Mars and Snickers: Now with Cow Extract

Ealier this week, Masterfoods, best know for its Mars and Snickers chocolate bars, unceremoniously announced it was replacing its vegetable whey with the rennet based version.

Usually, that wouldn’t really be news, except that the replacement substance is “a chemical sourced from calves’ stomachs”. It is used to curdle milk going into the chocolate…

Turns out this substance will now be used in nearly all Masterfoods’ sweets, including ice cream, Mars, Snickers, Twix, Milky Way and other delectables.

Until last night, I thought I didn’t really care.

It was a hot day and I was taking a walk. At some point (and my mind, in its relaxed state made no link at all), my girlfriend says: “I feel like a popsicle or something”. Cool, me too…

We enter a grocery shop and she picks out two Mars ice cream bars. Seconds later, my internal alarm starts flashing gently. Then it rises to the top of my consciousness: “cow stomach”. Yuck. I quickly select something else and so does she after I tell her what I read on the news…

The more you know about how food is made, the less appealing it becomes. On Rennet from the Wikipedia:

“Deep-frozen stomachs are milled and put into an extracting solution – in this solution the enzymes are extracted.”

Ok, so a bright visual just excluded any future consumption of those products…

What happens next is I fire up my trusty friend internet and set out to discover what other “delightful” surprises may be lurking in your grocery store’s aisles.

Ocean Spray:

Offending Ingredient: Carmine

If you ever thought “Ruby Red” was given its color by the grapefruit, you’d only be partially right. Turns out it gets a little extra help from carmine. Which is made by grinding up Polish cochineal beetles.

It gives a vibrant red color as well as a new twist on the term “Beetle Juice”.

Guinness Beer:

Offending ingredient: Isinglass

A form of collagen extracted from fish bladders. It’s used to accelerate the clarification of the beer and some wines. (notice the name isinglass: is-in-glass, slightly frightening)

Jell-O:

Offending Ingredient: Gelatin

Gelatin is made with meat and leather industry by-products, mainly pork skins, pork and cattle bones, or split cattle hides.

Ok, that’s enough for now.

Getting back to Mars and Snickers. Here’s what they could have done instead.

Let’s remember that all these decisions are economically fueled: the animal produced whey is cheaper than the vegetable sourced one.

So the big concern Masterfoods has is saving money, or making more of it, probably both. Seems to me that in this age of information and rabid vegetarians, adding cow stomachs to your chocolate wouldn’t fit well into those objectives, but what do I know?

Tempted by economic gains, they could have done something like this: admit they were about to pull the switch and then change their minds. Emit a press-release with a title like this: “Mars to Remain Cow Free” or something of the sort.

They could then proceed to explain that many other companies give in to using rennet, an awful substance made from calf stomachs, in the quest to use cheaper ingredients. But they decided not to because they wanted their customers to enjoy pure chocolate even if it cost a bit more to make.

They might even have tested out the “Rennet Free” label on a wrapper with a link to a website that explains what rennet is and how you can find it in competitive brands like X, Y and Z.

This accomplishes a couple of things:

• Mars comes out like the good guy, and the stomach-free alternative
• Other brands take a beating with vegetarians and animal conscious parents and children
• Mars sales go up, other brands tank

That would have been smart marketing. Instead you have to add their products to the “foods made with dead animal parts you wouldn’t normally eat list”. Bummer.

I’m no vegetarian. In fact I have some French ancestors and we eat meat, liver, kidney – the whole lot – even stomach. Just not in my chocolate ok?