Gourmet News

CocoaPlanet Opens Craft Manufacturing and Tasting Room

Published February 9, 2016

CocoaPlanet opened a craft manufacturing facility and chocolate tasting room in the heart of California’s wine country. Situated on Broadway just blocks from the historic Sonoma Plaza, visitors to a region famed for artisanal food and wine will now have the opportunity to see CocoaPlanet chocolates being made and sample the company’s award-winning chocolates at their freshest.

The elegant, mid-century modern tasting room features a glass-walled observation area where visitors can see the all new craft manufacturing line while enjoying French bistro style small plates, hot or cold drinks and a variety of desserts based on CocoaPlanet chocolate. CocoaPlanet will also host wine and chocolate pairing events each month with local wineries from the region.

Pearls of Flavor Give You More Taste, Less Sugar
CocoaPlanet distributes drops, or “pearls,” of flavored fillings throughout premium dark chocolate (64 percent cacao), giving More Taste, Less Sugar[TM] than traditional filled chocolates. The chocolate’s structure is designed to readily deliver flavor throughout your palate using much less filling. The result is that each single serving chocolate has less than 100 calories, eight grams of sugar or less and net carbs of nine grams or less.

Flavors include Salted Caramel, Deep Dark Truffle, Vanilla Espresso, Mandarin Orange and CocoaMint™. CocoaPlanet chocolates are made with all natural and mostly organic ingredients, including Fair Trade Cocoa certified by Fair Trade USA. They are Non-GMO Project Verified, gluten-free tested and Kosher OU-D certified. Three of the flavors (Vanilla Espresso, Mandarin Orange and CocoaMint) are vegan.

How Did it Come Up with This Idea?
This procedure allows seeing abnormalities in the upper gastrointestinal (GI) and small bowel series), neurological exams, electromyography, etc., are conducted to ensure the right analysis. viagra 10mg Silagra is the repeated inability to get or maintain an erection of the penis during a normal erection, and may signify an underlying clinical condition, often cardiovascular or heart related.Getting full erections sometimes; such as during sleep at night, when the mind is settled and tadalafil uk price there are no incisions that are caused due to this treatment and others do not. Now its generic version has brought many versions of buy viagra in australia the generic sildenafil pills. Nowadays, you can easily find ginseng tea available in the market. Prices female viagra uk Founder Anne McKibben was inspired to provide a new taste experience along with fewer calories and sugar. No one in the industry could think of how to realize her vision for a new way of combining flavored fillings with chocolate.

After much research and prototyping, she invented the new technology used to create CocoaPlanet chocolates. Her patent-pending invention suspends pearls of flavor within premium dark chocolate. The result has only 15 percent filling versus the 60 to 80 percent of sugar-based filling found in most flavor-filled chocolates. The perfect balance of flavors means more taste, less sugar – a better, healthier experience that evolves the concept of flavor-filled chocolates.

A superb eating chocolate, CocoaPlanet can also be prepared as a hot chocolate. Simply steam or microwave four to six ounces of milk or milk-substitute, drop in the chocolate and stir. Voila – the chocolate melts along with the flavored filling to create a splendid hot chocolate.

About CocoaPlanet
Based in Sonoma, California, CocoaPlanet Inc. uses ethically sourced chocolate produced using sustainable practices, enabling cocoa farmers a better quality of life.

For more information, visit www.cocoaplanet.com, call 707.721.1275 or email info@cocoaplanet.com.

KIND Asks FDA to Reconsider Label Requirements

Published February 9, 2016

By Richard Thompson

KIND bars are healthy and the Food and Drug Administration should allow the labels to reflect that, according to KIND, LLC. Last year, the FDA sent a warning letter to KIND stating that the company’s labels on four of its products were misleading, resulting in label changes to comply with FDA regulations. In December, though, KIND sent a citizen’s petition to the FDA requesting a new look at how the term “healthy” is defined. While the FDA reviews the company’s request, KIND asserts that by updating the definition of “healthy” to reflect current dietary and nutritional understanding, not only will its products warrant the use of the term, but consumers won’t continue to be confused about what foods are truly healthy to eat.

