‘I took two bites and had to spit it out’: candy makers are phasing out real cocoa in chocolate
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/11/reeses-hersey-chocolate-candy-cocoaOpen linkView original on feddit.uk538
Comments232http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/11/reeses-hersey-chocolate-candy-cocoaOpen linkView original on feddit.uk
I don't understand how they cant see that once we leave we leave. If you bite into that and hate it; its a cycle broken and we we unlikely to trust the product ever again.
It's what happened with Bassets Winegums. Used to be my absolute favourite candy. Wife came back from the UK with a box,I opened it and the taste was... Different. Googled - turns out they changed the recipe after being purchased by some large conglomerate. I haven't had one of their candies since 13 years ago. Fucking idiots.
Well if they all do it, who are ya gonna run to?
i will have to give it up. it will be easier if its crap anyway. Learning to pay for what you actually want vrs you think you want are two different things.
The thing is, they won't ALL do it. The big names will. Real chocolate will become more of a luxury thing you have less often (which, to be fair is probably a good thing) and the established brands might survive on some blind brand loyalty, or die out.
You’re using the future tense but this is pretty much the way it already is. No one considers hersheys good chocolate. It’s getting slightly worse and people are acting like some goddess has been kicked off her pedestal. Its more like a dead dog has just had one more fly land on it.
Not eating candy is always an option for adults with an ounce of self control.
So is eating a moderate amount of higher quality and more expensive chocolate. Its okay to enjoy a treat every once in a while
NO. We must all SUFFER. It's what The Lord intended.
I should become a baptist pastor this is fun.
Well swish swish. Even those with an ounce of self control sometimes also allow themselves an ounce of enjoyment. You should try it.
I thought we were talking about a product that had become un-enjoyable a second ago. What enjoyment can an adult get out of chocolate flavored wax that they couldn't get better somewhere else with a product they like, rather than one they used to like before it was made bad?
If all my chocolate options are actually brown wax, I don't actually have any chocolate options.
The comment I replied to was generalized to all candy.
There are plenty of companies still selling actual chocolate, and since it's chocolate and not chocolate-flavoured sweets I think it'll just become smaller and/or more expensive. Which is fine.
I eat candy because it tastes good. If it all tastes like shit they why should I eat it?
I mean, you can make your own peanut butter cups...
Trader Joe's has giant Belgian chocolate bars, and far far better peanut butter cups with normal PB.
If something turns to shit, you stop eating it and get something else I guess?
Ozempic!
The New Coke fiasco begs to differ.
The cynic in me imagines that they switch away from real chocolate, everyone will hate it, they'll release a new product line that proclaims it uses real chocolate, but charge a premium for it, and people will buy it.
What premium am I paying for any Coke vs. other name brand soda?
I don't understand the question.
Ah, okay, you're putting two points together.
I think people came back to original Coke because they were looking for a specific flavor. When they had no reason to buy Coke, their options were limited - buy what they can get, or stop drinking colas. I kept on with Coke, but was happy when they changed back. As an older person now, I'd make a different choice.
As for quality vs. taste people will buy what they find acceptable for the price, with a minimum standard that is generally very individual. This has been the case for a very long time, and cocoa is pretty expensive. It isn't surprising that some people will pay more and higher quantities of expensive ingredients lead to a more expensive product. Toss in inflation, and here we are.
I think we’re talking about very old brands that sell in big numbers because they’ve locked in grocery store shelf space and Halloween combo bag deals. It’s not like every sale is made after a careful taste test.
Boomers with practically no taste buds left will still buy these to hand out to trick or treaters because they remember them being good 40 years ago. Meanwhile the manufacturer can add millions in profit by shaving costs here and there, because they operate at such huge volume. Their brand is mature and their market is saturated. They can’t really grow sales anymore so all they can do to juice profits is cut costs.
I’m not justifying their way of thinking, just saying this is why they don’t behave as if every single candy must taste amazing. Their profits keep chugging without that. And if you aren’t growing profits, you’re dead. So blame capitalism for the underlying reasons for why they can’t just leave well enough alone.
Stupidity and short term money.
