The differences in the taste of chocolate between the US and Europe/the rest of the world all stem back to the late 1800's & early 1900's. This is when the great modern confectioners got their start as (mostly puritanical) family firms. Daniel Peter invented solid milk chocolate in 1875 in Switzerland. John Cadbury followed suit in England with his first milk chocolate bar in 1897. Milton S. Hershey in the US built his first chocolate manufacturing plant in 1903. Franklin Clarence Mars founded Mars in Washington in 1911 only to fail & restart in Minnesota in 1920.
Prior to David Peter's invention of solid milk chocolate in 1875 chocolate was known as a drink. One of the challenges of making the, now familiar, milk chocolate bar was reducing the water content of the milk to make it easier to emulsify and set the chocolate. This had to be done in a way that kept the creaminess and didn't burn or scorch the milk and that wouldn't spoil. The Swiss got there first it. Cadbury figured it out (or just copied the Swiss). Hershey struggled. He had a chocolate manufacturing plant that was closely guarded not to avoid someone stealing his chocolate recipe but to avoid anyone discovering he didn't have one.
One day in 1904 he cracked it & depending on who you believe, either by perseverance or by parsimony. Hershey's advocates will tell you that late one night, after many failed attempts he & his colleague John Shmalbach discovered just the right slow evaporation of non-fat milk that produced a creamy, faintly bitter chocolate. Hershey's detractors will tell you how a tight-fisted Milton Hershey did not want to waste a large delivery of milk powder that had soured and instead used it & found it sold surprisingly well. Either way that's when Hershey's distinctive "sour" flavour was introduced.
Then the Great War happened. Supply problems & rationing hugely restricted Cadbury & the other European manufacturers. Hershey, despite producing what many thought was a worse product had fewer supply issues and, without European competitors, a US market largely to himself. By the time Europe has finally picked itself up after the Second World War the American palate and taste for chocolate has long since been fixed.
TLDR: Americans have terrible chocolate because in 1914 a Moravian took a wrong turn and got an Austrian shot by a Bosnian
Actually, given that their purchasing power is so immense it actually changes what's available to every other burger maker in the market, that might be true.
That would be fine except Hershey's chocolate really isn't very good. They use way too much sugar and not enough cocoa to really make it respectable chocolate. The only reason it sells well is because of market dominance and that many Americans are deprived of exposure to good, high-quality chocolate.
When it comes to food we should remember that the Bay Area is a total bubble. Some of the finest food in the world is produced here and some very innovate and ground-breaking work in the various food movements came from here.
> The only reason it sells well is because of market dominance
That's a tautology.
You can have your opinion, and down-vote me all you like, but it's really disrespectful to call an entire country provincial because you disagree with a particular taste palette.
I don't actually know my chocolate preference, but as someone who enjoys well done steaks and sweet wines, let me tell you: people are not very tolerant of alternative palettes.
Yeah, especially with certain foods, it becomes a matter of quality vs. preference. As in, "this wine cannot possibly be of high quality because it is too sweet". So, you're an ignorant peasant for preferring it.
So, white wines in general are inferior to reds. I always chuckle when I come across red descriptions that read "hints of leather and chocolate" or similar. I never taste what's described. Either my palate is severely underdeveloped (as with any good peasant) or there's a lot of Emperor's New Clothes going on.
Over the last few years, however, the elite seem to be relenting at least somewhat. Reislings have begun to cross over at least to the extent that you won't lose your trust fund for sneaking down a glass now and then.
Did he edit the comment or something? I see nothing that calls an entire country provincial. Calling something terrible is fine by me. Life would be terribly boring if you had to preface everything with "In my opinion". I am deeply sorry if I offended anyone who does preface everything like that, by calling their lives terribly boring.
> That would be fine except Hershey's chocolate really isn't very good. They use way too much sugar and not enough cocoa to really make it respectable chocolate.
That description sounds a lot like the chocolate milk we drank in Indonesia; it tastes very watered down with added sugar. Totally undrinkable. Chocolate milkshakes were the only way to get something chocolaty, milky and drinkable.
Interestingly, lots of stuff about Indonesia struck me as surprisingly American (for a former Dutch colony in Asia), but I hadn't considered that this could also be true for their chocolate milk.
I think the discussion is about "milk chocolate", a solid chocolate used in candy, not "chocolate milk", milk flavored with chocolate. 'Tis an interesting transposition, though!
You are absolutely correct that there's a difference between mil chocolate and chocolate milk. However, the comparisons with both having less chocolate and more sugar in the US is relevant for a comparison of American vs European tastes.
I can't believe I'm saying this here, but just wanted to show that I agree with you, that peoples tastes are subjective and should not be stated as fact. Even if I happen to agree entirely that I find US chocolate disgusting (which I do), I am capable of entertaining the possibility that other people may prefer that taste over European chocolate.
Some years ago I was at a lecture on chocolate by some industrial chemists from Cadbury UK.
