There was a push not that long ago to allow vegetable oil to be used in chocolate and still have it called chocolate. The FDA didn't approve the proposed change. This is a way around it, I guess.

It's interesting that chocolate all on it own is an ingredient in the new version.

I vote for "Ingredient Transmogrifier".

Poor Hershey's has really fallen lately.

The New Coke Ray

Wife and I have been off the "Milk Chocolate" for quite a while. We've found that we enjoy small amounts of high quality dark chocolate far more than larger amounts of the lesser chocolates produced by Nestle, Hershey's, etc.

@TakingItSeriously: Amen, I switched to dark chocolate quite some time ago and never looked back.

BTW great handle :)

Hershey's = Dirt

I guess they'll have to change those tour videos at the Hershey factory.

The Formula Phaser?

The Re-Recipe Ray?

I wish I could think of others. It's hard to think of something as catchy as Grocery Shrink-Ray.

Yuck, those things weren't great to begin with. I don't even want think what they must taste like now that they've lowered the quality of the ingredients.

Milk chocolate isn't the same as bad chocolate--Lindt makes quite a lovely milk chocolate, for instance, while on the other hand Nestle's and Hershey's both make dark chocolate that's not particularly impressive, by me. But once you're operating on the same qualitative level, the milk/dark divide is essentially just a taste call.

Isn't this something that those who eat this often would notice? Or can we just now substitute sugar and oil for chocolate?

As an admitted chocoholic I know that if the cocoa percentage in candy falls below a certain amount in Europe (I forget what percent it is) they have to label it Chocolate Flavoured Candy. I personally would LOVE to see this enforced in America. Most of our commercial chocolate is crap. Even hoity-toity Godiva makes their chocolates months in advance and freezes them. I'm lucky -- I have two high quality hand made chocolatiers withing walking distance of my work place.

**wanders off in search of that 72% dark bar she bought last week**

I'll just call it disgusting.

Willy Wonka is rolling over in his grave with this one... thank god for World Market, Lindt and Ritter Sport!

I noticed that with a couple of Nestle candy products. They didn't actually say that it was a chocolate bar, it was some sort of confection. Ick.

I notice that with Hershey, a purple label/logo usually denotes Dark Chocolate. It is also usually the logo w/the outside lines/bars.

@Git Em SteveDave displays attention-grabbing vanity: According to their Kisses website: [www.hersheys.com] , they're still chocolate. I'm guessing since they removed the phrase candy coated as well, with the candy coating, it's not "pure" milk chocolate. Does anyone know what M&M's say on the packages?

@henrygates: I just went through the Hershey 'factory' tour last month. First time in decades. It's a lot different than I remember it.

They have this array of singing cows, heads pointing out of the barn, happily making milk to put into the 'milk chocolate':

I guess they'll have to replace that with a rows of sunflowers or palms, screaming murderously as their nuts are squeezed for oil.

@crabbyman6: that's not bad, but it takes me about 10 seconds to pronounce "transmogrifier" in my head.

i think it this case, we could've called it a "chocolate country crockifier"...

Oh, yes, cheers for the high quality chocolates everyone mentions. For those of us without lots of spare cash, we stick with what we can buy 3 for a dollar on sale.

@brumbjorn: The cocoa percentage must be a certain percent, as well as other aspects, to be fully labeled chocolate in the US. Other things will be 'chocolate flavored'. (See Palmers candies.) It may not be the percentage you would prefer, but it is enforced.

@Git Em SteveDave displays attention-grabbing vanity: OK, did a google image search and found the following:

>

Since they removed Candy Coated, and they obviously are still candy coated, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say, like M&M's, they probably are classified as a "chocolate candy" and need to advertise themselves as such to fit the packaging label laws.

This reminds me of the label "pasteurized processed cheese food". I buy cheese instead. WTH is cheese food? At least this still has chocolate in it. I fear the day it becomes "chocolate-flavored candy".

at least it wasn't hit by the grocery shrink ray.

Well, it still has milk in it. Can't they change it to Milky Chocolate or Milked Chocolate. But seriously, cheap chocolate candy is nasty. If you want candy, get Runts, Gummi Bears, Sour Patch Kids, Skittles, etc. If you want chocolate get the gourmet stuff

I am amazed that Hershey gets off selling their chocolate scented brown wax as chocolate.

Sadly the Hershey Wax Company produces the Kit-Kat for the US market, while the rest of the world gets a proper Nestlé one. You can get proper Kit-Kats in the US if you know were to look. Sure you have to pay more for the better quality ones from the UK, but you'll wind up eating them less of often and probably wind up saving money and weight gain in the long run. Apparently the licensing deal goes away if the Hershey Wax Company is sold or goes out of business. One can only hope.

As for M&M's I think the "chocolate candy" designation has something to do with the candy shell over the chocolate.

@TomCruisesTesticles: Even Godiva Milk Choc I find flat tasting. Dark chocolate is rich and strong and delicious

I like Hershey bars, they're burny in your throat. I'm not sure if that's a good sign for chocolate but it's something I like sometimes. But I really like those super-dark gourmet chocolate bars with the roasted cocao bean nibs in them. That's some Darrrkk chocloate. Dolemite.

@mac-phisto: I'm just trying to class up the place. Maybe there can be a pronunciation guide somewhere, once you hear it once you'll never forget.

A couple of years ago, Hershey's led the push to force the FDA to allow them to remove the natural chocolate fats, replace it with other, inferior fats, and still be able to call it chocolate.