I'm sure they tested the new recipe on a sample audience long before they put it into mass production which informed them that the recipe change would positively impact their bottom line. Big companies don't make enormous blunders which put them out of business. The social media tech companies we all hate are still around and have billions of users after all the crap they did. Why? Because all of the negative changes they made to their platforms were first tested on a sample of users and the sample kept using it. After all of the recipe downgrades and shrinkflation, you still see the products on the shelves. The only time you ever see an established brand suddenly vanish is when they're bought out by private equity or they're made obsolete by new technology.
All good points bit missing mine: brands vanish all the time. Companies too.
It's just that short term money is valued, thats how we run today. It's never about long term services and products.
Big companies do make big blunders, but there are forces at work in those upper echelons of the business world beyond market economics. I'm no sure the exact amount, but it seems that once someone or some group has accumulated over a certain amount of money, it takes consistent, sustained catastrophic mistakes to ever drop below that amount, like a sort of critical mass.
Companies that big don't obey the same economic laws you and I do, and often don't obey many laws at all for that matter, and they don't often fail mainly because the system was set up by them in a way where they can't fail, regardless of how monumentally they screw up.
When they do, their customers flee to one of their 3 competitors who are all run by guys that play golf together and collude, then later one of those companies does a big screw-up, the customers flee back to the first one.
That's what happened to me and Oreo's during the switch from soy oil to trans-fat-free oils. They were NASTY during that transition.
That doesn't sound like this quarter's problem, or even next quarter's problem. In fact, that doesn't even sound like the quarter after that's problem.
I didn't know Hershey's used Cocoa, I thought the main ingredient was vomit.
I’m assuming you of course are aware, but that is a tasting note. As in hersheys will specifically call out that tasting note as intentional if you do a tasting tour. It explained why I only ever liked their special dark and hates their regular bar.
It's a tasting note, because the original Hershey's milk chocolate chemist accidentally spoiled the milk as part of his process.
It took a decade or two to figure out what was wrong, but by then the American public was used to vomit tasting milk chocolate.
No. It's part of their process because it makes it more shelf-stable. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20231221-why-british-chocolate-tastes-the-way-it-does
That may be what it is now, but the original cause was spoil d milk. Because Hershey refused to use powdered milk, he had just bought a massive dairy farm and insisted on using fresh milk.
Accidentally? I thought he had a large batch of spoiled milk powder and was looking for a way to use it up.
Hershey doesn't use powdered milk. Hershey himself stubbornly insisted on the recipe using fresh milk because he had ignorantly bought up a bunch of cows before getting the recipe nailed down.
And that's why American chocolate is bad, or so the legend goes.
Source: I'm from Pennsylvania and have taken the Hershey factory tour many times since childhood.
It was very word for me. Like with most American products that were in TV series, but weren't available in Europei was anxious to try them first time I went to the states.
Mountain dew was amazing. Taco Bell was not all I imagine it to be, but Hershey's was just straight up disgusting.
It's fine, it's only sold in the US.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/hersheys-chocolate-tastes-like-vomit_l_60479e5fc5b6af8f98bec0cd
Even if you are familiar with the process, I'll leave this here for anyone interested in the why. Article is a bit apologetic to Hershey's, but still seems to be good info.
Right? These candies have never made their money with quality.
Guys (and gals), there's simple solution to all that: learn to bake.
We are a community of makers. We write our apps ourselves, we host our shit by ourselves, we stream our music and our movies by ourselves. So what should we do when bad corporations are taking away our snacks? Make them yourself!
Recipes are free and open. The tools are not expensive (not much RAM in the oven). There's nothing stopping us.
So, do we need baking community?
Edit: So... ![email protected] ? It's my self hosted server. Will that work?
Yes. Host recipes. Get productive.
This has basically been my mantra for the last 5 years. "Fuck off, I'll do it myself."
![email protected]
Chocolate is often candymaking, not baking, though.
That's just bread. I'm talking about cakes.
Chocolate is candy but brownie is cake :)
I recently made brownies from scratch, and they came out so much better than the box brownies that I usually make, that my entire family noticed, and really loved them. It wasn't that much more work than the box, you just had to measure out the flour, sugar, and cocoa, but the difference was huge. Well worth the slight extra effort.
Don't leave us hanging. What's the recipe?
I don't know, I found it on the Internet, they were all more or less the same.
