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 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.
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.
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
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.
~~Candy makers~~ capitalists
FTFY
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.
I took two bites and had to spit it out
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.
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.
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)
"We are proud to announce our products are completely free of any natural ingredients!"
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... !baking@lemmy.curiana.net ? It's my self hosted server. Will that work?
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
There is no corner they aren't willing to cut.
“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.
We continued releasing more and more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for decades after learning that it was causing increasingly extreme weather
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
You vill eat the chocolate-style cube.
... 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 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)
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
And before anybody snaps: i hate capitalism.
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.
How to say you come from the States without saying you come from the States.
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).
EU has laws stating how much raw cocoa a product that calls itself chocolate must have.
US has none of that
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.
When you can taste the enshittification of everything.
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!
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.
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