They said that the Hershey taste was based on milk that had spoiled by the need to transport without refrigeration. That on changing the flavor (sic) USA consumers had demanded a return to the former recipe.
We then got to taste the Hershey chocolate. The entire theatre erupted with [largely] mock retching and disdain calls of how vile the product was. Thankfully we had water and a pack of other chocolate treats to taste as part of the lecture.
Vomit was the overwhelming flavour agreed by all those around me.
But then I was listening to a radio programme about Ethopians eating goat intestines with bile sauce squeezed over the other day; apparently the chef was hugely excited to eat the dish, the Europeans present less so.
And of course now Cadbury UK is owned by Craft, its taste has changed, and I find it disgusting too (although not as disgusting as Hershey). I have managed to find a dark chocolate made with trinitario cocoa (so it isn't bitter like normal dark chocolate), which is as cheap as mainstream chocolate. It is so far above mainstream chocolate that it's like night and day.
I think a few people here in the UK are getting a little annoyed with Americans buying our chocolate companies and wrecking them. Could you stop, please?
The first time I tried Hersheys I only had a few bites before saying to my family that it tasted like vomit. They thought I was exaggerating but didn't like it either. I was genuinely horrified that people would eat something that tasted that way as confectionery. I remember googling 'vomit' and 'Hersheys' at the time to see if I was the only one, but couldn't find any other matter-of-fact or serious reference to the likeness. And bam, here it is on HN years later.
Ditto - I was genuinely really surprised the first time I tried an imported Hershey bar, via the good people at Cybercandy. I was shocked that something which is seemingly such a famous name amongst chocolate brands was actually, when tasted, just kind of awful, really.
Up until now, I had assumed Americans realised their chocolate was crap, they just didn't sell much of the good stuff there. Certainly a few of them I have met in Europe seem to agree ours is better.
Humans have a natural response to vomit. Things that are vomited out may be spoiled foods or contain bacteria from the person who vomited it. This is why vomit is disgusting to humans.
Some animals have a practice of regurgitating food, so vomit is not disgusting to them (otherwise they wouldn't eat regurgitated food). Some animals need to eat feces to digest the food fully, or maybe hide their traces from predators etc.
It depends on what is most useful to the animal. The definition of gross varies between animals.
Europeans must hate Parmesan cheese then. It is the exact same olfactory compound found in Parmesan, and is responsible for Parmesan's unique taste.
That Europeans aren't falling over themselves to condemn the revolting nature of Parmesan suggests to me their dislike of Hershey's is largely based on snobbery.
It just amuses me that people bring up the vomit thing (actually butyric acid) like it is some laughable feature of Hershey's and inherently horrifying.. but they never mention all the other foods that are high in butyric acid, and are in fact loved by foodies.
People can dislike hersheys, but going on about how it "is made to taste like vomit" like it is a shocking revelation, is a double standard.
Europeans have access to the real thing: Parmigiano Reggiano. Butyric fermentation is kept under control because it can ruin the cheese's taste and aspect in a very obvious way (by creating holes).
Parmigiano Reggiano's direct italian competitors - Grana Padano and Trentingrana - "cheat" by using lysozyme to inhibit the bacteria responsible for producing butyric acid.
He promised double-blind trials, but then ran a single-blind trial, and only reluctantly single-blind. And he didn't report preferences, but only that his sample could distinguish between Kit Kats. Science, man! Where's the love?
I remember going back to the US after a few years abroad and realising how low-quality most products felt. Sure, in a dollar store that seems normal, but even in "normal" grocers and the like everything felt like a low-quality rip-off to their european counterparts (even though they're usually the same brand!)
I feel like there's probably a good opportunity to make a business selling just slightly higher-quality products.
Having grown up in western Europe and moved to the US at age 24, I feel the exact same way. Most products (examples that still strike my mind: home tools, buses, street signs, desk lamps, food, etc) in the States are lower quality than what I would find in Europe.
But stuff in the US is also usually less expensive. So I guess it is just an effect of the free market: US buyers preferring lower quality but less expensive products...
In my experience, that's what the "Whole Foods" chain is. Their marketing image is one of "organic", but I find walking around one is more like walking around a supermarket in Europe than anything else.
Wasn't Trader Joe's the American branch of a notoriously cheap and low quality German supermarket? Is its US reputation really one of more expensive higher quality products?
Wikipedia says that it was founded by an American, Joe Coulombe, and then sold to trust which also owns a notoriously cheap and low quality German supermarket chain in 1979. Perhaps Trader Joe's started expanding more quickly after being sold.
In Netherland it is considered low quality. From what I hear, goods remain unpacked in their boxes, are often not sorted by date, so there may be expired products at the back. I wouldn't know which supermarket chain could possibly rank lower than Aldi, though I'm sure there are some smaller and independent supermarkets that are worse.
But I have to admit I might be a bit elitist about this. Lidl, which I hear a lot more good about, also doesn't really meet my standards for a supermarket. And Albert Heijn, which is often considered pretty good, is not considered all that good by me.
