come from England.
I don't think Germans expect their hamburgers to come from hamburg
This is because the style has a specific name. A Champagne is:
- a sparkling wine
- made using the « méthode traditionnelle champenoise » (literally « traditional method from the Champagne region »)
- from the Champagne region
- + a few other technicalities
We have a lot of sparkling wines (« mousseux ») made with the méthode traditionnelle and they can be marked as such, but they’re not champagne. And they do taste different from champagne (and I personally prefer most méthode traditionnelle other than champagne so good for me, less expensive).
For products like wine or cheese, the soil has a huge impact on the final taste, that’s why it’s so important to differentiate between the type of product and its origin.
Well:
> In 1890, Canadian pharmacist and chemist John J. McLaughlin of Enniskillen, Ontario (Hamlet), after working in a soda factory in Brooklyn, New York,[5] opened a carbonated water plant in Toronto.[1]
It sounds like you’d like to ban marketing.
Try to replace "place" by "brand" in the sentence above.
In Europe _places are brands_. Sure, in the US I might want to name my product "Coca Cola chocolate" or something, because of the sweet brown characteristics I'd like to emphasize. Doesn't mean I'm allowed to.
At some point, a brand is just a brand.
But I think that's what happens with distance things get more abstracted away.
So Mondelez cashes in on the brand name and the still perceived Swissness while selling you cheap chocolate.
Could this be explained by the fact that the bar contains other stuff like nougat? They very well might be using "good milk chocolate", but if there's also nougat in there and it has low protein, then it's going to drag down the overall protein ratio.
That said, I'd prefer a good dark to either one.
Hematogen may contain cow blood (which is disgusting if you know what it is you're eating), but Hershey tastes like what I would otherwise only imagine cow vomit to taste like. And one doesn't need to know what's inside to sense the taste.
The top ingredients in order are: "Sugar, Whole Milk Powder, Cocoa Butter, Cocoa Mass". The chocolate is 28% cocoa solids. [1] Sounds like high-quality milk chocolate to me. (And there's no vegetable oil or anything.)
Do you think Toblerone should be less sweet? Because milk chocolate is always sweet, I don't know of any brand that doesn't have sugar as the first ingredient.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/TOBLERONE-CHOCOLATE-ALMOND-NOUGAT-Tob...
To make cheaper chocolate you increase sugar to save on cocoa (there's a hard lower limit of cocoa content however in many countries and the EU) and milk.
Vegan milk-like chocolate also has lower protein contents, but in my opinion it's a different product where this rule of thumb does not apply.
For comparison, for example, Cailler is 28% and 20% respectively, which is a little bit more milk but that's all. [1]
Toblerone doesn't seem like "cheap chocolate". It's just slightly less milky than another premium brand, and has other ingredients like almonds and honey.
[1] https://swissmade.direct/shop/swiss-food-and-drink/chocolate...
Milk chocolate is for people who like sweetness and want a lot of it. Toblerone is candy, remember.
You should be buying dark chocolate of your desired cocoa percentage, and leave the (high-quality) sugary chocolate for those who want it.
But without telling them their chocolate is cheap, because it isn't. There's no need to be judgmental about people's chocolate choices.
One of the discount supermarkets in Denmark was selling enormous quantities of it, and similar products, when Covid stopped most travel.
"...in 1845 and opened the well-known shop on Paradeplatz in 1859. In 1892, the chocolate-producing branch of the business split off from the confectionery and now operates independently as Lindt & Sprüngli.[2] Owner of the chocolate factory became Johann Rudolf Sprüngli, son of Rudolf Sprüngli. While his brother, David Robert Sprüngli, was allocated the confectioner's."[0]
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confiserie_Spr%C3%BCngli
I doubt this ever is "for all products" though. As this is an international regulation I intuit you have to register in some appropriate international body for protection, no?
[eAmbrosia] the EU geographical indications register https://ec.europa.eu/info/food-farming-fisheries/food-safety...
Printing that line in a story about a Toblerone controversy is vaguely annoying. "We know we are providing them free advertising for a nothing story but you're reading it anyway. Don't you want a Toblerone now?"
Now I'm going to forever be checking to make sure my chocolate has more than 8g of protein per 100g of product
In 2016, Toblerone grabbed headlines when it increased the gaps between the triangular chocolate chunks on bars sold in the UK, supposedly to be able to sell the snack at the same price but at a weight reduced from 170g to 150g. A year later, Mondelēz also reduced the weight of Toblerone bars sold in Germany, with the number of triangular peaks down to 11 from 15.
Such “controversies” guaranteed Toblerone a run of free marketing, with sales reportedly rising in spite of supposed outrage among customers. The bar reverted to its original shape in 2018.
I have eaten Toblerone for many years but this is the first time I noticed the bear.
There it is! That is another Fedex logo arrow moment.
Never noticed it before, not sure if the bear will stay after the changes.
> Mondelēz, which has owned Toblerone since 2012, announced last year that from the end of 2023 it would move some of the production to its plant in Slovakia, where it also produces the Milka chocolate brand originally made in Switzerland.
The usual story of corporate greed. They just don't get the valuation and pride that people put into things. So in spite of "Made in Switzerland" giving them such an edge on the market in terms of consumer trust and pricing, of course they have to go where work is cheaper.
I've been hating this with a passion since when I was a child. I'm not a brand-loyal consumer at all, but I value that I can buy stuff for a fair price with an assurance of quality and product stability. I grew up with a famous yogurt brand whose unique selling point (apart from the inane amount of money they spent on advertising) was that the sour-ish and rather firm yogurt was put on top of a layer of fruit jam. This was distinctly better than almost all the other brands that were (and still are) homogeneous, super-sweet slurries of all the ingredients. My favorite yogurt maker then got sold to, I believe, Nestle; they then quickly overhauled their new brand and wouldn't you know, they kept the name on the outside but inside they turned it into the same sweet slurry that all the other brands offered. Because, obviously, that's what consumers wanted, right.
It totally evades me what goes on in the minds of these 'managers'. What did they 'manage' at all? They just destroyed a brand by executing the one UPS it had.
I take exception at the word "inventor" here. "Creator" would work better. It's a candy bar. He didn't invent candy bars. He created a candy bar. There's enough distinctiveness for a trademark, but there isn't enough inventiveness for a patent.
https://www.lifepr.de/pressemitteilung/kraft-foods-deutschla...
Regardless, the patent office is not a gatekeeper for the use of “inventor”.
Why?
That’s pretty weird for a company naming themselves “Micro Swiss”.
Hopefully at least the person or people that started Micro Swiss have some kind of connection to Switzerland, like for example that there is some great-great-great-grandmother that came from Switzerland or something.
Micro Swiss is named so, because of the type of (micro) lathes they used originally to make the nozzles. I don't have a primary source but it seems reasonable.
https://www.mmsonline.com/articles/understanding-swiss-type-...
See also the Swiss water process for decaffeinated coffee - the process was invented in Switzerland but it can be done anywhere (obviously).
Though what about Swiss Miss cocoa? They've always been based in WI and have no connection.
Maybe related to the sizable Swiss community in Wisconsin?
https://www.kmu.admin.ch/kmu/en/home/concrete-know-how/sme-m...
Cattle, not pets. We don't need to name our food in 2023.
It's the only way to eat food at scale.
Or is it just the naming you object to?
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Also: Toblerone enjoys a great deal of publicity but tastes like shit. I had one some time ago and it was so sugary that I found it disgusting.