Belgian Mayonnaise Makers Want To Change A 60-Year-Old Rule Regarding Their National Mayo Recipe
If you asked your friends to take an informal poll on their favorite food toppings, I’m sure it would go something like this: ketchup, Sriracha, mustard, BBQ sauce, some sort of dressing, that delicious sauce from that Mexican place down the street, etc. Where would mayonnaise land on the list? For most people, I would imagine it landing not very high.
Wait, what? Mayonnaise is the most popular condiment in the U.S.? We spent nearly $2 billion on it in the last year alone? I…I need a minute.
If you thought that Americans were serious about mayo, you haven’t been to Belgium. Belgians eat mayonnaise with everything. And they are very particular about how mayo is actually made. In fact, they have a 60-year-old rule dictating that mayo must be 80 percent fat and seven percent egg yolk.
However, now that mayo with fewer calories is getting increasingly popular, mayonnaise makers in Belgium are asking if that 60-year-old rule can be changed. That’s because the rule doesn’t allow Belgium mayonnaise makers to change their mayo recipes, otherwise it wouldn’t be called mayonnaise. This is leading to Belgians looking for healthier alternatives, which are imported from different countries, thus hurting the Belgian mayonnaise market.
"This situation is no longer tenable," said Nicholas Courant, spokesman of the Belgian federation representing the food industry, Fevia. "Belgian manufacturers are suffering from unfair competition. Producers abroad don't have to follow these regulations. They can produce mayonnaise with less fat to meet the increasing demand for toppings and sauces containing fewer calories."
Although many manufacturers want the rule to be changed as it would be good for business, many Belgians are against the changing a rule, since it would be bad for the mayonnaise. They argue that changing the original Belgian mayo recipe would ruin the authenticity and overall quality of the product.
There will apparently be a “mayonnaise summit” to discuss the possible changes to the rule and to the Belgian recipe. One suggestion was to produce two types of Belgian mayo: traditional, the 80 percent fat, seven percent egg yolk kind and modern, which would consist of 70 percent fat and five percent egg yolk.
Here in America, the Food and Drug Administration has a lengthy definition of what exactly constitutes as mayonnaise. It stipulates that for a condiment to be called mayonnaise, it should contain egg yolk. This led to Hellmann’s maker Unilever to file a false advertising law suit against Hampton Creek’s vegan mayo, called “Just Mayo,” since it didn’t actually have any egg yolk in it.