With the 2014 holiday season in the rear view mirror, Louisianans now turn their attention to the next big party: Mardi Gras. And while there’s still plenty of time to stockpile beads and throws, you’ve probably already been offered your first piece of king cake, or will be very soon.
But as The Wall Street Journal reports, a growing number of king cake makers are opting to omit the plastic baby that traditionally is baked into the cake due to liability, health and safety concerns. Liz Williams, president of the Southern Food and Beverage Museum in New Orleans, tells the newspaper she first started noticing local bakeries moving the trinket outside of the cake—and offering it separately to customers—about 20 years ago.
Poppy Tooker, host of the local radio program “Louisiana Eats,” blames the increase in baby-less king cakes on our sue-happy society.
“There’s a very simple reason you don’t find favors in king cakes anymore: We have too many lawyers in America,” Tooker tells the newspaper.
Nonedible items generally are forbidden in confections in the U.S. An import alert from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration famously has kept Ferrero SpA’s Kinder Surprise eggs—chocolate eggs containing small plastic toys, often requiring assembly—out of the country for decades. The FDA says the king cake falls into the same category as Kinder eggs, but notes that it “has not taken any enforcement action or issued any regulatory requirements specific to king cakes.”
“Any decision by the FDA to take enforcement action is guided by, among other factors, the agency’s assessment of the public-health risk presented by the particular food and the resources and tools available to the agency,” the agency says. Read the full story (subscription may be required).