Aldi may not be low quality in Germany (It's just a.n.other supermarket there), but in the UK, it is definitely percieved as such. A small percentage of the stock is german delicacies, and a further small percentage are standard brand name items, however the vast majority is off-brand look-alike items, usually dangerously close to a trademark infringement. Combined with very low prices gives it something of stigma with shopping brand snobs.
I'm not sure that the UK perception of Aldi is "low quality" as such. "Cheap", yes. "Chaotic", yes. "Just generally a bit weird and foreign", overwhelmingly. But i wouldn't expect the actual quality of the goods to plumb the depths of a Morrison's, or, god forbid, an Iceland.
But then, whilst i don't live anywhere near an Aldi, i have become something of a connoisseur of the baffling Teutonic delights of my local Lidl, so perhaps i'm biased.
I don't and obviously you don't but overwhelmingly everyone I talk to does percieve it, or at least auto-assumes it is because of everything mentioned above. Well at least in people who don't actually use Aldi (or Lidl for that matter) regularly
Re the prior comments, I based my view on the instances in Germany. The products are usually good and prices really low. Especially the chocolate clones of some brands are some 30% of the price and 90% of the taste.
Then again, I saw just recently a dirty one in Luxembourg, so my first comment should read "it depends" (which is kind of a non-comment) ;)
There are actually two Aldis and in the US we have Aldis and Trader Joe's. TJ's is based in Pasadena and has the reputation for having products that are slightly healthier and higher quality than the average store, while being the same price or cheaper because everything is TJ brand instead of name brand. Of course they are also famous for "Two Buck Chuck" the $2 wine they sell, which varies widely in quality. It's definitely not high end like Whole Foods though, just maybe slightly better than Safeway or Kroger like the OP suggested was a good market niche.
There is a very evident difference between american and european supermarkets (and the food culture); in the former, the core idea is to present and mass-sell products, in an almost anonymous and very inexpensive way; comparatively speaking, food is more expensive in Europe, but also less anonymous.
My guess is that there is relatively little market space for products in between the cheap and the premium brandings.
Important note - with "anonymous" I don't refer to the brand, but to the quality of the product.
It's not really surprising to me. Do you remember the price comparison between "normal" grocers in the US and in places in the EU or say Japan? If I were to guess, they're higher other industrialized countries abroad. Probably as high or even higher than Whole Foods.
Globally food prices have been increasing consistently.
American branded "milk chocolate" (and specifically the process that Hershey's does) has much lower cocoa solids (and additive control) requirements than elsewhere.
"I plan on purchasing an adequate amount of, "KIT KAT," product while I am here in Japan to run double-blind taste trials when I return to US, as I have done with some European and Canadian product in the past. I will inform you of the results of these trials."
Corn bread is a regional thing here in the US. In the south, you will often find it to be made very sweetly. What you're used to would probably be found more in the Midwest and Plains states. (I'm in Indiana, and the corn bread here is delicious - a little dry, but very good)
As someone who also grew up in Belgium and now lives in New York, I completely agree. I brought back as much as I could when I went back to visit a few months ago - and it was still not nearly enough.
There's also a Leonidas up at Madison & 52nd - don't remember the prices there but definitely on the higher side. And well, we both know what Godiva really is...
I met a South African septugenarian living in Arizona who imports his chocolate and candy from Australia because what the Americans have to offer is such low quality.
It's true that "consumer chocolate" in America is pretty bad, i.e. anything made by Hershey's. Too much sugar and not enough cocoa.
Good stuff should be above 57% cocoa. If it's less than that, buy high-quality milk chocolate.
That said, other commenters on this thread are correct that it's not too hard to find good chocolate if you just know what to shop for.
My all time favorite is Valrhona. It's by far the best chocolate of them all. Obviously that's personal preference.
We're lucky that we have at least two awesome local brands in the Bay Area. Recchiuti chocolate is awesome, the only location I know of is in the ferry building. Tcho chocolate is the other one and I've been told that they do some interesting stuff with analytics to create the ultimate chocolately goodness.
I care little for Ghirardelli. I went to Ghirardelli Square as a kid and it was fun, but it's just not my thing now.
I'm from the UK. Our chocolate has taken a beating lately, and in fact there was a call from some part of the EU establishment to ban UK chocolate manufacturers from calling their chocolate 'chocolate'. Instead they would have to call it 'hydrogenated something or other'. It didn't happen.
That said, I once tried a Hershey's chocolate bar on a work trip to the US. I was almost physically sick from the taste. It is truely, truely awful.
Exactly, the amount of cocoa butter is just as important if not more important than the amount of cocoa. Unfortunately the amount of cocoa butter is rarely found on the package.
I don't know about the milk chocolate suggestion. The taste comes from all the fat that comes from the milk and you have maybe 20% cocoa. You may just as well have a smaller piece of a dark chocolate with a glass of milk.