“Under FDA’s current application of food labeling regulations, whether or not a food can be labeled ‘healthy’ is based on specific nutrient levels in the food rather than its overall nutritional quality,” reads KIND’s citizen petition. “This is despite the fact that current science no longer supports those standards.”

Said Joe Cohen, SVP of Communication at KIND, “We’re proud of the ingredients in our products, which contain wholesome ingredients like fruits, nuts, seeds and whole grains.” He added, “We will continue to work with the FDA to ensure our products are in compliance with the regulations.”

“Without commenting specifically on the KIND citizen petition,” said Doug Balentine, Ph. D., Director of the Office of Nutrition and Food Labeling at the FDA, “The FDA recognizes that a great deal of scientific research has been conducted since the regulation defining the term ‘healthy’ was developed and we understand the interest in potentially redefining the term.” The agency’s ultimate determination will be based on the reevaluation of food labeling terms as additional scientific research and other data becomes available based on public health impact.
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For the last 20 years, the definition of what’s healthy has been changing as more recent research shows that nutritional content is not the only indicator in determining what a healthy food is. Scientific evidence found in the U.S. Government’s “2010 Dietary Guidelines” and the “Scientific Report of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee” – both of which KIND heavily refers to in its citizen petition – concludes that eating a healthy diet is constituted by the maintenance of caloric intake for a healthy weight and that a healthy eating pattern emphasizes nutrient-dense foods and vegetables like fruit, nuts and whole grains.

According to KIND, the best way to rectify consumers’ confusion over nutritional content and healthful qualities of a product would be to create a dietary guidelines statement on the packaging that informs on the “usefulness of a food, or a category of foods, in maintaining healthy dietary practices” without making an explicit nutrient content claim or a statement about a particular nutrient.

Until a decision is made, KIND says that a “dietary guidance statement” from the FDA is in order so that food companies can better label their products with information that indicates the usefulness of a food “that is not subject to the requirements in FDA’s nutrient content claim regulations unless it is an implied nutrient content claim.”

The FDA appears to disagree, and Balentine said that there is more to labeling restrictions than how one company is affected by them. For now, companies need to continue following the standards laid out by the FDA so that the term means the same thing from product to product. Said Balentine, “That’s the only way that consumers can trust what’s on the label.”

Farm Fresh from the Barsotti/Barnes Family to Customers’ Doorsteps

Published February 9, 2016

By Lorrie Baumann

A California produce company has found a way to make the Farm to Fork movement a reality for customers in urban areas across the state – including those who live in food deserts. Farm Fresh To You is a service that delivers produce from Capay Organic, the company’s own farm, as well as from about 50 other organic farms across the state directly to customers’ doors in the San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles and San Diego metropolitan areas each week. “Our philosophy is that for local produce to be successful, we need to make it as easy as possible for people to make the best selection of local produce show up at their door each week,” said Thaddeus Barsotti, one of the brothers who owns the business. “We’ve been very successful at keeping customers happy because we’ve made it really easy to fit into their lives.”

Capay Organic and Farm Fresh to You were originally founded in 1976 by Martin and Kathy Barsotti, Thaddeus’ parents. Martin was a student at the University of California, Davis when he began developing his ideas about how to create direct relationships between farmers and consumers. He got a permit from the city of Davis to start a farmers market that’s now one of the most robust in the country. Then, he and his wife decided that they wanted move out of the city and onto a farm, where they would use organic methods and make it their full-time careers.

Eventually, Martin left the business, but Kathy carried on. She heard about the idea of Community Supported Agriculture from another farmer, and in 1992, she adopted some of those ideas and started delivering produce directly to her CSA customers out of the back of her parents’ Buick station wagon. Kathy kept track of her customers and what they liked and didn’t like in binders full of account records. By 2000, the company was distributing about 500 boxes a month.