Did you use butter and milk or oil and water in the box mix? That's usually the only difference. The box mix is just flour, cocoa powder, salt, etc. The quality of those ingredients doesn't vary too much.
Butter yes, milk no.
I saw an old Good Eats episode where Alton Brown put the brownies in for about 15 minutes, took them out for 10 minutes, then put them back in the oven until they were finished. He claimed that the interruption changes the chemical reaction somehow, and makes them better. I've tried it in the past, and they seemed to be marginally better, but it m.not sure.
He frequently does things that make recipes 2% better for 50% more effort. Which is appreciated, but often a little silly. Sometimes though it is well worth it.
I doubt that would be significant. Real butter and real milk are the biggest difference between real rich brownies and the cheap stuff.
Baking is relatively easy, but how do you make your own chocolate? I don't think you can properly do that at home.
It can be done, but it's not easy.
I've seen recipes, which are basically just cocoa butter and cocoa powder, and they seem pretty simple, though I've never tried them.
Most chocolate "making" just starts with chocolate callets. Melt them, temper it, put it in moulds, and add filling. I've done this, and it's not that difficult. Of course, the quality here depends on the quality of the callets, so if you start with Hershey's (not sure if they even make callets), it'll still taste like vomit.
You can, but you also don't have to make it from scratch. Various forms of real, non-ultraprocessed-and-candified chocolate are guaranteed sitting lonely and forgotten in grocery store baking aisles around the world at this very moment. There's also the option of finding a reputable local chocolatier, if you have one. I've never lived anywhere where there aren't at least several local options, if not countless, but maybe I'm just lucky that way. Even if not, there's always online ordering.
I'm from Austria, so plenty of options for high quality chocolate here. But they have gotten quite pricey lately.
Either way, I should lose weight (:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IaCZcdWk1DU&t=1965s&pp=ygUTbmlsZSBibHVlIGNob2NvbGF0ZQ%3D%3D
Cooking nerd here. You can kind of make your own chocolate.
You almost certainly can't make chocolate from scratch. You could, in theory do all the steps but even in the old days it was an industrial process and it's nearly impossible to get the quality control tight enough at home. The fermentation, roasting, and grinding steps all have to be done under very precise conditions or you won't get good chocolate.
You could just go really old school and use the Aztec recipes but that's not "chocolate" as most people would know it. It's more like a spiced tea.
Home cooks can buy chocolate (it's worth it to splurge and get nice chocolate if you're going through this much trouble) and mix it and shape it. You can make a wide array of flavored ganaches, coat things in chocolate, fill chocolate shells with stuff, etc.
The hardest part is tempering. Chocolate is actually a crystal. The short version is that if you don't control that crystal formation through careful temperature and movement control, your chocolate will get weird and chalky; if you get that all right it's smooth and snappy. There are books and videos on it but you'll need to mess up a bunch of batches before you learn it.
if you don't like capitalism stop eating corpo food.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzanNNq_JZU&t=47
I read your comment in her voice
Great, that exactly the voice I wrote it in :)
This.
Might be a little time consuming but very rewarding. Also, they can be a easy gift to friends and families.
Good luck finding cocoa powder or baking chocolate which is pure rather than mainly sugar.
"We are proud to announce our products are completely free of any natural ingredients!"
Reminds me of CHOW, the "food-free food" marketed by Famine in Good Omens.
It's like a full synthetic oil change, but for your gut.
...but no slavery
I wonder...
This has been that way for a while now. Reeses and Hershey's suck. They use a PINCH of cocoa powder and their chocolate tastes and feels like wax. The peanut butter filling is basically peanut flavored sawdust. They spend crazy amounts of money reduce ingredient costs while still maintaining a somewhat edible product. They end up with "chocolate favored wax/oil and sugar". Boycott them. You can get way better chocolate at Aldi.
I was getting some melting wafers the other day and grabbed a bag of Ghirardelli, which has been pretty reliable in the past. I didn't catch that they were "chocolate flavored" wafers until I was at checkout. Chocolate was the 8th ingredient.
dear lordt
Hershey's chocolate tastes like wax and vegetable oil.
