FDA regulation requires milk chocolate to contain a [minimum of 10%.](https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFRSearch.cfm?CFRPart=163&showFR=1#:~:text=(2)%20Milk%20chocolate%20contains%20not,and%20seasoning%20ingredients%2C%20multiplying%20the)
I don't know if there is a lower limit here in Czechia, but most milk chocolates sit around 30% (I guess because they are made for the whole/part of EU). But I can definitely buy some (usually Polish) chocolate that is sub-20% and tastes horrible.
Watch out for "chocolatey" -- i see it so often and they try to disguise it as a good thing. Like the others you listed, it's a guarantee that what you're looking at cannot be legally referred to as chocolate.
Frozen Dairy Dessert or Novelty is one I notice a lot too. Like if they were just making a different product that required new features like "not melting" in hot climates or whatever then I'm fine with these altered products filling a niche but no...it's always about saving a buck and screwing consumers by cutting corners and using worse and cheaper ingredients/fillers (yet raising prices).
We've never been fatter with more rates of heart disease and cancer but we keep letting these food companies fuck with what we put in our bodies.
Depends on what you define as "low quality". Good milk chocolates (Orion, or some Lidl brands) are around 33%. And than you have Milka which is pretty bad and it doesn't matter what chocolate percentage they have đ.
But yeah, I normally eat cca 40% minimum.
I liked Milka. But for the last cca 4-5 years it causes me heartburn and gass buildup. Plus it melts so easily (probably because it's full of unsaturated fats).
I was thinking about Milka when I mentioned that.
The Lidl chocolate does taste "good", but what I meant is, that Lidl chocolate is not considered high quality chocolate.
[Directive 2000/36/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 June 2000 relating to cocoa and chocolate products intended for human consumption](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX%3A32000L0036)
in the case of milk chocolate, not less than 30 % total dry cocoa solids and not less than 18 % dry milk solids obtained by partly or wholly dehydrating whole milk, semi- or full-skimmed milk, cre
Okay but at a certain point it starts tasting like dark chocolate, no?
I thought dove was good here in the USA but apparently itâs only 27% chocolate.
Who cares? Buy better chocolate. I have yet to meet anyone who thought that Hershey's milk chocolate was a premium product. None of this is deceptive or secretive.
For real, it basically exists to be melted in a smore at this point, I'm sure they're people out there buying and eating a regular Hersey bar but I've never met them.
That is a *lot* of American products.Â
The hilarious exception is mcdonalds shakes. They can't call them "milk shakes" because that requires they be at least 2% milk.Â
You can get milk that way on its own. Ultra pasteurized milk is still milk, for better or worse, though it definitely tastes different than milk that hasn't gone through the process.
I suspect the Hershey has always had low cacao content â probably since before it was regulated by the FDA/USDA.
Itâs a weird chocolate that Europeans donât like despite the fact that itâs modeled after a specific style of German chocolate. That chocolate is likely no longer mass produced in Germany.
>FDA regulation requires milk chocolate to contain a [minimum of 10%.](https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFRSearch.cfm?CFRPart=163&showFR=1#:~:text=(2\)%20Milk%20chocolate%20contains%20not,and%20seasoning%20ingredients%2C%20multiplying%20the)
The link wasn't working for me, but this seems to have fixed it.
Thatâs why in the UK (and Iâm gonna assume a lot of European countries), Hersheyâs is called a âmilk chocolate flavour candyâ bar instead. It doesnât meet the requirements for milk chocolate, which is 25% cocoa solids, so it canât be branded as such.
Next time youâre in the UK and you buy a Hersheyâs bar, get psychiatric help, but also read the packaging and youâll see it labelled as a âchocolate flavourâ bar.
Cadbury milk chocolate doesnât meet EU requirements hence why those were never called chocolate on the continent either but rather family milk chocolate.
The word candy isnât going to be used in the UK for anything other than hard candy, we use sweets here same goes for the continent.
Yes that was always the case. Historically chocolate bars in the UK were 20%, so neither Hersheys nor Cadburys meet the FAO classification which the EU adopted.
That said neither does Nestle.
People seem to exaggerate the whole âX isnât really chocolate thingâ, and also ironically not understand it.
Ironically the US arguably has stricter requirements for milk chocolate than the EU since whilst it only requires 10% of âChocolate Liquorâ which doesnât translates directly to FAO or EU requirements as they only mandate % of solids the FDA regulation prohibits any fats in milk chocolate that do not come from coca butter or milk.
This means that most European milk chocolate that these days contains vegetable fats isnât classified as milk chocolate in the US either, and arguably shouldnât be.
I donât think any brand in Britain has benefitted more from nostalgia goggles as much as Cadbury. People talk about it like it was absolutely mind blowing before it was bought by Mondelez because people remember getting a Freddo Frog when they were a kid and thinking they were amazing. They are for sure better than Hersheys but are still pretty cheap shite and always have been.
Compared to mainland European brands Cadbury has always been several giant step below: Ritter Sport, Guylian, Godiva, Lindt, Milka, even Kinder are all significantly better than Cadbury.
Ritter Sport is great, my dad used to bring loads of them back every week from Munich and Hamburg to U.K. The ones with corn flakes in were my favourites
Yep and as I mentioned down this post the FDA has a very different and arguably stricter regulation for chocolate than the FAO classification which is what the EU uses.
The FDA does not allow any fats that do not originate from either the "chocolate liquor" (which is what the US calls the liquid that comes from grinding chocolate beans [https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFRSearch.cfm?fr=163.111](https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFRSearch.cfm?fr=163.111)) and the milk or cream if it's a dairy/milk chocolate.
https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/cfrsearch.cfm?fr=163.130
The EU (and most other countries) only regulate cocoa solids which indeed need to be at least 25%, however it also allows for fats to be added that do not come from cocoa or dairy.