I actually prefer milk chocolate over dark chocolate. And yes, I've had all the good, high percentage cocoa, chocolates from Switzerland, Belgium etc. I like the sweeter, milder taste, and and tired of some of my friends who keep annoying me with this "you're not eating real chocolate". They've turned into chocolate snobs.
Makes sense. Hershey's chocolate here (Brazil) taste like crap too - while although more expensive, I'm yet to find a bad product from Nestlé. I believe in the US they mainly ride on brand recognition.
The bad taste is due to less cocoa content and more filler, like palm oil, or even paraffin (yeah, candle wax).
Places like Brazil and Australia (where I live) tend to add a larger amount of emulsifiers to commerically produced chocolate. This helps in keeping production costs down, and it also raises the melting temperature of the chocolate so that it doesn't melt in the wrapper while it sits on store shelves.
You typically will not find noticable amounts of added emulsifiers in cooking chocolate, as they detract from the taste and texture of the final product. Furthermore, pure cooking chocolate should be able to be melted, reshaped and reset (tempered) over and over again with no degredation in quality.
Chocolate with added emulsifiers, however, is easy to spot because when it melts and re-sets, it has white splotches on the surface. If your milk chocolate has white bits, that typically means its a lower quality, like basically every mass produced chocolate in US / Australia / probably elsewhere.
If you really enjoy chocolate, you should consider buying cooking chocolate. :)
I agree, the Kit Kats outside of the U.S. are quite different from their U.S. counterparts. Although, to me, the taste of the Nestle-manufactured non-U.S. Kit Kat bars are far inferior to the Hershey-manufactured U.S. Kit Kat bars I grew up with. This might be down to the difference between those of us who are supertasters and are most focused on flavor, and those of us who are nontasters and are most focused on texture [1] . I notice that the author's points of contention revolve predominantly around texture, not flavor (chocolate heaven for him is "so rich, so smooth, so crunchy"), whereas when I think about the differences in the Kit Kats, my brain is entirely focused on taste and could care less about texture.
Being long-term situated outside the U.S., I frequently find myself wishing the Hershey-made Kit Kat bars were available to buy up and take to the movies here, but instead end up passing over the comparatively less appealing Nestle version and purchasing M&Ms, which mostly taste the same the world over (though I haven't had them in Hong Kong), instead.
Hershey's uses paraffin (wax), copious amounts of oil, and so forth to ensure that their product has a uniform texture. If a "nontaster" would prefer any product, it would surely be Hershey's, not a good European chocolate bar.
M&Ms don't taste the same the world over. They taste very different abroad. So you might want to rethink your claim of being a supertaster, since you apparently can't taste most of the differnces the rest of us can!
I grew up with Hershey's, and it was obvious to me from a very early age that it was nasty. I could barely even bring myself to eat pure milk chocolate from them. The only thing that was bearable was if they put peanuts or something else in it to hide the taste.
As a kid, I always assumed that it was because they loaded it up with corn syrup and industrial fats rather than actual cocoa butter. And it turns out I was right... only about 11% cocoa in the "chocolate." It's like Taco Bell and their meat which they're legally not allowed to call meat because it's mostly not from an animal. Using soured milk is just the cherry on top of the shit sundae, as the Angry Video Game Nerd would say.
1. Are you calling yourself a Supertaster?
2. No one can argue with preference. But as linked to earlier in these comments, it is well documented that the U.S. has a very very lax policy on what is allowed to constitute "milk chocolate." Any manufacturer not taking advantage of said lax standards would be idiots. Of course, anyone trying to argue that American chocolate literally has better chocolate flavor and that they know because they are a supertaster is quite wide of the mark indeed. American chocolate != real chocolate.
Your argument is that because I don't realize that some other brand of chocolate is superior to Hershey's chocolate, I'm not a supertaster?
Please read the Wikipedia article, or any research on, what a supertaster is. It is not a "person with more distinguished tastes", since these are wholly subjective and cultural constructs. Just as you believe in your own superiority for preferring Swiss chocolate over American chocolate (might you have refined taste in wine as well? [1]), a Chinese citizen no doubt realizes how superior his tastes are to yours for preferring his largely sugar-free chocolate to your (in his eyes) sickeningly sweet, additive-laden, and clearly unrefined dessert of choice.
And if your argument is that Hershey must certainly be producing what it produces in order to "take advantage of lax standards", you've much to learn about the nature of big business. Visit Asia some time, and you'll notice quite quickly how American chain Pizza Hut, which has adapted to the tastes of the locals by changing its recipes and producing all manner of pizzas largely unappealing to Americans but very appealing to Asians, is rapidly outcompeting other American chain Papa John's, which has stuck with its original American recipe, remaining tasty to Americans... but not so tasty to most Asians. Branded food businesses win by serving the market, not by cranking out crappy tasting morsels that cost less to produce. Those that go the latter route fail in their respective markets.