And then use scare tactics to convince everyone that we have to use their products for Halloween.
you can get better chocolate at aldi and make your own peanut butter cups at home, it's fairly easy
edit, Ive made pot peanut butter cups before, is delightful.
low dose, but, infuse the marijuana bud with coconut oil and use the coconut oil in the chocolte when you melt it. You cant put much, but it's fun none the less
Reeses Cups are the absolute worst candy these days. They are so terrible now, and I used to love them. The peanut filling is gross.
That's how I reacted the first time I tasted Hershey's chocolate.
Inb4: butyric acid
A somehow necessary ingredient in Hershey's which lingers unpleasantly on the palate, otherwise known as a stomach acid which imbues your vomit with the unmistakeable flavor of vomit
^Whyyyyyyyyy^
Actually this goes back to the early days of Hershey's. As part of their drive to produce affordable chocolate, their main formulation was developed around slightly spoiled milk, which has an acidic taste. That's why all Hershey's chocolate since the beginning of time has had that 'vomit flavor'. Obviously they're not allowed to use spoiled milk anymore, but they wanted to taste the same as it always has. So they add the acid as an ingredient to replicate the same flavor.
I know m&ms are Mars but those little bits of poison have also tasted like vomit for decades. I can't even watch people choke those friggen things down. Smarties or death.
Smarties are nestlé, so it's probably both.
Stomach acid is hydrochloric acid.
Yes, but butyric acid is produced in the stomach by fast breakdown, and it's very easy for humans to detect.
I recently had something sold as chocolate that contained 0% cocoa, its just a chunk of palm oil. First time I have ever had chocolate so bad I threw it in the bin. I can also taste it in Cadburys now, or they have increased their palm oil amount since I had eaten it previously.
I will be checking ingredient lists more often when buying chocolate now. If palm oil is the main ingredient it can fuck off.
I mean, isn't "white chocolate" 0% cocoa?
No solids, it should be made of cocoa butter. In the shit one I had they replaced all of the cocoa butter with palm oil. Tbh I don't think they should legally be able to call it chocolate.
Funny how the milk industry fought so hard to ban the use of milk on vegetable products. Now they are all called drink. But there was no confusion to the public just a dick move.
Yet here where the intention is clear to see something which is not it, this is magically ok.
Which country did that? Cause here in the US, we still have milk everything. Oat milk, almond milk, soy milk, you name it.
Many, many places. It's so strongly regulated here, I think they even have to call it goat drink, too! The cow lobby is bullish, I tell you.
Okay name one.
No that does not exist. Just the plant produxta
this is what comes to mind. I don't know when the switch was made but everything is drink here:
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-40274645
Oh yeah I remember that. Because of their pettiness I stopped using milk, only thing I used it for as porridge and I use water instead now. Looked it up and you get the water boiling and can cook it at a higher temperature without it burning to the pan. Ends up fairly creamy still without using cows milk. Also costs less to make.
they aren't they can call it chocolatey or something similar but there has to be a certain amount of cocoa to be called chocolate
cocoa butter, sugar, milk solids. No cacao.
“One German brand, the Nestlé-owned Choco Crossies, recently announced it was eliminating cocoa altogether from its new Snack Vibes line, replacing it with ChoViva, a lab-grown chocolate alternative made from fermented sunflower and grape seeds.”
How the fudge did we end up in this dystopian nightmare? ಥ_ಥ
Child slavery is frowned upon just enough that they have eliminated real cocoa. People won’t pay for non-slave rates, so they have to go with synthetic product.
i get a single fair trade dark chocolate bar every week or two & let the squares melt against the roof of my mouth. lately it’s been hu cashew butter & raspberry. usually a couple of squares satisfies my cravings. occasionally i make fudgy brownies with fair trade dutch processed cocoa if i’m really fiending. a chocolatier in a yt video said “eat less chocolate so you can eat a higher quality chocolate” & i took that to heart.
We continued releasing more and more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for decades after learning that it was causing increasingly extreme weather
Sorry, but I really want to try the fermented seed cocoa. There are non-Nestlé versions and having an option that doesn't exploit child slaves is always a good option.
Choviva is not very good imo. Good enough for some cookies or müsli though, products where the chocolate content is small and not high quality. And I'm someone who is generally charitable with alternatives a la mock meat, cheeses, etc. It tastes like toasty fat.