It's bad because cocoa butter has a unique mouth feel and melts at just the right temperature - nothing else is exactly right, and many other shelf stable fats that stay solid yet melt at around body temperature are bad for you (often hydrogenated). "Other" fats are much cheaper, though.

So, if Hershey had been allowed to get away with this, they'd have been able to make garbage and call it the same thing as manufacturers who stick with the traditional ingredients do. It would have been cheaper for them to do so, and that would punish those who stuck with better ingredients.

Hershey's owns Twizzlers, Mauna Loa Macadamia Nuts, Scharffen Berger, Joseph Schmidt, and Dagoba Chocolates. I avoid all of them due to this. [en.wikipedia.org]'s#Other_sales_and_acquisitions

[www.typetive.com]

If you'd like to know what this proposed "chocolate" would taste like, think Sixlets Candy or Ice Cubes. Not to slam either of those fine confections - I adore Ice Cubes for what they are, but it is not chocolate.

But then the company that makes them doesn't call Ice Cubes chocolate because it isn't.

Hershey's wants to change that.

@Hongfiately: Haha reminds me of the chicken "flavor" Cup of Noodles

@marsneedsrabbits: So Hershey wanted to make their product even worse?
Yet another reason for them to go out of business.

@marsneedsrabbits: and that would punish those who stuck with better ingredients.

Why it would punish those who stuck with better ingredients? If you use crappy ingredients and the public still buys them, eh, then it's not Hershey's that's punishing the competition, it's the consumers. IF there aren't enought people to care about high-quality chocolate to keep you in business, then you picked a crappy business.

@Hongfiately: Silly! Cheese food is what you feed to cheese so it can grow up big and strong! It isn't actually intended for human consumption. Sounds so much better than Purina Cheese Chow, don't you think?

i like transmogrifier, but i would vote for something like

Grossery Transmogrifier or Grossery Remix Ray

Screw corrupted commercial American chocolate... it ranks about as high as Kraft Macaroni & Cheese in the world of pasta. Try a good online chocolatier. A few years ago I gave my wife a piece of a Michel Cluizel bar. She wasn't interested but accepted, and five minutes later she was on the phone with her mom raving about it. That's how good it gets if you lift yourself out of the Hershey/Nestle/Godiva/Dove grocery store chocolate world.

But I'm no snob... I get M&M cravings every few months and nothing else will do.

"Hershey Wax Company" -- awesome moniker!

How about the Truth Laser.

As long as Hershey doesn't mess with their original chocolate bars and take out the cocoa butter, they can do whatever else. I love their chocolate with almonds. I find that Nestle is too sweet, so I'll take a Hersheys first.

Lindt all the way baby! Mass produced American chocolate is just gross. I've been eating Lindt for so long that I ate a Hershey bar recenty and it seriously tasted like rubber from the manufacturing process. GROSS!

Crap-zapped.

I like chocolate but doing without is better than eating waxy
"chocolate flavored" junk.

Hershey, you are slipping. You are almost on par with Palmers, the most disgusting chocolate candy and the bane of Easter baskets everywhere.

@timmus: There is something better than M&M's. They are called Smarties. Again, this is one of those products Americans get screwed out of.

The American "Smarties" is something totally different.
We created this last year to explain:

A Field Guide to Smarties


Top: American "Smarties" - these are absolute rubbish since they are just basically sugar pills with food colouring. Ironically, they are made in Canada.

Middle: Canadian Smarties - these are properly made by Nestlé and are the proper candy coated milk chocolate. Sadly they are not in a proper tube.

Bottom: British Smarties - these are properly made by Nestlé and are the proper candy coated milk chocolate. They are in a hex tube which is a bit more environmentally responsible than the old tubes with the plastic tops, but they aren't as good for reclosing.

@OmniZero: Grocery Tweak Ray?

It's essentially the same reasoning as the Shrink Ray, of course; they want to make production cheaper without alerting the consumer to the lowered value of the product. It's nice that now and then the FDA actually does keep something honest and they couldn't entirely pull it off.

Reformulation Beam.

Yes it is like the shrinkage issue (same causes), but the effect to US (the consumer) is actually worse because the product is changing to a lower grade product.

This really SUX.

European chocolate must have something like 30% chocolate in it for it to be called chocolate. Too bad our requirements are far less than that. Buy any store brand chocolate in Germany or Switzerland and it will blow away any American mass market name brand chocolate (even their Kit Kats are higher quality!). Waxy chocolate that doesn't melt - more likely crumbles - is what I've come to expect from Hershey's. Dove is still sort of okay on occasion. I get about 10 bars every six months for friends who travel across the pond. One taste of a Karina cappucino cream chocolate bar and you will be hooked.

Victory Chocolate.

Doubleplus ungood.

This is why I don't buy American chocolate. Gag.

Thank god they left the resinous glaze, & carnauba wax in the ingrediants else i'd be calling for a boycott!!!!

Typically, ingredients are listed in descending order.

NEW: red 40, yellow 5, blue 2, blue 1, yellow 6

OLD: red 40, yellow 5, yellow 6, blue 1

So does this mean more blue ones?

I'm a real choco-holic and chocolate snob. Real chocolate should be made with 100% cocoa butter and nothing else.

That said, does anyone find it disheartening that the FDA chooses to allocate its resources to preserving the integrity of chocolate, rather than weeding out toxic chemical additives from our food?

I like the sound of 'New Coke Ray' for some reason. Not only does it get across that a change has been made, it hints at the strong possibility that the change was a bad idea.