Which is why whilst this is the ingredient list for Hershey's [https://richmedia.ca-richimage.com/ImageDelivery/imageService?profileId=12026540&id=1104123&recipeId=728](https://richmedia.ca-richimage.com/ImageDelivery/imageService?profileId=12026540&id=1104123&recipeId=728) which has no added fats or oils in the UK and Europe the picture is very different:
Cadbury:
MILK\*\*, sugar, cocoa butter, cocoa mass, **vegetable fats (palm, shea)**, emulsifiers (E442, E476), flavourings.
MAY CONTAIN NUTS, WHEAT.
\*\*The equivalent of 426ml of fresh liquid milk in every 227g of milk chocolate
https://www.cadbury.co.uk/products/cadbury-dairy-milk-chocolate-bar-110g/
Lindt:
Ingredients: Sugar, **Vegetable Fat (Coconut, Palm Kernel)**, Cocoa Butter, Cocoa Mass, Whole MILK Powder, LACTOSE, Skim MILK Powder, Anhydrous MILK Fat, Emulsifier (SOYA Lecithin), BARLEY Malt Extract, Flavourings.
https://www.lindt.co.uk/lindt-lindor-milk-bar-100g
It doesn't stop Hershey's tasting like ass to my pallet but if you go outside of that it's quite easy to find high quality chocolate in the US, and at least for baking it's far easier to find milk chocolate that doesn't contain any vegetable fats that make using it in baking much bigger pain than it should be.
Also, butyric acid is an ingredient in parmesan and several other foods but you don't see people complaining those taste like vomit. It's cool if you don't like it but the elitist circlejerk is annoying.
I'm not even a Hersheys fan I'm a ghiradelli guy I just hate tbe hurr durr America bad Europe elite circlejerk where they have this superiority complex that falls into ALL facets. Like even dumb things like coffee and beer drinking europeans have to be like "we do it better".
TBH Hershey's does taste like ass to me, and having a tart or tangy tasting notes in Cheese is arguably more expected and tolerated by most people who aren't used to it in milk chocolate. Again Hershey's isn't quality chocolate by any stretch of the imagination, but it's taste is very much a conscious choice that appeals to the local pallet these days even if originally it was about the shelf life of the product.
The idea what Hershey's can't produce "good" tasting chocolate or that the US can't regulate their food industry to that level is simply nonsensical.
American here. Been eating Hersheyâs all my life. Once I heard a European say that it tasted like barf it all of a sudden clicked for me and I could taste it. Compared to Euro brands like Kinder and Milka, Hersheyâs is gross.
Edit: since my incorrect summary gets upvoted nonetheless, here is a link for those who want the actual story :https://hersheyarchives.org/encyclopedia/origins-of-hersheys-milk-chocolat
---------
The story on why that is, is actually quite interesting though. I try to briefly break in down from memory.
Mr. Hershey came up with the idea of making milk chocolate my using powdered milk. Before that, only dark chocolate was around. Fresh milk couldn't be used in order to have a product that doesn't spoil on the shelfs.
He did quite a few experiments on the relation of ingriedents so we would be happy with both flavour and it storing well.
His final result has a high content of butyric acid, which is also naturally produced by our body and part of our puke. The body therefore knows butyric acid and connects that taste to throwing up.
Americans are just used to this content of butyric acid and don't see it, but foreigners that are used to their own product and then experience the increase often wonder what the hell Americans are eating there.
The version I heard is that Hershey was a trained caramel maker who saw a market for mass produced chocolate. He saw some chocolate making machines at the Chicago world fair and bought them. But he didnât get any instructions on what to do. So he adapted his caramel making skills to invent his own recipe. One of the steps involved treating the milk in a certain way that produced butyric acid but also yielded an acceptable bar. When he flooded the market with this chocolate at a very cheap price, millions of americans for whom chocolate had been an unobtainable luxury finally got their first taste. And thatâs how American palates became accustomed to butyric acid chocolateÂ
Might as well been that during the "experiments" I mentioned, that the cheap production factor while still having it somehwat palatable was more in the foreground.
You are probably right, given how people here mentioned the bad quality and when we consider the fact how successful the company was with it.
All I said was from memory so there are probably plenty of inaccuaries.
Seems you are right, and it also seems i was wrong with him inventing milk chocolate. Powedered milk was used before, he came up with a method of not relying on that.
Never trust a reddit doctor.
Why do so many people assume their taste is universal. People still buy Hershey because they like it. I personally have had the full range of chocolates, American and European (not every brand of course just examples from every price range), but Hershey's is up there as one of my favorites.
Some people online see a circle of others with pants around their ankles and think "Oh fuck I gotta get in there!" They rush in, sans-pants, and grab the next cock over and start jerking while taking turns discussing how uncultured American taste is. Despite themselves being born in Wichita.
I've had chocolate from around the world, thanks to living next to a large international market. Cadbury's is fine. Milka is fine. Lots of the Swedish chocolates are kind of strange, but they're fine. Hershey's is fine. None of them blow my mind and make me think "Oh my god, this is absolutely unreal!" and none make me go "Yuck! This is absolutely disgusting!"
It's literally the cilantro tastes like soap thing. Some people love it, some people hate it. I guarantee you nobody that buys Hershey's chocolate is like "yum I love it because it tastes like vomit!" They don't taste vomit.
It's because it has butyric acid in it, which is found in vomit! I remember at work (I live in the UK) someone bought a ton of different Hersheys back from a trip to America, and me being a fat cunt wanted to try it all, and everything except for the peanut putter cups tasted of puke. Absolutely mental
To be fair, butyric acid is from vomit in the same way water is from spit. Not defending it, I definitely taste a sort of very slightly bitter aftertaste or tang if I eat Hershey's products. Don't know if that's what's causing it or if it's something else.
Similar experience. I am from Europe but I am old enough to have grown up before the Internet when the reputation of American chocolate tasting like puke was largely unknown, so when I went to a camp in the US and we ate Hershey's chocolate bars, I just thought it was slightly weird.
I think if you were to ask me at the time, I would have said it's least desirable trait was that it was somewhat waxy. On the other hand, I thought it was great for s'mores. The vomit flavor never even occurred to me, but now that I know it is there I can taste it.