By coveting.
There's a scene from Band of Brothers, two GIs meet a French family on D-Day. One of the soldiers offers the boy, 4 or 5 years old, a chocolate bar. The boy smiles from ear to ear when he tastes it. His father says, "Thank you. He's never had chocolate before."
Imagine that. Imagine living in a society where chocolate is considered an exotic food. That's how the world was, for almost all of human history. You live in Norway and you want a lemon? HA! Tough shit, you'll never even know what lemon smells like.
But, at some point, Americans got used to having every delicacy from every corner of the world. We forgot that each nibble of chocolate is exotic. That the beans aren't native to our country. That most people in the world can't afford real chocolate except as a rare treat. And look at us now - just like the rest of the world.
Lab-grown? Lab-GROWN? What fucking part of the metal tank has the growing area?
Also I don't think the term Lab Grown would really apply in this case. Unless I'm wrong I'm pretty sure the term would be lab synthesized, unless they are just using the materials to rend down into building blocks to grow cocoa artificially via some type of cellular manipulation method.
The hydroponic lab?
Shits like a century old.
probably synthesized, sunflower/grapeseed mixture. probably just turn the seeds intoa pulp and made it into faux-colate.
Cyanide is "natural". Not everything "natural" is good for you. I'm all for alternatives, although as with any other thing, they need to study them to make sure they're safe. Like aspartame, which is one of the most studied substances on earth. It's safe. And it's a fantastic tool to have - saying this as a diabetic, but artificial sweetners gives us the ability to make tasty foods that save calories/carbs, which is something most people can use.
So I don't know about ChoViva in specific, but if there's an alternative to cocoa that doesn't rely on slave labour and isn't harmful… I'm all for it.
lol GRAPESEEDS.
What's wrong with the carob bean?
Club, one of my childhood favourites with the advert song of "If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit, join our club" -- no longer has enough cocoa to be legally called chocolate.
Madness.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c86737yg3jlo
I only eat the opposite type of chocolate, that being chocolate so dark its 90-97% coco content. I want my chocolate so natural, earthy, and bitter that it tastes similar to chocolate (that's just my preference not that it makes me any better or worse than anyone else).
I’ll say it, it makes you better. (This is not biased, I just so happen to also have that same preference)
Dark chocolate is quite healthy, specifically coco is known to have healthy properties and the darker it is the less sugar.
True, but the amounts of dark chocolate I eat probably isn't.
i usually prefer 85-100 if possible.
Bars?
Rookie numbers.
I think real dark chocolate can actually be good for you. Shame I like the crap stuff. But not this crap, this shit tastes like you've talked up a bit of stomach bile while you were chewing.
Absolutely, its still an acquired taste but it can have health benefits (of course if you don't like the taste then the health benefits probably aren't worth it).
i do the same, its either 90-100% if im lucky to find 100% thats not part of the baking aisles.
... I just buy bags of ghiradelli dark chocolate baking chips, and eat a handful, when I feel like snacking on chocolate.
They have 72% cacao chips, but that is bit too rich for my taste and my wallet, 60% seems to hit the spot.
Much cheaper per weight than actual ghiradelli chocolate squares or whatever.
And you can just toss a few into some fresh hot coffee, stir for a minute, kablamo choco-coffee.
Anyway, yeah, most US 'chocolate' is disgusting.
Most by sheer volume because four companies make damn near every candy bar in the grocery store? Sure. Most by percent of discrete chocolatiers? Nah. There's tons of good chocolate in the US, it's just priced as the luxury good it should be (turns out slavery is great for keeping prices down)
Yes, yeah, the former is what I meant there.
There indeed are tons of proper local chocaltiers in a lot of places, but sadly they do not have too much of the overall market volume.
they have 92%
This. I just once in a year get a bag of this stuff from Togo:
https://www.gebana.com/eu-de/schokolade-gebana-togo-zartbitter-bio-togo
Use it to make cookies and all kinds of stuff - or just to eat it as is.
I can't tell if this is a moment from your real life or a bit of creative writing about a dystopian future.
And I'm confused about how you found anything in that comment dystopian. Though I'm assuming that name I didn't recognize is a brand name for an actual chocolate producer. Hopefully it isn't a brand name for something similar to chocolate but not lol.