If Hershey is producing what it's producing to "take advantage of lax standards" and not because it's what the market wants, then the American chocolate industry is wide open for someone more willing to produce in line with what Americans want - and with a market as large as the dessert market in a nation of obese individuals, that'd be a pretty tempting niche to fill (maybe Nestle could do the job?). Yet, unless you can point to tremendously high barriers to entry keeping new entrants from the market, or somehow forcing Americans to buy Hershey instead of some of Dove, Nestle, Ferrero Rocher, etc., your premise seems flawed; the far simpler solution is simply that Hershey is winning the chocolate race in America not because it's skirting the rules, but because it's producing what its (so obviously unrefined) customers all want.
Sorry I criticized your claim of being a supertaster.
But before we go off on a tangent about how certain markets encourage production of low quality goods, let's go back to your original claim that somehow qualitatively some people prefer texture over flavor. As I already pointed out, except for the functional difference between supertasters, food preference is purely subjective and not worth arguing about.
What is objective is the amount of cacao and milk fat (amongst other ingredients) used in the manufacture of chocolate candy. If what you desire is something with actual chocolate in it, American manfuactured candy (pick your brand, it doesn't matter), it will, objectively, contain less chocolate on average than most other places in the world.
What Hershey's does to their milk chocolate is called adulteration. It is manipulating the amount of the key ingredient in something to produce it is as cheaply as possible. It's the same thing fast food vendors do to their meat to make it go farther.
It may very well be true that American tastes prefer lower-quality chocolate, but that's a chicken and egg problem that I'm not prepared to debate.
I actually find it ironic that you would suggest that supertasters who prefer taste over texture would prefer American Kit Kat bars, as everything I've been led to believe suggests that those who actually prefer taste would lean towards the chocolate with higher milk fat and cacao and less palm oil and wax. The later would provide a more consistent mouthfeel, but would sacrifice taste (which, in my humble opinion, is exactly what happens with American chocolate).
Of course, because supertaster is not a better/worse proposition, but just a different experience with tastes, perhaps there's something about the bitterness of high percentages of cacao (like coffee, green tea, or grapefruit juice) that is unpalatable to someone with a heightened sense of taste.
Well, I can't dispute the claim that Chinese Pizza Huts are disgusting to Americans and Chinese Papa John'ses aren't; that's pretty much how I feel about them.
Pizza Hut's success isn't necessarily down to adapting its pizzas, though. They do two other things differently: the Pizza Hut menu includes chinese dishes like fried rice, and their branding/decor is super-fancy, whereas the decor at Papa John's says "pizza place".
Also, Papa John's isn't exactly hard to find (in Shanghai, anyway). It's one of a few joints (like Ajisen and KFC) that I think of as ubiquitous.
So any manufacturer who doesn't produce a product at a minimum level of the government policy is an idiot?
It's as if you don't trust consumers at all. We need government policy to define exactly what chocolate needs to be, otherwise no one will make anything good.
How bout this? Buy a nice bar of Godiva chocolate. Or one of the many premium chocolates you can find at most grocery stores or online.
That's a fair point. Though I would argue that it's awfully hard to find an American chocolatier that doesn't scrape the bottom of the barrel in terms of quality. The only one I can think of off the top of my head is Ghirardelli. Godiva is Belgium by origin, though their headquarters are now in NYC (Turkish owned, however).
If a corporation is looking out for shareholder value, producing chocolate with the least amount of the most expensive ingredient is a savvy move. Even more savvy when the bulk of your clientele doesn't know your chocolate is so bad. Thus, it's quite hard to find an American chocolatier that actually produces high quality chocolate. You can argue about the evils of gov. regulation till the cows come home, but the reality is that you can't really trust consumers because, as a group, we're really bad at communicating our desires and corporations are really good at informing our decisions.
Hell, Hershey's doesn't even temper half of their shit, that's why old Hershey's bars (or other chocolate candy bar) develop a white powder over time. That's the milk solids separating from the cacao. This doesn't happen in high-quality chocolatiers.
This might be down to the difference between those of us who are supertasters and are most focused on flavor, and those of us who are nontasters and are most focused on texture
Gee, or maybe it's the fact that you enjoy what you grew up eating.
It may be that you prefer the inferior American chocolate. But Nestle brand KitKat are definitely better tasting (not sure what texture has to do with it) I know this is only anecdotal but you are probably the first person I've ever seen claim they prefer the Hershey's brand over the Nestle's brand.
Are you lumping people into either "supertaster" or "nontaster" category?
Texture is an important part of the experience. Mouthfeel is something that they test for.
In the UK try a bar of Cadburys and a bar of Galaxy. To me the Cadburys bar is grainy and the Galaxy is smooth. Other people may feel Galaxy is greasy, I guess.
Neither of them have the 'snap' of a good chocalate.
My favourite used to be Michel Cluizel. There's a bit of a problem with high end chocolate, as there is with audiophiles or wine tasting. "It sounds nice" or "it tastes nice" are all that matters (after you have a minimum quality) but high end products make odd claims. I am doubtful of the effect of 'single plantation beans' on the end product. I'd like to see double blind trials on that.