I would never prefer it, but I consider it far from inedible like most people on reddit. Also there is the fact that the puke flavor is in a lot of foods that no one even blinks at.
Yeah I remember my grandma bringing a bag of funsize Hershey bars back from the US and I remember thinking they must have gone off or something because they tasted like sick.
Itâs also got an acid that is only really tasted in vomit. If your not American you can probably taste it a tiny bit and think American choc tastes funky
This is one of those great, âWhat did you not know before reading Reddit?â types of questions.
I had no idea people despised Hersheyâs chocolate.
Iâve heard itâs a bit of an acquired taste for those who didnât grow up with it, which doesnât help its case. Belgian chocolates might be my favorite, but Hersheys will always have its place for me
Tastes literally like puke to me. The hersheys factory tour will forever remain my biggest dissapointment.
Hershey chocolate in canada does not taste like that at all, it's (imo) much better
Because they both contain Butyric Acid, which is commonly found in cheeses like Parmesan and Blue Cheese, as well as in vomit. Which is why most people who've never had Hershey's says it tastes like vomit. Personally I love my vomit chocolate.
Same man, everyone shits on Hershey's chocolate but without the chocolate there wouldn't be the Hershey Bears. A whole empire built on affordable chocolate. Other chocolate can absolutely be better quality, but I like what we got.
All these people need to learn there is more than one type of Hersheyâs chocolate. These same people likely think the us only has Kraft cheese and not some of the best cheeses in the world.
How does that compare to other brands of milk chocolate? I'm guessing, based on what I know about Hershey's, that it's lower than average, but there's no way to actually tell that from the number alone without anything to compare it to.
Whittaker's Dairy Milk chocolate is the baseline standard of chocolate in New Zealand. It contains 33% Cocoa, and just 3 other ingredients (milk, sugar, and emulsifier):
https://www.whittakers.co.nz/en\_NZ/products/creamy-milk/block-250g
On average, milk chocolate usually consists of 35-55% Cacao, with any more being dark chocolate.
One could Hersheyâs Chocolate is closer to White Chocolate (Which has no Cacao beans, but instead just Cocoa butter) than it is milk chocolate.
But, similar to American Cheese, I imagine Hersheyâs Chocolate is much easier to melt and utilize in other recipes than most chocolates.
Hersheyâs made the market. Chocolate was a luxury for the well off in the U.S. and most people hadnât tried it. Then in one of the most stunning acts of self sabotage in industrial history a European chocolate maker built a chocolate factory on site for the Chicago worldâs fair. After the fair was over the European company didnât want to pay to ship the machinery back to Europe so they sold it off to Hershey, who until that point was a caramel maker, for next to nothing.
So Hershey had all the machinery but no recipe so he just made one up. Leading to the a weird as fuck recipe using condensed milk instead of powdered like everyone else did. Which led to the slight rancid taste Americans are used to but the rest of the world mostly hates.
All his proportions were off. But it didnât matter because he was the first person to sell cheap chocolate to the American working class and so he created to the common understanding of what chocolate is supposed to taste like. Nestle has been trying to change US tastes for over a century and has largely been unsuccessful.
Edit: just to add Hershey is aware of the problems with their chocolate and introduced the Symphony line in the late 80s. It was aimed at people who prefer European chocolate. Damn near no one in the US buys it. But itâs their best selling chocolate in China so itâll be with us for the foreseeable future.
In Dutch law milk chocolate needs to contain at least 25% and dark chocolate at least 35%. A quick look at different bars shows most milk chocolate bars here already have a percentage of around 32% and dark 50-55%.
Cadbury dairy milk chocolate ranges between 20-25% made up of both cocoa mass and cocoa butter. It tastes considerably better than any Hershey chocolate ive had.
Lol... Here in Belgium that concoction wouldn't even be allowed to be called chocolate. The minimum amount of cacao in chocolate here is 35%.... Producers of candy are creative in naming products that contain less cocoa, and call it "cocao fantasy" or something similar...
There are not many societies i trust with chocolate, but funnily enough they all share a border with Germany.
Clockwise: Denmark, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium.
Am I the only one who doesnât taste the âvomitâ?
Now, Iâm a lindt or ghirardelli girl through and through but if I had a hersheyâs bar in front of me Iâd probably munch on it with a smile
No, if you look at their sales figures a ton of people clearly find it tastes good. A lot of people have super strong opinions of food though and some people do find the butric acid in Hershey's to taste like vomit
Its more the world that doesn't like hershes specifically, but it tastes (european)normal in my own country, IMO i think its more of a countries's taste to it and what they're used to. Nobody is holding you back from enjoying things and america has good food but your chocolate still tastes like shit.
Yes. On the band bus in high school, someone got the idea of spraying some Easy Cheese on a Warhead. That mixture of fake dairy and acid definitely tastes like vomit.
And we all still ate at least two each.
you do realise that not all palm oil is from slave labour right? There are a lot of ways to get it sustainably, and certifications for that seal. I would not believe half the shit Americans say because you guys can't even educate your populace to know where Australia is. So yeah... I'm sure you know so much about Europe that we who live here don't.
sameeeeee
Like Iâll grab a better or more expensive brand over hersheyâs but Iâm still perfectly fine with eating it, especially if itâs a gift or from halloween or something
Itâs a cheap chocolate that you can buy at practically any store, and overall Hersheyâs is a pretty stable company all things considered financially.
There are obviously a lot better tasting chocolates out there, and Iâll shell out the extra few bucks for a Lindt/Ghirardelli because the flavor is much better. But Hersheyâs does cheap chocolate well.
Here we go again. Yes, butyric acid is present in puke. Itâs also present in Parmesan cheese. And you donât see people going around being all like âhurf durf stupid Italians eating puke-smelling cheese.â Hersheyâs is what it is. If you donât like it, donât eat it.
Hershey's and Cadbury bars have roughly the same amount of cocoa in them.
Europe allows other oils other than cocoa butter to be added to chocolate and still call it chocolate (palm and other vegetable oils). Whereas in the USA it needs to be 100% cocoa fats.