You are eating baking choco chips instead of the chocolate that is for sale and also talking about how you can't afford the richer baking chocolate all while putting it all in a faux sounding positive light. It actualy reads much like things I read written in the dustbowl and depression.
This is not a normal state of affairs and phrasing the work a rounds like some uplifting lifehack makes it seem dystopian
It was a different commenter, though I also like snacking on dark chocolate chips. Baker's chocolate is also good, but the consistency of the squares isn't great for snacking.
I just read it as a tip for how to get chocolate anyways, even if all the chocolate bar makers stop using it. The chocolate-like but cheaper stuff they are using instead of chocolate sounds more like the dustbowl/depression era tricks to enjoy food while you can't afford it.
Though part of my perspective is from getting my cooking to a level where store bought prepared stuff is just the easy/convenient option, not the high quality one (for health or taste). I also love dark chocolate and prefer the high cocoa content ones over must chocolate bars.
Plot twist: it's a Ghirardelli ad.
There is no corner they aren't willing to cut.
hershey isnt real chocolate, they add a bitterent that why it taste like shit, i think its butyric acid.
Mmm, pukey
It doesn't taste like shit, it tastes like spoiled milk
Uhhh the finest sour milk the free market can bare pls
the finest one is when it LOOKS like tofu.
Candy makerscapitalistsFTFY
Yeah it would be really nice if the media could distinguish a bit better between "actual expert at thing X that has done it for a long time and gives a shit" versus "people/corporations that started with tons on money and think they could end up with slightly more by misleading fans of X and building the infrastructure to efficiently enshittify it"
edit to add: I was supposed to quip at the end of my post that oh yeah, the media and journalism are "products" that are no different, and in fact worse. Look at who owns the big outlets. gross.
It's fascinating how hard some sectors are fighting to forbid replacement meats or milks to call themselves steak or milk. But those products barely resembling the original name are completely allowed to call themselves chocolate or fruit juice (based on some concentrate and some other stuff).
This might be the case in the US. In the EU, chocolate is taken much more seriously. This vomit-flavored abomination called Hersheys "chocolate" is probably illegal and unfit for human consumption here.
The reason Hersheys tastes like vomit actually isn’t because of the (lack of) cocoa. It’s because they use intentionally soured milk in their chocolate.
Basically, a company as large as Hershey strives for consistency instead of quality. And that means they need a consistent source of milk. The problem is obviously that milk sours fairly quickly. So rather than using inconsistent milk (which may be in various states of souring), they use butyric acid to intentionally sour the milk. And butyric acid is also found in vomit.
So when Europeans try American chocolate, they’re often disgusted by the taste. Americans have grown up expecting that tangy taste in chocolate, but Europeans haven’t. So it’s all they focus on, and it inevitably ends up with them thinking that all American chocolate just tastes like vomit.
Aware, I only buy european chocolate now. From Aldi or the local Polish grocery.
fun fact i think the vomit taste comes from butyric acid they add into the chocolate, thats what vomit smell/taste.
I know, but knowing it does not improve the flavor...
it's about marketing.
people don't buy what is not familiar. so it's very much in their interest to market these replacements as familiar products.
food is a emotional thing, it's not logical of thoughtful. people typically only eat what they know or perceive to be good based on what others eat.
They only want to protect their profits. When the alternatives work fine, they fight against them. When theyre cheapening their own product they fight to hide it.
They aren't. Next time you're at the store, actually look at what the label says. It'll be a big "CHOCOLATE" and then a smaller "flavored candy".
Fruit juice from concentrate is still 100% fruit juice though. It just had the water removed and re-added.
But they do often make it "cranberry juice cocktail", which is some part cranberry juice and mostly apple juice.
And just this week I saw orange juice that was also part pear and apple juice, but that's probably because of citrus greening killing the orange groves.
Well obviously it sucks that the fake cocoa is disgusting, but I have to say I kinda am for the effort of trying to create an alternative, given how the cocoa producers are notorious for exploiting child labor and how terrible it is for the environment
Buy Tonys. The alternatives are bad for you
too bad they dont have 90+%
I only want ever want hazelnuts or something crunchy and milkchocolate. Not refined enough for dark chocolate
Another way of reminding us there is enshittification.