Some people actually prefer the palm oil in the Nestle KitKats, just as Cadbury tried to tell everyone.
I suspect it's a similar phenomenon with people who prefer HFCS Coke to cane sugar Coke. If you're used to palm oil, cocoa butter will make your chocky bar taste "off".
I'm surprised at the incivility this comment's provoked in several of the respondents here. My guess is that those who are responding with hackles up and swords raised are misinterpreting the terms "supertaster" and "nontaster" and feeling slighted / offended… which really does nothing but show they've missed the point.
This is not some kind of hierarchy. A "supertaster" (25% of the population; NOT a rarity, for people talking about "claims" as if I said I helmed one of the Fortune 50 or could see through walls) is not superior to someone with a normal amount and distribution of tastebuds in his mouth or someone with a lower than normal amount. He does not have an exquisite palate, and he doesn't have naturally better "taste" than others. In fact, it makes your "taste" far worse: coffee, vegetables, fruit, fish, and the majority of fine dining options are all but unpalatable.
As for people accusing me of liking Hershey's milk chocolate itself - I don't like Hershey's chocolate bars or kisses. Never did. We're talking about the difference between two kinds of Kit Kat bars here, not all of Hershey's vs. all of some other chocolate brand.
My comment was a counter example to the article. The author made a very subjective post - which is fine - but then went on to argue that Hershey is clearly engaged in some sort of conspiracy to deny people delicious Kit Kats, which is not fine unless everyone shares his opinion that the alternative to the Kit Kat Hershey makes is more delicious… and not everyone does. My response could go one of two ways:
1. I could be angry and emotional (as some of my respondents were here), and call the guy a clown and an incompetent, and argue that he's all wrong because Hershey's Kit Kat is fine just the way it is, or
2. I could sit and see if I could come up with a possible reason why two people, one who's "accustomed" to Kit Kat in the United States, and the other, who also grew up accustomed to eating Kit Kat in the United States, had such different reactions on consuming Kit Kat outside the United States. Based on the author's description of his experience eating Kit Kat, which focused entirely on mouthfeel, he seemed to be judging "taste" by texture, which is what taste is to a nontaster.
To those who resorted to insults because their feelings were hurt, next time, before you break out your pitchfork, sit down for a moment and see if you can reason out the (non-emotional) difference between you and an article or comment author, rather than turning to insults, which are entirely unproductive and make you look like someone crying in his milk.
Every time I see everything2 I am amazed it still exists and even more amazed it isn't just an archive by now. Then get stuck in a maze clicking around for hours.
The kitkat made in India, was nearly a market leader in the 90's and even early 2000's. But over time it lost out to new products from Cadbury. The Kitkat here recently improved when someone woke up from a slumber in the kitchen of Nestle.
I have eaten Kit Kat brought from middle east, specially from U.A.E/Saudi Arabia multiple times. Some imported, some directly bought.
The difference in Indian and Middle-Asian Kit Kat is also noticeable, the MA version being firmer, but Indian version being more heavy both in cocoa content, and wafer in recent years.
In fact, Kit Kat only suffers in India because of it poor pricing strategy. For a lot of time, it was price at INR 6/12, which is kinda pain when buying stuff.
The story in the article is actually from 2002. The irony here is that the Kit Kat has gotten better than the rest of Hershey's lineup through attrition since that time.
In 2008 Hershey started taking the cocoa butter out of many of their chocolates[1], noticeably reducing their quality for many people.
Because of the terms of the licensing agreement with Nestle, Hershey was not able to do this with the Kit Kat, maintaining its quality.
Everything2 has more history than yet-another-silly website. It predates Wikipedia and was in ways a prototype for encyclopedic wikis but with a far freer style.
Am I the only European who actually likes Hershey's?!
I can't say it's better than Swiss or than Cadbury chocolate, but it's not worse either! It's just a different experience!
...I like the "rugged" and slightly "sour-ish" taste of Hershey's and that fact that it actually fills your mouth with a strong flavor. And that it doesn't just melt instantly in your mouth, but you can actually chew it. And that it doesn't feel like "50% sugar": to me all European chocolates are just too fucking sweet, except for the dark chocolates. But I like milk chocolate that is not so fucking sweet and doesn't just fucking melts in your mouth before you even had the chance to taste it, and the extremely subtle yogurt-ish flavor of the Hershey added on top just makes it perfect to me. Cadbury too has some of these attributes but the Swiss brands taste just wrong to me.
Even if it was a historical accident, to me Europe just misunderstood chocolate (except for the dark high cocoa chocolates that they did get right), and I really hate it that Hershey's is so hard to find in Europe.
I don't know if you are the only European that likes Hershey's chocolate, but being a European that has tried Hershey's chocolate, I can say with confidence that you are completely nuts.
Am I the only European who actually likes Hershey's?!
I honestly don't mind it when compared to European chocolates in the same price bracket. It's obviously not the same product, but also not a worse product. At the end of the day given a choice between between cheap shitty Hershey's and cheap shitty Cadbury, I'll choose the Hershey's, mainly since Cadbury is far too sweet. It's also probably the only time ever where an American product is less sweet than its European equivalent.