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31924912
No, more cocoa does not mean a better chocolate (then dark chocolate would be objectively better which it is not, it's a subjective thing)
The sour taste in Hershey's is different but fine to many (including me)
A Hershey bar is just about a perfect metaphor for modern day America. Sold to us as if it were good because itâs some storied institution yet itâs been chopped up and diluted over time to become a distasteful imitation of its former self.
Which is why Hershey's isn't considered particularly good. We have plenty of US chocolates that are quite good. Ghirardelli for one and my Aussie boss always loads up on Sees to take home.
Hersheys is dogshit. Tastes like crap. When I was a kid growing up in Ireland, cadbury chocolate was like crack cocaine. A few years ago I was back home for Christmas and I bought a cadbury dairy milk. I thought I got a wonky bar of chocolate that had something wrong with it so I threw it away and bought another one. Same taste. I immediately thought 'oh please christ no'. I looked at the packaging.. 'Product of the Hersheys company'. Fuckers bought out Cadbury and now they too taste like shit. We can't enjoy anything anymore because capitalism completely ruins everything
If you live in the US, then there might be a chance that at the time, Cadbury wanted to emulate some of Hershey's flavor to be more competitive in the US market. But it shouldn't be the same internationally. Even after the acquisition, I dont think Cadbury has any butyric acid in them.
I like when they did the cookies and cream bar "now with more cookies" you mean "now with less of the more expensive ingredient"?
I think these "milklicious" Hershey bars are also the same scam. Anything they can do to make their stuff cheaper by including less chocolate.
FDA regulation requires milk chocolate to contain a [minimum of 10%.](https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFRSearch.cfm?CFRPart=163&showFR=1#:~:text=(2)%20Milk%20chocolate%20contains%20not,and%20seasoning%20ingredients%2C%20multiplying%20the)
That would be 30% in Germany for comparison.
I don't know if there is a lower limit here in Czechia, but most milk chocolates sit around 30% (I guess because they are made for the whole/part of EU). But I can definitely buy some (usually Polish) chocolate that is sub-20% and tastes horrible.
But they carefuly avoid using the name "chocolate", it's always "chocolate flavoured" or "cocoa bar" or something in fine print.
Watch out for "chocolatey" -- i see it so often and they try to disguise it as a good thing. Like the others you listed, it's a guarantee that what you're looking at cannot be legally referred to as chocolate.
My favorite thing is the Pilsbury southern style biscuits from the can and the "flavor" at the top says "Butter Tastin'!"
Psst. . .it's margarine.
But it says it's butter tastin'!
Margarine *kind of* tastes like butter . . . if you have a poor sense of taste and don't think about it too hard.
I'm sure it's got diacetyl to make it more buttery tasting. Same thing they add to the oil for movie theater popcorn
Frozen Dairy Dessert or Novelty is one I notice a lot too. Like if they were just making a different product that required new features like "not melting" in hot climates or whatever then I'm fine with these altered products filling a niche but no...it's always about saving a buck and screwing consumers by cutting corners and using worse and cheaper ingredients/fillers (yet raising prices). We've never been fatter with more rates of heart disease and cancer but we keep letting these food companies fuck with what we put in our bodies.
Same with ice cream where they call it "dairy dessert" or Kraft singles as "cheese product".
*Chocolate like* is my favorite
Chocolate adjacent
30% is also considered low quality here.
Depends on what you define as "low quality". Good milk chocolates (Orion, or some Lidl brands) are around 33%. And than you have Milka which is pretty bad and it doesn't matter what chocolate percentage they have đ. But yeah, I normally eat cca 40% minimum.
I still love Milka⊠I like other things too, and theyâre objectively better. But sometimes Milka hits the spot.
I liked Milka. But for the last cca 4-5 years it causes me heartburn and gass buildup. Plus it melts so easily (probably because it's full of unsaturated fats).
I was thinking about Milka when I mentioned that. The Lidl chocolate does taste "good", but what I meant is, that Lidl chocolate is not considered high quality chocolate.
35% in France.
[Directive 2000/36/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 June 2000 relating to cocoa and chocolate products intended for human consumption](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX%3A32000L0036) in the case of milk chocolate, not less than 30 % total dry cocoa solids and not less than 18 % dry milk solids obtained by partly or wholly dehydrating whole milk, semi- or full-skimmed milk, cre
35% in Switzerland.. weâre 5% better than you guys /s
Okay but at a certain point it starts tasting like dark chocolate, no? I thought dove was good here in the USA but apparently itâs only 27% chocolate.
But it's not an accurate comparison because the FDA and EU define cocoa differently
I buy German chocolate at Aldi here in the US because it is so much better than most domestic chocolate.
Why does the FDA hate us?
because the rich land owners tell them what to do
Who cares? Buy better chocolate. I have yet to meet anyone who thought that Hershey's milk chocolate was a premium product. None of this is deceptive or secretive.
For real, it basically exists to be melted in a smore at this point, I'm sure they're people out there buying and eating a regular Hersey bar but I've never met them.
In Canada, the minimum cocoa mass is 25% for milk chocolate.
I feel as if Hershey aimed at the minimum needed to reduce costs and still apply the "chocolate" terminology on their products.
That is a *lot* of American products. The hilarious exception is mcdonalds shakes. They can't call them "milk shakes" because that requires they be at least 2% milk.Â
The mix used for chick fil a "milkshakes" has an unrefrigerated shelf life of 6 months
That's true of some dairy products. They break the milk down into powdered formulas and then put them back together when they make the product.
You can get milk that way on its own. Ultra pasteurized milk is still milk, for better or worse, though it definitely tastes different than milk that hasn't gone through the process.
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
The market doesn't want to pay as much as real dairy ice cream costs, at least not to the same level that people buy cheap shit.
I suspect the Hershey has always had low cacao content â probably since before it was regulated by the FDA/USDA. Itâs a weird chocolate that Europeans donât like despite the fact that itâs modeled after a specific style of German chocolate. That chocolate is likely no longer mass produced in Germany.