Nearly no one touches the chocolates at most supermarkets I went to. Far cry from when 40 years ago, workers from overseas would include chocolate bars in care packages.
That real cocoa are mostly from developing countries, not all are politically stable.
We have an inflation target now, they either raise prices or shrinkflate. Its much easier to shrinkflate.
When you can taste the enshittification of everything.
Taste is in accordance with the color.
EU has laws stating how much raw cocoa a product that calls itself chocolate must have.
US has none of that
From the article, this is where the other answer probably got they link.
Blatantly untrue.
https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-21/chapter-I/subchapter-B/part-163/subpart-B/section-163.130
Seriously you can just lie about US laws to get upvotes on this platform.
Terminally online Europeans and pick-me Americans can't handle that the two regions actually have very similar food safety and labeling laws. EU is better overall on livestock welfare and doesn't have the same dairy and corn industry lobbyist problems, but a lot of the "it's actually illegal to sell this american product here" are just protectionism to keep their economy competitive.
They'll phase anything but sugar.
Laughs in corn syrup.
Laughs in aspartame
... high fructose corn syrup has entered the chat...
laughs in brazillian sugar cane industry
Hey I started a new community: Enshitification.
I posted this Reese's article the other day.
It's for articles like this but also personal experiences, like things you noticed going to shit.
So if you want to rant a bit about a product quality decrease, feel free to post about it there.
That's how I've felt about soft drinks in the UK since they pulled the sugar tax, now every drink just tastes of sweeteners. I'm guessing most people can't taste them or something but I can't stand them.
Yeah, I think sucralose is the only one that doesn't taste awful to me. Like I've always been skeptical of the defense of aspartame because it tastes like something I shouldn't be eating. I was looking forward to stevia back when it got popular, but it also has that taste (I'm guessing from leftover solvent, since it's not water soluable like sugar).
There's plenty of ways to make things taste great without relying so heavily on sweetness. I hate the western food industry's obsession with it along with the capitalist obsession with selling as much as possible, because it's resulted in the less sugar I've wanted to see instead meaning the sugar is replaced with other chemicals that taste sweet (and "chemically").
And I doubt safety studies looked at anything beyond "does it so obviously cause issues that we'll be sued the moment we try to sell this?"
Most sweeteners don't bother me but stevia has a very distinct flavor that I dislike.
As for safety, aspartame is extremely well-studied and understood. It's been used for over 50 years now. Sucralose for 30 years. We also know a lot about the dangers of high sugar intake. The no-calorie stuff is probably healthier overall in the amounts people actually consume.
Seems like the tax is working then
Nope, checked, the brits are still obese
/si mean i taste it. i started trying to give up soda in general, and the sweetened waters definitely have something about them. like the preservatives in MRE’s. it’s hard to describe the taste, and there is nothing ‘wrong’ with it, but there is also something wrong with it
You aren't alone. Artificial sweeteners are disgusting with a capital D.
Gotta love capitalism
It's not capitalism alone, it's climate change also that is disrupting cocoa yields and makes prices go through the roof.
Climate change and capitalism are inseparable
Well, it would be an interesting thought experiment if instead of capitalism, socialism had won in 1989. I can tell you one thing from my own knowledge: at least the soviets didn't give sh*** about the environment. Again: not defending capitalism here.
And before anybody snaps: i hate capitalism.
Sorry, I was listening to some upbeat music and before I could help myself, I looked down and my hands and realized it was too late. :(
Out-competing that bland old "real" chocolate with the superior product.
There it is.
They ain't even that cheap anymore.
Pretty interesting that this was something I remember being warned about 26 years ago
They are also sounding the alarm bells for bananas, arabica beans, soy beans and corn…
My recollection is that around the time I was being told chocolate was going extinct, they were also telling me soy bean futures were the best investment
US chocolate...presumably Cadbury will also be affected though.
Cadbury has been garbage for years now unfortunately.
Cadbury ruined their best product, the Creme Egg, some time ago. It’s nothing like it used to be. A shame too, because they could raise the price and I still would have bought them, but as it is, I don’t remember the last time I had one.
I remember when it changed from creamy to just sugar goop that makes my teeth hurt.