Of course if I'm in a store spending my own money I'll chose neither and buy a more expensive, but smaller, piece of higher quality dark chocolate.
I used to love Hershey's, but then in a trip to Uruguay ("free shops" for brazilians) I found the (until then) mythical Lindt. I have no idea about its market share in US though.
Why mutual exclusivity? I like Lindt chocolate as well (on occasion, I find it a little overbearing on the sweetness), but I also love just a good, plain Hershey bar.
You can love more than one thing at a time for different reasons.
"This story is dark like dark chocolate and dramatic like that swirly dark-white chocolate" pronounced TrainedMonkey while munching on thin mint girl scout cookie.
This is true for all sorts of sweets and drinks outside of the US. For example - in the Baltic countries you cannot buy real Coca Cola. It sure looks like the real deal, but actually it's `a soft drink with cola flavours`.
You also cannot purchase "real" coca Cola in the us as local bottlers all use high fructose corn syrup instead of cane sugar. However, many small grocers will stock coke made in Mexico and shipped north. It usually costs about 2x the local variant. I'm really surprised that the local bottlers aren't swayed by the possibility of charging more.
Coke's response about their use of high fructose corn syrup is a claim that their customers are not able to tell the difference. bollox I say.
Pepsi, however, offers "Throwback" versions of Pepsi and Mountain Dew which use cane sugar instead of HFCS, and seem to be commonly available at many normal grocery stores in 12-packs for the same price as the regular ones. I prefer it to regular Coke, though Mexican Coke is a little better (but also much more expensive).
I visited the World of Coke in Atlanta a couple years ago, and at the end of the tour they had machines dispensing samples of all kinds of their international sodas. I was disappointed to find that Mexican coke was not offered, although in retrospect, not surprising as they probably would prefer not to advertise how much better cane sugar Coke is.
Oh man yeah tell me about it! The good news is you can find lots of specialty colas that make up for it lol. I live in Vancouver but down near Seattle this company has lots of great stuff: http://www.orcabeverage.com/
Even very young me could taste the difference. As a young child, one of the things I always looked forward to when visiting my grandparents is the States was to drink American Coke since I though it tasted so much better than stuff they had in Europe.
There are deliberate differences in chocolate composition for chocolate bars in different parts of the world for climate reasons. Take a European chocolate bar to India in the summer: it will be a gooey mess (as I discovered for myself). So the "same" bar manufactured for Indian markets (for example) has a higher melting temperature than those made for European markets. This obviously introduces taste and consistency differences.
Every time the topic of American chocolate comes up, people talk about how disguisting it is compared to European chocolate. Have you tasted anything other than Hershey's? We have excellent chocolate, even at our biggest grocery stores! (Walgreens, for instance, stocks Ghirardelli and Godiva.) And if you want something even better, every big city is bound to have a handful of chocolatiers.
I think the issue probably comes from tourists purchasing their favourite snack bars, such as a KitKat or Mars, age being unpleasantly surprised. Here in the UK, I love these chocolate bars - definitely nothing like candle wax?
This extends to more than just chocolate though. The Big Mac using mechanically recovered beef would be a big unpleasant surprise (which doesn't happen here except for the nuggets).
Mix that in with cultural differences, you have plenty of horrors (I've heard egg mayo is blended in US rather than mashed together so it's chunky, which has horrified many a Brit). However, anywhere worth holidaying has great food to eat do I don't think it's fair to say its 100% bad. In my opinion, the bread in Spain sucks (unless fresh) yet I've eaten at many great restaurants and bought great snacks.
Godiva chocolates are also dreadful and unsubtle. I tried a little bit to find edible chocolate when I was considering moving to the US. And when I want a simple chocolate bar, I'm not interested in a bitter high cocoa dark chocolate.
See, it's a quality of life thing. I don't want to have to go to specialty stores to get a treat that doesn't taste like vomit at 3pm on a Thursday afternoon. I don't want to have to make my own ice cream to get a nice chocolatey flavour. I don't want to have to bake my own biscuits to get edible triple chocolate chip cookies. Etc. You get the idea.
I humbly disagree, having tasted European chocolate. Godiva is pretty good, and certainly orders of magnitude better than Hershey's.
Divine chocolate (Whole Foods) and Ritter Sport milk chocolate are even better. I mean, really, take your pick. There's so much variety. (EDIT: Though, in retrospect, I guess they aren't made here. But I still say that Ghirardelli and Godiva are pretty good, even if they're not the best chocolate I've ever had.)
There's also plenty of variety in European chocolate. Personally I consider Kitkat among the lowest quality. Personally I prefer stuff like Verkade (no idea how big they are abroad, but they're the giant in Netherland), or Tony Chocolonely's (small but growing fast, pioneered slavery-free chocolate).