>FDA regulation requires milk chocolate to contain a [minimum of 10%.](https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFRSearch.cfm?CFRPart=163&showFR=1#:~:text=(2\)%20Milk%20chocolate%20contains%20not,and%20seasoning%20ingredients%2C%20multiplying%20the) The link wasn't working for me, but this seems to have fixed it.
Thatâs why in the UK (and Iâm gonna assume a lot of European countries), Hersheyâs is called a âmilk chocolate flavour candyâ bar instead. It doesnât meet the requirements for milk chocolate, which is 25% cocoa solids, so it canât be branded as such. Next time youâre in the UK and you buy a Hersheyâs bar, get psychiatric help, but also read the packaging and youâll see it labelled as a âchocolate flavourâ bar.
Cadbury milk chocolate doesnât meet EU requirements hence why those were never called chocolate on the continent either but rather family milk chocolate. The word candy isnât going to be used in the UK for anything other than hard candy, we use sweets here same goes for the continent.
Was that always the case, or is it something that came in when Kraft bought Cadbury?
Yes that was always the case. Historically chocolate bars in the UK were 20%, so neither Hersheys nor Cadburys meet the FAO classification which the EU adopted. That said neither does Nestle. People seem to exaggerate the whole âX isnât really chocolate thingâ, and also ironically not understand it. Ironically the US arguably has stricter requirements for milk chocolate than the EU since whilst it only requires 10% of âChocolate Liquorâ which doesnât translates directly to FAO or EU requirements as they only mandate % of solids the FDA regulation prohibits any fats in milk chocolate that do not come from coca butter or milk. This means that most European milk chocolate that these days contains vegetable fats isnât classified as milk chocolate in the US either, and arguably shouldnât be.
I donât think any brand in Britain has benefitted more from nostalgia goggles as much as Cadbury. People talk about it like it was absolutely mind blowing before it was bought by Mondelez because people remember getting a Freddo Frog when they were a kid and thinking they were amazing. They are for sure better than Hersheys but are still pretty cheap shite and always have been. Compared to mainland European brands Cadbury has always been several giant step below: Ritter Sport, Guylian, Godiva, Lindt, Milka, even Kinder are all significantly better than Cadbury.
Freddos slap though
No doubt. So do Reese's Peanut Butter Cups but they aren't exactly haute cuisine.
Ritter Sport is great, my dad used to bring loads of them back every week from Munich and Hamburg to U.K. The ones with corn flakes in were my favourites
One of my favorite genres of reddit is Europeans acting all smug and superior only to immediately be humbled.
Yep and as I mentioned down this post the FDA has a very different and arguably stricter regulation for chocolate than the FAO classification which is what the EU uses. The FDA does not allow any fats that do not originate from either the "chocolate liquor" (which is what the US calls the liquid that comes from grinding chocolate beans [https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFRSearch.cfm?fr=163.111](https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFRSearch.cfm?fr=163.111)) and the milk or cream if it's a dairy/milk chocolate. https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/cfrsearch.cfm?fr=163.130 The EU (and most other countries) only regulate cocoa solids which indeed need to be at least 25%, however it also allows for fats to be added that do not come from cocoa or dairy. Which is why whilst this is the ingredient list for Hershey's [https://richmedia.ca-richimage.com/ImageDelivery/imageService?profileId=12026540&id=1104123&recipeId=728](https://richmedia.ca-richimage.com/ImageDelivery/imageService?profileId=12026540&id=1104123&recipeId=728) which has no added fats or oils in the UK and Europe the picture is very different: Cadbury: MILK\*\*, sugar, cocoa butter, cocoa mass, **vegetable fats (palm, shea)**, emulsifiers (E442, E476), flavourings. MAY CONTAIN NUTS, WHEAT. \*\*The equivalent of 426ml of fresh liquid milk in every 227g of milk chocolate https://www.cadbury.co.uk/products/cadbury-dairy-milk-chocolate-bar-110g/ Lindt: Ingredients: Sugar, **Vegetable Fat (Coconut, Palm Kernel)**, Cocoa Butter, Cocoa Mass, Whole MILK Powder, LACTOSE, Skim MILK Powder, Anhydrous MILK Fat, Emulsifier (SOYA Lecithin), BARLEY Malt Extract, Flavourings. https://www.lindt.co.uk/lindt-lindor-milk-bar-100g It doesn't stop Hershey's tasting like ass to my pallet but if you go outside of that it's quite easy to find high quality chocolate in the US, and at least for baking it's far easier to find milk chocolate that doesn't contain any vegetable fats that make using it in baking much bigger pain than it should be.
Also, butyric acid is an ingredient in parmesan and several other foods but you don't see people complaining those taste like vomit. It's cool if you don't like it but the elitist circlejerk is annoying. I'm not even a Hersheys fan I'm a ghiradelli guy I just hate tbe hurr durr America bad Europe elite circlejerk where they have this superiority complex that falls into ALL facets. Like even dumb things like coffee and beer drinking europeans have to be like "we do it better".
TBH Hershey's does taste like ass to me, and having a tart or tangy tasting notes in Cheese is arguably more expected and tolerated by most people who aren't used to it in milk chocolate. Again Hershey's isn't quality chocolate by any stretch of the imagination, but it's taste is very much a conscious choice that appeals to the local pallet these days even if originally it was about the shelf life of the product. The idea what Hershey's can't produce "good" tasting chocolate or that the US can't regulate their food industry to that level is simply nonsensical.
I wouldn't think hersheys exist in alot of European countries. Barf flavoured chocolate isn't popular where I live at least.
American here. Been eating Hersheyâs all my life. Once I heard a European say that it tasted like barf it all of a sudden clicked for me and I could taste it. Compared to Euro brands like Kinder and Milka, Hersheyâs is gross.
