Since we wrote about Hershey’s reformulating some of their products into “mockolate” that can’t legally be called “milk chocolate,” the story has been getting some play in the media, prompting Hershey to respond to the controversy. So, why did they reformulate their candy? Because you like fake chocolate better!
From the Patriot-News:
“Consumers love this, and people prefer the change,” [Hershey's spokesperson] said.
Cybele, who runs the Candy Blog, and has been working to make consumers aware of the changes in Hershey’s products, has been keeping a close eye on what she calls misleading statements on Hershey’s website. For example:
I don’t know if they can get away with calling the product Hershey’s Miniature chocolate bars when I found that 41% of my package were not chocolate bars at all.
Milk Duds haven’t been chocolate for years, but the description is still there:
Bite-size chocolate-covered caramels, MILK DUDS candy is a perfect snack for a night at the movies or anytime!
Slightly more disturbing was Cybele’s attempt to find out what is actually inside the Hershey’s Krackle Bar. They flat out wouldn’t tell her.
I called this morning and gave the representative my case number and she read back my request: What are the ingredients in the Krackel bar. The ingredients list on the Miniatures bag lists them all together and I want to know just what’s in that bar.
She asked me why I want to know.
I stammered that I wanted to know what I’m eating.
She asked if it was an allergy issue.
I replied that I wanted to know what was in that bar. If I ate only that bar, what would I be eating? (The package does say “something for everyone” so Hershey’s understands that sometimes people just pick through and eat only one variety.)
She said she did not have that information. It doesn’t exist in her records. If she wanted she could escalate me to a supervisor, but they had only the same info that she does.
Surely someone must know? Ultimately, the company decided that the recipe for the bars could not be shared.
The recipe for this bar is proprietary and cannot be shared.
Do they really think we’re going to try to make them at home?
Hershey changes recipes for some candies [Pennlive]
Hershey’s Website Inaccuracies [Candy Blog]
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Maybe it contains the latest from the poison food train.
@The Great Aussie Evil: Agreed. Hershey’s cuttin corners and getting the shit shipped in from China. Maybe they really don’t know what’s in it … Who knows what sort of substitutes they use over there in China to cut costs.
I think it’s pretty reasonable that they aren’t willing to share their recipe. The ingredients however are not the recipe. Now I’d like to know and may start calling up myself to find out.
@valarmorghulis: I agree, wonder what she would have said if it was an allergy issue?
OP:yes it’s an allergy issue
Hershey chick: what are you allergic to?
OP: Chocolate
HC: well since I don’t know what’s in the bar I can’t help you
seriously whould it have changed the answer?
@AuntieEm: Hershey chick: what are you allergic to?
Op: I’m not sure, that’s why I’m calling you. See my lips and cheeks became swollen about 5 minutes after eating that bar. So why don’t you tell me?
I wonder if that would get the ingredients….
@valarmorghulis: She didn’t want the recipe. A recipe would explain in detail how to create a candy bar. An ingredients list simply tells you whats in it.
By the same standard, you can’t really figure out just how to bake a lemon creme pie just from knowing what goes into it.
Considering Hershey’s “real” milk chocolate has always been pretty weak, the new fake chocolate could conceivably taste better, though it’s possibly more artificial and unhealthy.
Stick with British chocolate bars – there is no comparison. World market has them.
[www.nytimes.com]
@farcast:
Canada also has sites that send orders of chocolate bars to the U.S. (Nestle, Neilson, Cadbury etc.).
Go Google.
Plus this: [www.foxnews.com]
@farcast: Violet Crumble for the win!
When these kissables first came out, they were pretty good. It’s a shame they’ve degraded so much.
@Coles_Law: Violet crumble is Australian and not real chocolate, but it’s damn good. I have one sitting next to me right now.
@Coles_Law:
Is Violet Crumble that thing that disappears inside your mouth?
Our local Dillon’s grocery carries those, in the International food aisle. They’re weird but I love them!