We have Kit Kat in any flavor you can imagine over here and recently the worlds first Kit Kat store opened in Ikebukuro, Tokyo. Haven't been there yet, but will definitely check it out.
Am I the only one who noticed the k c difference? Hn poster changed the K to a c. Though the correct spelling. I felt like the articles authors use of kkk was a bit odd. Perhaps even intentional? Maybe subtly inappropriate?
Those answers are all reasonable, except for the use of "specific specification" and attributing taste differences to differences in the raw agricultural ingredients, rather than the incompleteness of the product specification.
I'm pretty sure the quality of American candy has continued to decline. Or, I may have acquired higher standards in the intervening time. I'm nearly always disappointed when I eat a candy bar, of almost any sort. They're too sugary and simplistic to be satisfying. Calling most of them "chocolate" is an insult to actual chocolate.
> Or, I may have acquired higher standards in the intervening time.
Don't discount this idea too much. There was a sea change in my dietary inclinations around the time I was 20-21 years old; I started preferring fatty foods to sugary foods. I'll still eat candy, but I'm much less attached to it now.
I think it's a little of both. It's not just candy, either. Most foods have seen a decline in quality. You can still buy actual food that is of high quality, but it costs a lot more. But, since I was a kid (which was a long time ago...well before 2003), I've seen grocery stores evolve to selling more processed and packaged food. Corn by-products in all their forms seem to be the primary ingredient in nearly everything, now.
I don't want to be the angry old man yelling at kids to get off his lawn, and I see that in many ways we have superior options today, than when I was a kid. As a vegetarian of over 20 years, my food options have widened in the intervening years. But, I also don't really like what mainstream food has become, or rather, what Big Ag has turned mainstream food into (as it wasn't an accident, it was a massive campaign of misinformation and regulatory capture).
I'll add to this post by saying that I live in Japan so, if you can't find the flavour you want, I am happy to buy it and send it to anyone. Obviously, I'd expect the person to cover the cost. I imagine it would be same/cheaper than buying on Amazon though.
I work with some Nestle folks in Japan. One of them told me that they have 200 kitkat varieties nationwide. The idea is to align to local taste and pride in the "meibutsu" of each region. (e.g. pickled plum in Nagasaki). Nobody else does this, to my knowledge. The kit-kats are imported though as there is no local production.
This marketing has been successful. KitKat is the #1 chocolate bar in Japan. Anecdotally, I was told that many consumers believe Nestle is a Japanese company.
Japanese has just the one liquid phoneme; in terms of english they don't distinguish L from R. It's traditionally romanized with an 'r', but it can be pronounced as an L.
All that seems a little beside the point, though; they have their own (terrible) writing system. I'd kind of expect any brand using roman letters to look foreign.
And protesters being shot in Ukraine seems kinda trivial when you consider what is happening on Syria, Iraq, or in lots of African countries.
Here we have(Spain) a refugee from Africa that was forced to kill his parents as a kid, his sisters were raped in front of him and then he never saw them again. Now the war is over on the paper, but it is not for the population.
I for one welcome Kit Kat trivial stories. There is a problem about news, we focus only on the worse news of the world, so the only "approved behavior" is to live chronically depressed(there will always be bad news).
An article about Android 4.4.2 would be less trivial than protesters being shot in the Ukraine? And why are you reading HN instead of doing something about the Ukraine situation?
It has "Kit Kat" in it, so people might think it's about Android. And it has conspiracy in it, which sounds like N S A. Predictably, it gets upvoted ;-)
Prior to David Peter's invention of solid milk chocolate in 1875 chocolate was known as a drink. One of the challenges of making the, now familiar, milk chocolate bar was reducing the water content of the milk to make it easier to emulsify and set the chocolate. This had to be done in a way that kept the creaminess and didn't burn or scorch the milk and that wouldn't spoil. The Swiss got there first it. Cadbury figured it out (or just copied the Swiss). Hershey struggled. He had a chocolate manufacturing plant that was closely guarded not to avoid someone stealing his chocolate recipe but to avoid anyone discovering he didn't have one.
One day in 1904 he cracked it & depending on who you believe, either by perseverance or by parsimony. Hershey's advocates will tell you that late one night, after many failed attempts he & his colleague John Shmalbach discovered just the right slow evaporation of non-fat milk that produced a creamy, faintly bitter chocolate. Hershey's detractors will tell you how a tight-fisted Milton Hershey did not want to waste a large delivery of milk powder that had soured and instead used it & found it sold surprisingly well. Either way that's when Hershey's distinctive "sour" flavour was introduced.
Then the Great War happened. Supply problems & rationing hugely restricted Cadbury & the other European manufacturers. Hershey, despite producing what many thought was a worse product had fewer supply issues and, without European competitors, a US market largely to himself. By the time Europe has finally picked itself up after the Second World War the American palate and taste for chocolate has long since been fixed.
TLDR: Americans have terrible chocolate because in 1914 a Moravian took a wrong turn and got an Austrian shot by a Bosnian
p.s. I love chocolate. I can't stand Hersheys.