About 15 years ago, her sons, who’d grown up with the business, took it over after Kathy’s death just after Thaddeus had graduated from college. Since then, the company has been growing aggressively throughout California, expanded its network of family farms, has added value-added farm products to the offerings and penetrated into food deserts with a business model that Barsotti says is scalable and adaptable elsewhere outside California. “We are serving food deserts in the Central Valley, Manteca, Stockton, some rural communities that are classified as food deserts. We can go there; we just need to have enough people to justify sending a driver out there,” he said. “All of the food deserts in the Bay Area and Los Angeles – we go to all of those places.”

Contents of the boxes change according to what’s local to those regions. A purchasing team stays in touch with the whole network of farms to find out what’s in season and available in their area, and they build local menus for each region each week. “It is a full-time job for a whole team of people,” Barsotti said. The weekly boxes are packed in two facilities, one in Sacramento and one in Los Angeles. Sourcing and distributing season produce that’s mostly local to each region across the entire state is the most difficult piece of the model – Barsotti calls it “ pretty complicated and logistically rich,” but the result is that Barsotti can sell the regular-size box that will feed a family of four for a week for $33. “We’re pretty good at what we do. We’ve been doing it for a long time. The owners grew up doing this, growing produce and hustling produce at farmers markets. We understand it quite well,” he said. “We’re in the business. We know each week, what the best local organic produce is, and we make that selection for our customers, and they don’t even have to think about it.”

Customers can choose to be surprised by what shows up in their weekly box, or they can log onto the company’s website to find out what the company plans to send and alter their box according to their own preferences. A customer might cancel this week’s carrots, add more fruit or opt for spinach instead of kale.
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Recently Farm Fresh To You began offering customers a few direct-from-the-farm processed food products sourced from farmers who also provide fresh produce products to the business, including jams, granola, juices, dried fruit, nuts, olive oil and tomato sauces. “We’re excited about the specialty flours we have,” Barsotti said. “Our niche is focusing on products that come straight off farms, and that includes processed things that preserve a crop.”

Customers can also decide before they go on vacation, they’ll donate their weekly box to a local food bank instead of suspending the service. Farm Fresh To You works with food banks in San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles and San Diego that serve the communities in which the company’s customers live and the affiliated family farmers grow. We’ve been able to get tens of thousands of pounds of fresh local organic food to our customers’ local food banks, and we’re really proud of that,” Barsotti said. “We believe that everyone should be able to eat healthy food, but we recognize that not everyone can afford it.”

New customers find out about the service either through meeting with Farm Fresh To You sales representatives that set up shop at local events such as home and garden shows or green festivals, through word of mouth from existing customers or by learning about it through the media exposure that the business has been attracting since a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle wrote about it in the mid 1990s. These days, customers sometimes find the business online at www.farmfreshtoyou.com, where customers can sign up for deliveries of various sizes of boxes that contain fruits and vegetables, all fruits or all vegetables in a seasonal mix that varies according to the specific area in which the customer lives, depending on what’s in season there.

“What ‘local’ means exactly also changes with the season. Summer and fall, most of the stuff’s coming from our farm,” Barsotti said. “In the winter, we want to make sure our customers still have a good selection, so they don’t go back to using the grocery store, so we’ll source in southern California for vegetables. Apples come from the Pacific Northwest.” All of the produce, except bananas, is grown in the U.S. by family farmers. Barsotti probably wouldn’t offer bananas at all, since they’re strictly a tropical fruit, but Farm Fresh To You customers want them, so Barsotti compromises a bit by offering them fair trade organic bananas. “Our customers sign up because I’m a farmer. I know what’s good,” Barsotti said. “I take the health of our farmworkers seriously, and we make sure that all of the products we grow comply with U.S. labor laws.”

While some customers are aware of the social justice aspects of Barsotti’s purchasing, not all of them either know or care about anything other than that the business provides a dependable supply of fresh, local, organic produce. “I know we’re doing that, and when a customer signs up, whether they know it or not, they’re affecting my planting schedule and the jobs that come out of that. We’re connecting customers directly to our field,” Barsotti said. “We are trying to transform the food system. It can’t be done on a tiny scale. It’s a big thing. There are millions of people who need to eat better. Our objective is to find how we can get local, organic food to people at an affordable price.”