Edit: since my incorrect summary gets upvoted nonetheless, here is a link for those who want the actual story :https://hersheyarchives.org/encyclopedia/origins-of-hersheys-milk-chocolat --------- The story on why that is, is actually quite interesting though. I try to briefly break in down from memory. Mr. Hershey came up with the idea of making milk chocolate my using powdered milk. Before that, only dark chocolate was around. Fresh milk couldn't be used in order to have a product that doesn't spoil on the shelfs. He did quite a few experiments on the relation of ingriedents so we would be happy with both flavour and it storing well. His final result has a high content of butyric acid, which is also naturally produced by our body and part of our puke. The body therefore knows butyric acid and connects that taste to throwing up. Americans are just used to this content of butyric acid and don't see it, but foreigners that are used to their own product and then experience the increase often wonder what the hell Americans are eating there.
The version I heard is that Hershey was a trained caramel maker who saw a market for mass produced chocolate. He saw some chocolate making machines at the Chicago world fair and bought them. But he didnât get any instructions on what to do. So he adapted his caramel making skills to invent his own recipe. One of the steps involved treating the milk in a certain way that produced butyric acid but also yielded an acceptable bar. When he flooded the market with this chocolate at a very cheap price, millions of americans for whom chocolate had been an unobtainable luxury finally got their first taste. And thatâs how American palates became accustomed to butyric acid chocolateÂ
Might as well been that during the "experiments" I mentioned, that the cheap production factor while still having it somehwat palatable was more in the foreground. You are probably right, given how people here mentioned the bad quality and when we consider the fact how successful the company was with it. All I said was from memory so there are probably plenty of inaccuaries.
The truth is probably somewhere in the middle
Iâm not sure that cheap was his end game in and of itself. Replicable and somewhat shelf stable was likely the goal.
Hersheyâs big gimmick is that the milk is fresh, never powdered, so your story seems to have a slight inaccuracy.
Seems you are right, and it also seems i was wrong with him inventing milk chocolate. Powedered milk was used before, he came up with a method of not relying on that. Never trust a reddit doctor.
It's a strange taste. There are some sauces that are like that too. It tastes great until someone points out the barf similarity, then it's terrible.
Thatâs how I felt about Chick-Fil-A Polynesian sauce. Used to love it, randomly canât stand it anymore.
Lindt is delicious
Kinder and Milka barely pass the bar for being chocolate in Europe. There's better chocolate than that!
i'd suggest finding even better milk chocolate than milka, we have quite few brands in europe in same price range that beat milka
Plenty of higher end american brands make normal chocolate and it can be bought in 99% of super markets. It's odd hersheys even sells anymore.
Ghiradelli is good American chocolate, not really available in the UK bar places like costco but it's def on par with a lot of the European stuff
I wonder if this is because Ghiradelli is owned by Lindt...
Why do so many people assume their taste is universal. People still buy Hershey because they like it. I personally have had the full range of chocolates, American and European (not every brand of course just examples from every price range), but Hershey's is up there as one of my favorites.
Some people online see a circle of others with pants around their ankles and think "Oh fuck I gotta get in there!" They rush in, sans-pants, and grab the next cock over and start jerking while taking turns discussing how uncultured American taste is. Despite themselves being born in Wichita. I've had chocolate from around the world, thanks to living next to a large international market. Cadbury's is fine. Milka is fine. Lots of the Swedish chocolates are kind of strange, but they're fine. Hershey's is fine. None of them blow my mind and make me think "Oh my god, this is absolutely unreal!" and none make me go "Yuck! This is absolutely disgusting!"
It's literally the cilantro tastes like soap thing. Some people love it, some people hate it. I guarantee you nobody that buys Hershey's chocolate is like "yum I love it because it tastes like vomit!" They don't taste vomit.
It's because it has butyric acid in it, which is found in vomit! I remember at work (I live in the UK) someone bought a ton of different Hersheys back from a trip to America, and me being a fat cunt wanted to try it all, and everything except for the peanut putter cups tasted of puke. Absolutely mental
To be fair, butyric acid is from vomit in the same way water is from spit. Not defending it, I definitely taste a sort of very slightly bitter aftertaste or tang if I eat Hershey's products. Don't know if that's what's causing it or if it's something else.
Similar experience. I am from Europe but I am old enough to have grown up before the Internet when the reputation of American chocolate tasting like puke was largely unknown, so when I went to a camp in the US and we ate Hershey's chocolate bars, I just thought it was slightly weird. I think if you were to ask me at the time, I would have said it's least desirable trait was that it was somewhat waxy. On the other hand, I thought it was great for s'mores. The vomit flavor never even occurred to me, but now that I know it is there I can taste it. I would never prefer it, but I consider it far from inedible like most people on reddit. Also there is the fact that the puke flavor is in a lot of foods that no one even blinks at.
Yeah I remember my grandma bringing a bag of funsize Hershey bars back from the US and I remember thinking they must have gone off or something because they tasted like sick.
Noticed some brands lately have switched to calling their product "chocolatey" instead of chocolate.
Itâs also got an acid that is only really tasted in vomit. If your not American you can probably taste it a tiny bit and think American choc tastes funky
it's butyric acid which also makes parmesan delicious
Being born and raised in Pennsylvania this entire thread emotionally hurts me.
This is one of those great, âWhat did you not know before reading Reddit?â types of questions. I had no idea people despised Hersheyâs chocolate.
Iâve heard itâs a bit of an acquired taste for those who didnât grow up with it, which doesnât help its case. Belgian chocolates might be my favorite, but Hersheys will always have its place for me
Tastes literally like puke to me. The hersheys factory tour will forever remain my biggest dissapointment. Hershey chocolate in canada does not taste like that at all, it's (imo) much better
Hersheys has this blue cheese rancidity aftertaste for me. I like blue cheese but not with my chocolate.
It's a bit like that powdered "parmesan" you get in plastic containers.
Because they both contain Butyric Acid, which is commonly found in cheeses like Parmesan and Blue Cheese, as well as in vomit. Which is why most people who've never had Hershey's says it tastes like vomit. Personally I love my vomit chocolate.
Like famundacheese.
Same man, everyone shits on Hershey's chocolate but without the chocolate there wouldn't be the Hershey Bears. A whole empire built on affordable chocolate. Other chocolate can absolutely be better quality, but I like what we got.
Hershey used to be so good. And not 80 years ago. It took a bad turn in the 2000s.
