
Corporate America Is Conspiring to Keep Your Chocolate Shitty - ballenf
https://splinternews.com/corporate-america-is-conspiring-to-keep-your-chocolate-1825514264
======
zwieback
Title should be "I like UK Dairy Milk". Nothing wrong with that if you love
powdered milk.

By the way, the connection between Hershey's and Cadbury goes way back to the
founding days. There's a fascinating book called "Chocolate Wars" by Deborah
Cadbury that chronicles that time.

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bsder
The whole problem is that in the US chocolate goes through a huge transport
chain instead of being made and sold by local chocolatiers.

If you have to go through a supply chain, you value stability and not melting
more than you value taste.

~~~
Jarb
Nope, I don't buy it. I can get Ritter Sport, Kinder Eggs, and other imported
Chocolates from my grocery stores that taste just like they do in Europe. That
chocolate was shipped over the atlantic in addition to taking the same
transport routes as Hershey's does. Conclusion: Hershey's just sucks.

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asdfionionio
Not really true. American chocolate is an acquired taste, but it's supposed to
taste like that. Companies deliberately add butyric acid to make it taste like
Americans expect.

A lot of people don't like it. A lot of people do.

~~~
jjoonathan
I was recently in London and decided to try a non-US KitKat as there had
recently been a ruckus on reddit about how much better they were supposed to
be.

It tasted like a chocolate-covered cracker. Nothing wrong with that, but
chocolate covered crackers are a crowded space in the confections market and
without the "malted milk" taste, which I suppose must come from the butyric
acid, I found the non-US KitKat to be a completely uninspired contender. That
taste is _the_ thing that makes KitKat bars unique and exciting to me.

To each their own, but I hope the one-sided nature of the media frenzy (US
BAD! FOREIGN GOOD!) doesn't end in the mediocritization of a wonderful candy
bar.

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KozmoNau7
The best milk chocolate I have ever tasted is the one they give you on Swiss
Air flights. It is utterly perfect, just the right mix of sweetness and
richness, without being cloying. And the snap when you bite it is a thing of
singular beauty.

------
renaudg
As a French expat in London, who's actually just back from the shop to get
some chocolate : let me tell you how I burst into uncontrollable laughter when
I clicked through the link, and understood by the end of the first paragraph
that the author's point of reference was going to be "superior British
chocolate". Followed by a long love letter to Cadbury's.

In distressing disbelief, I glanced at the URL looking for theonion.com,
before collecting myself.

This is a photo of the chocolate aisle in an average Parisian supermarket:

[https://imgur.com/a/s3I2o7g](https://imgur.com/a/s3I2o7g)

It was sent to me the other day as a cheeky taunt, by my brother who lives
there and asked if I needed anything. Of course I do.

You can see here at least 7 different varieties of exquisite, melting praline
chocolate. Fine, pure darks of varying strength. The usual pistachio, roasted
almond, rice, hazelnut, vanilla, mint, and the more creative (and let's face
it : less authentic) pear, apricot, citrus, macaron, crème brûlée (!),
raspberry, blueberry, even grapefruit !

I'll never forget the shock when I first moved to the UK, browsing through the
aisles and naively looking for my standard French/Belgian/Swiss fare of dark
chocolate with roasted almonds, hazelnut, or rice.

I found nothing of the sort, instead on offer was potentially very fine
chocolate laced with Wasabi, of all things ! Wasabi, I repeated in horror,
taking a snapshot to immediately report the outrage back home. And chilli, yes
of course chilli : the ubiquitous alibi in British cuisine, akin to gratuitous
violence in action movies. The favourite lazy fix of bland meals that
otherwise wouldn't stand on their own feet. A smokescreen of burnt tastebuds
to hide behind. A pain that I'm aware (but still to this day can't understand
why) many people enjoy inflicting unto themselves.

I suppose this sinking feeling of mixed embarrassment, pity and smug sympathy
I had reading the article, must be similar to the one British or American
expats in France experience the first time they tune into the radio and hear
the French try, and fail hard, at rock'n'roll or hip-hop.