And the stupid plastic casing they now use. I can feel myself microdosing plastic just thinking about it.
Have they finally admitted they made them smaller yet? They're like half the size they used to be. Like a laughably noticable difference, but they're still like 🤷♂️ you're imagining things, same as always
Edit: I was prompted to look and there are recipes out there for making your own. Has anyone found a good one?
shrinkflation and cheapflation.
Oh they’re definitely smaller. Smaller and taste way worse… That should improve profits! 🤦🏻♂️
My local store instead had to discount them to 25 cents each. And that's when I started buying them up!
Yeah I bought small container of bakers cocoa bout a month ago and it was half the size it used to be and almost three times the price.
That's unbelievable 😮
Said the same thing when I first saw it. But had to have it so held my nose and tossed it into the basket
🤧
WARNING: May contain traces of real cocoa.
I bought a caramello bar a week or two ago
Threw it away after two bites. If i wanted to chew on wax id go find those sugar water filled coke bottle shaped ones.
Why did you take a second bite?
I didn't believe myself when i thought it tasted that bad
Next up, saw dust in candy and chocolate!
Wood is too expensive for that.
gypsum chocolate wafers.
Sure we have micro plastics, but how about eating macro plastics?
I’ve had some products that use ChoViva (fake chocolate made from sunflower seeds and oats) and they were ok. On the other hand my only memory of Hershey’s chocolate is just pain, even 30 years ago (last time I was in the US). So maybe it’s not replacing cocoa as such that’s the problem.
How to say you come from the States without saying you come from the States.
Idk people enjoy white chocolate which is literally rhe most disgusting snack I can imagine.
Yeah agreed. I only like white chocolate in a couple ways, like in a white mocha, but I'm general is pretty gross imo. I have a close friend who I agree with taste in food nearly completely, except when it comes to chocolate. She ONLY likes white chocolate and it baffles me how her taste buds have failed her so completely.
i never liked it, its too sweet and they almost always have a chemical aftertaste.
I sometimes enjoy white chocolate, but admit it's only a slight step above eating straight butter and sugar.
white chocolate is just pure "milk sugar"
You gotta try better white chocolate. The good stuff has more cocoa butter, so of course it's getting harder to find.
Is carob more sustainable than chocolate? Does it have the same ethical problems?
If it doesn't, it will.
https://www.spendwithpennies.com/reeses-peanut-butter-cups-recipe/#wprm-recipe-container-122992
I'm quite glad I have these in my local store.
https://eat-love-chocolates.myshopify.com/products/moule-au-beurre-darachide
They're about 5$ for one cup. Considering Reese goes for 3$ for the regular pack of 3 in vending machines, I think it's fine. The 5$ cup is much more than 5 times better than one Reese cup. More like 500 times.
$57 for a dozen? Absolutely not.
I’m not sure about this company and their ethics but i will say we must end this entitlement of wanting cheap good shit. Someone has to make that. Would you make a peanut butter cup for under $5? I sure as fuck wouldn’t.
Well then keep eating candle wax? Snacks should be expensive.
That isn't how things work. Just because you stop eating one, doesn't mean you need to overpay for another. You also insinuate that I even eat those. Your inability to discuss intellectually shows that you deserve to pay for expensive junk. It is literally peanut butter and chocolate. That can be made at home for a fraction of $57 and produce a tremendously more abundant pieces of 'candy' than a dozen.
You are a fool.
?
You vill eat the chocolate-style cube.
A buddy of mine has everything but his birthday is coming up …. I found the ideal indulgence: a $20 chocolate bar!
No it’s not one of those monsters, it’s normal sized. But it’s single sourced beans, gold medal award winning, local farm fresh dairy , infused with whiskey from a local distillery. That’s something he’s never had!
wf sells that kind of bougie chocolate in thier "gourmet specialty" sections, almost nobody buys it though, only as a gift since its expensive asf, fair trade single origin i believe too.
All chocolate in the future will now be white chocolate.
Perfectly describes my reaction when I first tried Hersheys "chocolade". If people used to that already vile stuff react to a new product like that, it must be horrible.
Should've only taken one bite
Food shouldn't come from a factory
What if a man puts the food in a can, in a factory downtown?
If you had your little way I'd eat canned food everyday.