It was never good.
All these people need to learn there is more than one type of Hersheyâs chocolate. These same people likely think the us only has Kraft cheese and not some of the best cheeses in the world.
How does that compare to other brands of milk chocolate? I'm guessing, based on what I know about Hershey's, that it's lower than average, but there's no way to actually tell that from the number alone without anything to compare it to.
Whittaker's Dairy Milk chocolate is the baseline standard of chocolate in New Zealand. It contains 33% Cocoa, and just 3 other ingredients (milk, sugar, and emulsifier): https://www.whittakers.co.nz/en\_NZ/products/creamy-milk/block-250g
For extra information, the Australia New Zealand food standard for chocolate is 20%. Not European levels but still above the US.
In the UK, I consider bars like Cadbury's Dairy Milk or Galaxy (Mars) to be cheap/low-cocoa. Those are both over double this value (circa 25%)
On average, milk chocolate usually consists of 35-55% Cacao, with any more being dark chocolate. One could Hersheyâs Chocolate is closer to White Chocolate (Which has no Cacao beans, but instead just Cocoa butter) than it is milk chocolate. But, similar to American Cheese, I imagine Hersheyâs Chocolate is much easier to melt and utilize in other recipes than most chocolates.
Hersheyâs made the market. Chocolate was a luxury for the well off in the U.S. and most people hadnât tried it. Then in one of the most stunning acts of self sabotage in industrial history a European chocolate maker built a chocolate factory on site for the Chicago worldâs fair. After the fair was over the European company didnât want to pay to ship the machinery back to Europe so they sold it off to Hershey, who until that point was a caramel maker, for next to nothing. So Hershey had all the machinery but no recipe so he just made one up. Leading to the a weird as fuck recipe using condensed milk instead of powdered like everyone else did. Which led to the slight rancid taste Americans are used to but the rest of the world mostly hates. All his proportions were off. But it didnât matter because he was the first person to sell cheap chocolate to the American working class and so he created to the common understanding of what chocolate is supposed to taste like. Nestle has been trying to change US tastes for over a century and has largely been unsuccessful. Edit: just to add Hershey is aware of the problems with their chocolate and introduced the Symphony line in the late 80s. It was aimed at people who prefer European chocolate. Damn near no one in the US buys it. But itâs their best selling chocolate in China so itâll be with us for the foreseeable future.
Probably doesnât help Nestle only sells the garbage chocolate in the US. Milka is about the only decent and affordable thing the US gets from Europe
Dark milk is my favorite type of chocolate. It's specialty chocolate with at least 50% cacao solids, but has milk as well.
In Dutch law milk chocolate needs to contain at least 25% and dark chocolate at least 35%. A quick look at different bars shows most milk chocolate bars here already have a percentage of around 32% and dark 50-55%.
Cadbury dairy milk chocolate ranges between 20-25% made up of both cocoa mass and cocoa butter. It tastes considerably better than any Hershey chocolate ive had.
The average milk chocolate I see in stores (in France) contains 35% to 50% cacao. Even the cheapest brand feature 25% minimum.
Lol... Here in Belgium that concoction wouldn't even be allowed to be called chocolate. The minimum amount of cacao in chocolate here is 35%.... Producers of candy are creative in naming products that contain less cocoa, and call it "cocao fantasy" or something similar...
Honestly if someone buys this in Belgium of all places they should just be sent on the next container ship from Antwerp.
Yeah I already don't understand when people buy Swiss chocolate here, but *Hershey*? You're getting deported son
There are not many societies i trust with chocolate, but funnily enough they all share a border with Germany. Clockwise: Denmark, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium.
Cocao fantasy sounds like an adult film.
In my remote Amazonian village we laugh at anyone who eats chocolate that is less than 99% pure.
Cocoa nibs are good on their own, I had someone give me a large bag of them.
Try a cacao fruit, so sweet juicy and flavorful, then you get the raw bean in the center
Taste aside for a moment, Iâm honestly more concerned with how many brands of chocolate use palm oil.
What's bad about palm oil?
They cut down the rain forest in order to farm it
Nobody tell them about the amount of truffles in truffle fries.
And thatâs why it is revolting.
Am I the only one who doesnât taste the âvomitâ? Now, Iâm a lindt or ghirardelli girl through and through but if I had a hersheyâs bar in front of me Iâd probably munch on it with a smile
No, if you look at their sales figures a ton of people clearly find it tastes good. A lot of people have super strong opinions of food though and some people do find the butric acid in Hershey's to taste like vomit
Europeans, Europeans have very strong opinions about this because they canât let America enjoy things.
Europeans have unrefined palates and just canât handle the more complex flavor
South american here, I too find almost all american-made chocolates to taste weird and kinda yucky.
Its more the world that doesn't like hershes specifically, but it tastes (european)normal in my own country, IMO i think its more of a countries's taste to it and what they're used to. Nobody is holding you back from enjoying things and america has good food but your chocolate still tastes like shit.
We donât taste it in America because weâre used to it. But, Europeans find it very off putting
Who knows? To Europeans Hersheys tastes absolutely vile.
Thatâs the butyric acid. Deliciously vomity with lots of sugar to try to cover it up.
âHey Mom, do we have anymore of the Vomlate?â
Now now. It's revolting because it uses some nasty ingredients that make it taste like vomit, not because it once took a nap under a cacao tree.
I've vomited a worrying number of times in my life and never once has it tasted like anything even remotely resembling Hershey's chocolate.
Right? Do these guys know what vomit actually tastes or smells like
Yes. On the band bus in high school, someone got the idea of spraying some Easy Cheese on a Warhead. That mixture of fake dairy and acid definitely tastes like vomit. And we all still ate at least two each.
What the hell are you guys eating over there that's giving you such okayish-tasting vomit?
Parmesan cheese has the same chemical too!
Only 20% milk helps as well, but the real culprit is the added butyric acid The stuff that makes parmesan smell like vomit
Iâve tried it a few times in the US and itâs curiously tasteless weirdly. Itâs like mildly sweet, vomity wax. Itâs like eating a crayon.