To each their strengths. The Swiss and Belgians are the unrivalled masters of
chocolate, and the French at least worthy connoisseurs of the art.

Now, I can't even begin to imagine how American chocolate tastes, having just
witnessed someone actually put British Cadbury's at the apex of cocoa
achievement.

~~~
coreyp_1
"how American chocolate tastes" \- I believe that I recognise most of the
brands in your picture, and I can buy them at Wal-Mart. IOW, we can get it
here if we want, I suppose.

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jbob2000
Talk all you want about taste preferences, but just like we have restrictions
on what you can call "chicken wings" and "Champagne" (as compared to "chicken
wyngz" and "sparkling wine"), so too should there be restrictions on what you
can call chocolate.

You can still have your American Hershey bar, it's just not chocolate, it's
candy. It's too bad the Swiss or whoever didn't secure "chocolate" like France
did for champagne.

~~~
Hnrobert42
Except the Swiss didnt invent chocolate. South Americans did.

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JPKab
The best chocolate I ever had was from a small chocolatier in a tiny one room
building in Elm Springs, Arkansas. He had been a Christian missionary in
eastern Africa, and ended up helping to build and develop cacao farming there.

He came back to the states and started ordering beans from the farms he helped
start and making bean to bar chocolate here.

The point is that big factory Chocolate is a different thing entirely.
Cadbury, Hershey's, it is all shit.

------
zwieback
Ritter-Sport FTW! I grew up not too far from the factory and luckily now I can
buy it in every super market in the US.

------
acd
Here is often what is found in candies and cookies nowadays.

* High fructose corn syrup glycemic index 100 vs normal sugar glycemic index 70. The higher the glycemic index the sweeter the product tastes. High fructose corn sugar is a biproduct from subsidized corn production. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fructose](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fructose)

* Palm oil(Cancergenic) [https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/press/news/160503-0](https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/press/news/160503-0). Palm oil is cheap so manufacturers use it everywhere but it is cancergenic.

The next time you are in the supermaket, twist the label and read the
contents. You will be surprised how hard its to find good products. When I
surved the local online super market store only about 3 candys out of 100 had
ok content ie not High fructose corn syrup or Palm oil.

~~~
MagnumOpus
> High fructose corn syrup glycemic index 100 vs normal sugar glycemic index
> 70

This is just plain false. Fructose has a glycemic index of 25 (1/4 that of
glucose), hence HFCS-55 (55% fructose, 45% glucose) has a lower glycemic index
at 58 than "normal sugar" (which is 50-50 fructose-glucose) at 65.

> The higher the glycemic index the sweeter the product tastes

Glycemic index has nothing to do with sweetness. Fructose is twice as sweet as
glucose with a quarter of the glycemic index; aspartame is 200x as sweet with
basically 0 GI.

Candy or chocolate made with sucrose rather than corn syrup tastes different
(and I would agree, better), but don't delude yourself that it is in any way
better for your health.

------
pg_bot
"Your Oreos are too sweet and your Chips Ahoy are too dry; the offerings at
your local CVS are no good. You have been lied to. These candies do not
suffice as guilty pleasures, and you did not choose them freely. You chose
them under the duress of false consciousness. Perhaps Mondelez realizes that
the sweet taste of Proper Cadbury would awaken in American consumers the
knowledge that capitalism doesn’t provide everyone those ideals of choice and
excellence, but merely a veneer of freedom and indulgence. Hershey’s sued the
major importers of British Cadbury not just because it wanted to continue
selling substandard chocolate to the masses, but because it wants to maintain
the lie that Americans are empowered by individualistic capitalism to choose
whatever chocolate they want, when in fact it crushes their taste buds to the
point that they cannot even imagine a better, sweeter world."

People might have different tastes.

Hershey's lawsuit against Cadbury was due to intellectual property rights
being violated.

Please stop this communist nonsense.

~~~
ewzimm
This is really an incredible kind of communism. Corporate America makes bad
chocolate, which proves that capitalism is a lie, so buy corporate British
chocolate.

