The federal Food and Drug Administration is proposing to redefine the very essence of chocolate and allow big manufacturers such as Hershey to sell a bar devoid of a key ingredient - cocoa butter. The butter's natural texture could be replaced with an array of inferior alternatives, such as vegetable fats. And the consumer would never know it.

Chocolate is under attack.

One of the opponents of this proposal, chocolatier Gary Guittard, said it best: "No one can afford to sit back and eat bonbons while America's great passion for chocolate is threatened."

For every defender of traditional chocolate like Guittard, there are powerful proponents who want to replace cocoa butter with vegetable oil: the Chocolate Manufacturers Association, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association (what do they want to put in the chocolate?), the Grocery Manufacturers Association and the Snack Food Association. These industry titans have filed a "citizens petition" to the FDA, as the Los Angeles Times recently reported, as if there were some groundswell in society to water down chocolate, reducing costs and potentially increasing profits throughout the economic food chain.

At the moment, chocolate requires two basic ingredients - cocoa and cocoa butter. The cocoa provides much of the flavor; the butter, the texture. So if, say, Hershey wanted to make a chocolate bar without cocoa butter, it can under today's rules. All the manufacturer has to do is label the product as "chocolate flavored" (for it still has the cocoa in it) rather than trying to pass it off as chocolate. That gives the consumer the appropriate signal that something less than chocolate lies beneath the wrapping.

This page, following its tradition of promoting truth and wholesome ingredients in food (guacamole must contain avocados!), stands for chocolate as it has been made for generations. Yet for the masses to rise up and beat down this proposal, many Internet surfers may find the FDA's Web site too incomprehensible to navigate. An easier way to defend chocolate is to visit the Web site dontmesswithourchocolate.com and learn how to submit feedback to the FDA. Spare no adjective. The very future of chocolate as we know it hangs in the balance.