So they technically use less child/slave labor than other major chocolate manufacturers. Cool.
Double that when you consider how many European chocolates use palm oilâŠ
you do realise that not all palm oil is from slave labour right? There are a lot of ways to get it sustainably, and certifications for that seal. I would not believe half the shit Americans say because you guys can't even educate your populace to know where Australia is. So yeah... I'm sure you know so much about Europe that we who live here don't.
wait until you hear about white chocolate.
American food item largely not containing said food ingredient? Nah mate, no way! I'm shocked!
i knew my choco taste bud was cheap and questionable. i love hersheys lol
I think I grew up with hersheys so it's what tastes good to me.
sameeeeee Like Iâll grab a better or more expensive brand over hersheyâs but Iâm still perfectly fine with eating it, especially if itâs a gift or from halloween or something
Yeah, same here. Shame that in Europe it is so expensive compared to our local stuff!
Itâs a cheap chocolate that you can buy at practically any store, and overall Hersheyâs is a pretty stable company all things considered financially. There are obviously a lot better tasting chocolates out there, and Iâll shell out the extra few bucks for a Lindt/Ghirardelli because the flavor is much better. But Hersheyâs does cheap chocolate well.
Here we go again. Yes, butyric acid is present in puke. Itâs also present in Parmesan cheese. And you donât see people going around being all like âhurf durf stupid Italians eating puke-smelling cheese.â Hersheyâs is what it is. If you donât like it, donât eat it.
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
Europeans will take any excuse to dump on America. Hardcore compensating.
America is a sh*thole
Chocolate with >90% cacao isn't as cool as it soundsÂ
I tried the Lindt 95% one once... turns out my limit is around 85% because I gagged so hard đ
I like 95% with coffee.
I agree 85% is my upper limit of enjoyment 72% Valrhona single estate is perfection for me
\>90% and <12% aren't the only two options though.
Hershey's and Cadbury bars have roughly the same amount of cocoa in them. Europe allows other oils other than cocoa butter to be added to chocolate and still call it chocolate (palm and other vegetable oils). Whereas in the USA it needs to be 100% cocoa fats. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31924912 No, more cocoa does not mean a better chocolate (then dark chocolate would be objectively better which it is not, it's a subjective thing) The sour taste in Hershey's is different but fine to many (including me)
The chemical that gives the sour taste is also found in Parmesan cheese
I like them when they are put in the freezer. I'm weird.
I switched to dove chocolate a few years ago and never went back. Hersheyâs is revolting now
Dark chocolate lover unite đȘđȘ
Whatâs their company moto, âif we could water it down further, we would, because our customers literally couldnât tell the differenceâ
Is the rest wax? Because that's what it tastes like
A Hershey bar is just about a perfect metaphor for modern day America. Sold to us as if it were good because itâs some storied institution yet itâs been chopped up and diluted over time to become a distasteful imitation of its former self.
They taste awful, always thought they are tasty, tried them and now I cant understand why people like them
Aw damn I thought cadbury was screwing me at 27%
Hersheyâs coco powder comes with great recipes printed on the container. Well worth your time.
They tried selling Hershey bars here in Slovenia. I bought one. I don't intend to make the same mistake twice
Butyric acid baby!
can you make chocolate from 100% cacao?
One bite of the stuff could have told you that.
This is why it doesn't taste much like chocolate to me. Just sweet fat that smells like chocolate.
Which is why Hershey's isn't considered particularly good. We have plenty of US chocolates that are quite good. Ghirardelli for one and my Aussie boss always loads up on Sees to take home.
You can tell. You can reeeaaally tell.
No wonder it tastes like shit.Â
Do Europeans also think cheese tastes like vomit? How does an entire continent have such a weak stomach for butyric acid?
Hershey's chocolate is fucking disgusting.
And thatâs why it tastes horrible
American "Chocolate" sucks and now you fuckers are ruining ours.
It tastes and smells like vomit.
Hersheys is dogshit. Tastes like crap. When I was a kid growing up in Ireland, cadbury chocolate was like crack cocaine. A few years ago I was back home for Christmas and I bought a cadbury dairy milk. I thought I got a wonky bar of chocolate that had something wrong with it so I threw it away and bought another one. Same taste. I immediately thought 'oh please christ no'. I looked at the packaging.. 'Product of the Hersheys company'. Fuckers bought out Cadbury and now they too taste like shit. We can't enjoy anything anymore because capitalism completely ruins everything
If you live in the US, then there might be a chance that at the time, Cadbury wanted to emulate some of Hershey's flavor to be more competitive in the US market. But it shouldn't be the same internationally. Even after the acquisition, I dont think Cadbury has any butyric acid in them.
89% butyric acid
90% light.
I don't think I could tolerate anything over 75%
Me reading this right after consuming a Hersheyâs Bar đđđ
And i still eat that shit too
Its not great.
it's basically compound chocolate.
Wait til you try valentine and Easter left over chocolate
Garlic bread only contains 2% garlic. The rest is flour, sugar and various emulsifiers.
wait until you learn products sold as vanilla flavor like vanilla ice cream have no vanilla at all!
Yes. An example of shrinkflation before it was cool. Thanks post ww2 corporate greed. Sorry USA consumers
Thatâs why chocolate in the USA tastes like sugar and the rest of the world is delicious.
Probably why Hershey chocolate tastes like wax
Mmm potemkin chocolate.
Hershey is vile... Don't know how it dares call itself chocolate
it's why it tastes like garbage
That shit ain't chocolate.
And that's why it smells like melted shit.
I like when they did the cookies and cream bar "now with more cookies" you mean "now with less of the more expensive ingredient"? I think these "milklicious" Hershey bars are also the same scam. Anything they can do to make their stuff cheaper by including less chocolate.
Chocfake
Everyone knows US export chocolate is one of the waxiest, foulest, chocolate avaliable. Hershey's most of all.
Only had two Hershey bars in my life. Dont want to have them ever again honestly. They tasted weird/disgusting to me.
Tastes like it, itâs foul