------
starpilot
What do choco connoisseurs think of Theo chocolate?

~~~
phinnaeus
The chocolate is pretty good and I love the smell as I bike past the factory
on my ride home every day.

~~~
starpilot
what a useless reply

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projektfu
If you like Cadbury chocolate, you'll probably like KitKat bars. Similar taste
and texture to the chocolate.

~~~
projektfu
Y'all are haters. Haters I say!

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downandout
Does this really belong on the front page of HN (or HN at all)? It's a
diatribe about how one guy likes UK chocolate more than US chocolate. Super
curious how it wound up on the front page too.

~~~
dodgedcactii
Downvote and move on then, brah

~~~
downandout
You can't downvote submissions. Also curious that an account with 1 karma
point is protesting someone pointing out that this doesn't belong here.

~~~
DanBC
You can flag submissions.

~~~
downandout
Yes, you can, and I did. But that's not what he suggested. Interesting that my
comment itself is now flagged too. My guess is bot accounts.

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jstewartmobile
Bringing up cadbury as the gold standard tells more about her bad taste in
chocolate than any inherent flaws of capitalism.

Even at walmart you can get a ghirardelli dark, or a lindt 90%. Cadbury--even
UK cadbury--is a chunk of sugared grease by comparison.

[https://www.cadbury.co.uk/products/cadbury-dairy-
milk-11294](https://www.cadbury.co.uk/products/cadbury-dairy-milk-11294)

~~~
handbanana
Everyone has their personal preferences. But you're comparing a milk chocolate
with very dark chocoloate. Cadbury bournville is the dark variety, but I bet
its not close to 90%. So if you like 90% chocolate, sure you will hate dairy
milk. As far as milk chocolate goes though, cadbury is one of the best IMO.
Usually people are split between dove/galaxy and dairy milk (as far as mass
produced chocolate goes)

~~~
jstewartmobile
She wasn't just talking chocolate. She was getting into economics.

Brought up the dark chocolate because it is the more costly product to
manufacture. Cocoa solids and cocoa butter are expensive. Sugar and vegetable
oil aren't. If this is a corporate ploy to acclimate people to trash chocolate
for profits, she was already on trash chocolate. But even in the low-rent
grocers, the premium product is available. Doesn't jive with her thesis.

~~~
handbanana
I agree in part. But why did she say "is a chunk of sugared grease by
comparison". Seems like that clearly shows she was comparing the two in taste
as well...

~~~
jstewartmobile
"sugared grease" was from me, not the author.

I wrote that because cadbury has gotten heat in the past for substituting
vegetable fats for cocoa butter, and the #2 ingredient in her favorite is
sugar. Cocoa products make their first appearance at #3:
[https://www.cadbury.co.uk/products/cadbury-dairy-
milk-11294](https://www.cadbury.co.uk/products/cadbury-dairy-milk-11294)

Compare with the Lindt 90%:
[https://www.lindtusa.com/wcsstore/LindtCatalogAssetStore/Att...](https://www.lindtusa.com/wcsstore/LindtCatalogAssetStore/Attachment/products/nutritional/nutritional-
information-SKU-392977.pdf)

~~~
handbanana
I assumed the "she" was you as I hadn't read the article yet. So I was
referring to you in my comment. As for the comparisons with Lindt 90%, just
stop. Choose a lindt product that's a similar % to dairy milk. Here you go:
[https://www.lindtusa.com/wcsstore/LindtStorefrontAssetStore/...](https://www.lindtusa.com/wcsstore/LindtStorefrontAssetStore/Attachment/products/nutritional-
information-SKU-4852.pdf)

~~~
jstewartmobile
If you read the article, her thesis is that we are under an illusion of
consumer choice. That we have several dark and milk varieties of differing
qualities and compositions undermines that thesis. Pedantic reminders of
apples-to-apples are unwarranted.

From the HN guidelines:

" _Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone
says, not a weaker one that 's easier to criticize. Assume good faith._"

~~~
handbanana
I don't disagree with your comment here. Next time lead with a comment like
this that gets to what you're trying to say. If you feel I was being pedantic,
then you've missed my points

