Another way of reminding us there is enshittification.
Nearly no one touches the chocolates at most supermarkets I went to. Far cry from when 40 years ago, workers from overseas would include chocolate bars in care packages.
That real cocoa are mostly from developing countries, not all are politically stable.
We have an inflation target now, they either raise prices or shrinkflate. Its much easier to shrinkflate.
Yeah I bought small container of bakers cocoa bout a month ago and it was half the size it used to be and almost three times the price.
That’s unbelievable 😮
Said the same thing when I first saw it. But had to have it so held my nose and tossed it into the basket
🤧
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.
I know m&ms are Mars but those little bits of poison have also tasted like vomit for decades. I can’t even watch people choke those friggen things down. Smarties or death.
Smarties are nestlé, so it’s probably both.
Stomach acid is hydrochloric acid.
But the real appeal of mass market chocolate like Hershey’s has always been its cheapness.
There it is.
They ain’t even that cheap anymore.
They’ll phase anything but sugar.
Laughs in corn syrup.
laughs in brazillian sugar cane industry
Laughs in aspartame
… high fructose corn syrup has entered the chat…
Are we finally getting some Mockolate-products?
A buddy of mine has everything but his birthday is coming up …. I found the ideal indulgence: a $20 chocolate bar!
No it’s not one of those monsters, it’s normal sized. But it’s single sourced beans, gold medal award winning, local farm fresh dairy , infused with whiskey from a local distillery. That’s something he’s never had!
wf sells that kind of bougie chocolate in thier “gourmet specialty” sections, almost nobody buys it though, only as a gift since its expensive asf, fair trade single origin i believe too.
Food shouldn’t come from a factory
What if a man puts the food in a can, in a factory downtown?
If you had your little way I’d eat canned food everyday.
“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
We continued releasing more and more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for decades after learning that it was causing increasingly extreme weather
Cyanide is “natural”. Not everything “natural” is good for you. I’m all for alternatives, although as with any other thing, they need to study them to make sure they’re safe. Like aspartame, which is one of the most studied substances on earth. It’s safe. And it’s a fantastic tool to have - saying this as a diabetic, but artificial sweetners gives us the ability to make tasty foods that save calories/carbs, which is something most people can use.
So I don’t know about ChoViva in specific, but if there’s an alternative to cocoa that doesn’t rely on slave labour and isn’t harmful… I’m all for it.
By coveting.
There’s a scene from Band of Brothers, two GIs meet a French family on D-Day. One of the soldiers offers the boy, 4 or 5 years old, a chocolate bar. The boy smiles from ear to ear when he tastes it. His father says, “Thank you. He’s never had chocolate before.”
Imagine that. Imagine living in a society where chocolate is considered an exotic food. That’s how the world was, for almost all of human history. You live in Norway and you want a lemon? HA! Tough shit, you’ll never even know what lemon smells like.
But, at some point, Americans got used to having every delicacy from every corner of the world. We forgot that each nibble of chocolate is exotic. That the beans aren’t native to our country. That most people in the world can’t afford real chocolate except as a rare treat. And look at us now - just like the rest of the world.
What’s wrong with the carob bean?
Lab-grown? Lab-GROWN? What fucking part of the metal tank has the growing area?
The hydroponic lab?
Shits like a century old.
Also I don’t think the term Lab Grown would really apply in this case. Unless I’m wrong I’m pretty sure the term would be lab synthesized, unless they are just using the materials to rend down into building blocks to grow cocoa artificially via some type of cellular manipulation method.
probably synthesized, sunflower/grapeseed mixture. probably just turn the seeds intoa pulp and made it into faux-colate.
lol GRAPESEEDS.
Child slavery is frowned upon just enough that they have eliminated real cocoa. People won’t pay for non-slave rates, so they have to go with synthetic product.
i get a single fair trade dark chocolate bar every week or two & let the squares melt against the roof of my mouth. lately it’s been hu cashew butter & raspberry. usually a couple of squares satisfies my cravings. occasionally i make fudgy brownies with fair trade dutch processed cocoa if i’m really fiending. a chocolatier in a yt video said “eat less chocolate so you can eat a higher quality chocolate” & i took that to heart.
US chocolate…presumably Cadbury will also be affected though.
Cadbury has been garbage for years now unfortunately.
Cadbury ruined their best product, the Creme Egg, some time ago. It’s nothing like it used to be. A shame too, because they could raise the price and I still would have bought them, but as it is, I don’t remember the last time I had one.
My local store instead had to discount them to 25 cents each. And that’s when I started buying them up!
And the stupid plastic casing they now use. I can feel myself microdosing plastic just thinking about it.
I remember when it changed from creamy to just sugar goop that makes my teeth hurt.
Have they finally admitted they made them smaller yet? They’re like half the size they used to be. Like a laughably noticable difference, but they’re still like 🤷♂️ you’re imagining things, same as always
Edit: I was prompted to look and there are recipes out there for making your own. Has anyone found a good one?
shrinkflation and cheapflation.
Oh they’re definitely smaller. Smaller and taste way worse… That should improve profits! 🤦🏻♂️
I’ve had some products that use ChoViva (fake chocolate made from sunflower seeds and oats) and they were ok. On the other hand my only memory of Hershey’s chocolate is just pain, even 30 years ago (last time I was in the US). So maybe it’s not replacing cocoa as such that’s the problem.
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.
you can get better chocolate at aldi and make your own peanut butter cups at home, it’s fairly easy
edit, Ive made pot peanut butter cups before, is delightful.
low dose, but, infuse the marijuana bud with coconut oil and use the coconut oil in the chocolte when you melt it. You cant put much, but it’s fun none the less
Hershey’s chocolate tastes like wax and vegetable oil.
I was getting some melting wafers the other day and grabbed a bag of Ghirardelli, which has been pretty reliable in the past. I didn’t catch that they were “chocolate flavored” wafers until I was at checkout. Chocolate was the 8th ingredient.
dear lordt
Reeses Cups are the absolute worst candy these days. They are so terrible now, and I used to love them. The peanut filling is gross.
And then use scare tactics to convince everyone that we have to use their products for Halloween.
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.
Is carob more sustainable than chocolate? Does it have the same ethical problems?
If it doesn’t, it will.