@farcast: No thanks. British chocolate is possibly the blandest, driest chocolate I’ve ever tasted. Ugh.
@Kia: That may be because it doesn’t have anything in it except for chocolate (ie. preservatives).
Get yourself a Cadbury bar, any kind, and tell me that it’s better than any Hershey’s bar.
@farcast: @nycaviation: The two of you said exactly what I was going to say. Hershey’s has never seemed like real chocolate to me, always waxy tasting. That fact never became more clear than when I moved to England.
Hershey’s Spokesman – “Consumers love this, and people prefer the change.”
That spokesman is a liar, and what he said is a whopper.
Not to be confused with Whoppers, which are no longer milk chocolate covered.
@BustedFlush: Reminds me of Charter cable recently:
“We’ve done focus groups and we’ve found that consumers don’t mind having their web browsing monitored by us so we can pitch focused ads at them… they actually prefer it!”
@scoosdad:
“Would you prefer to have your web browsing monitored to deliver focused advertisements, or to have your toes slowly chewed alive by termites hidden in your shoes?”
Surprising results declared:
“In a web survey, users have unamiously decided that they prefer to have their web browsing monitored.” etc.
It’s all in how you ask the survey.
@Dooley:
Reminds me of Mitch Hedberg’s joke…
“To get on this show, they made me take a drug test, and the questions were trick questions like, “Have you ever tried sugar… or PCP?”
I have found that people I have shared my good chocolate with, don’t like it very much. I have heard “I will stick with my Whitman’s Sampler” and “I like Hershey’s better”. Same thing happene dto my husband who gave some quality chocolate to some coworkers – one of them took the chocolate to a holiday get-together with family and ended up throwing it away because they didn’t like it :/
So, I’m not surprised.
@DrGirlfriend: That is the saddest thing I’ve read on this site today. No wonder Hershey remains in business.
@DrGirlfriend: I admit to prefer Nestle’s myself. American Nestle’s, that is. When I spent a few weeks in Belgium earlier this year, of course I tried all the famous candy all over the country. I’m not going to say it was bad, just not my preference.
On the other hand, the beer was superb (and I know beer).
@DrGirlfriend:
That is sad. For some time now I felt that mass produced American chocolate products pretty much sucked. The dark chocolate seems alright, but the milk chocolate seems ot have gone down hill over the years.
So when do they come out with the more expensive REAL chocolate candies? That is the point of this farce, correct? They make us pay a new premium for what we were already getting.
My office has candy jars in the breakroom with mini Krackels, Mr. Goodbar, and Hershey’s Milk Chocolate bars. I hadn’t had any of them in years before I started. The other day I went to eat a Krackel and it was SO terrible. I don’t know what is the substance masquerading as chocolate, but it’s gross.
@sprocket79: Agreed.
@sprocket79:
And if Hershey’s has anything to do with it, you never shall.
So, could someone who knows a bit about really good chocolate tell me what brands to look for and where to buy them?
I recently tried some chocolate that had a high cocoa content than I’m used to and didn’t like it at all, but I am very interested in trying a really good quality chocolate.
@AlstonBibaculus: I love chocolate. Many people simply don’t like bitter dark chocolate. Milk tends to compensate for lesser chocolate, so all manufacturers tend to use their lesser chocolate for milk chocolate. I’ve had luck finding a decent selection of quality and imported chocolates at Target. I would look there for a bar that strikes your interest and has a manufacturer that emphasizes quality. Start with Lindt(Swiss); they are exceptional although expensive. Schaffen Berger(US), Ghiradelli(US), Ritter bars(German), and Toblerone(Swiss) chocolate are also good. I usually buy a different bar each month and eat it slowly–a small piece daily. Some of the best have been tiny brands that I’d never heard of. Good chocolate should be savored and not just consumed. That’s the great thing about dark chocolate. You can spend several minutes enjoying a single square and be satisfied (then you eat less of it!). Start with a good Lindt. And after you experiment a bit, you might just find that you really love dark chocolate.
@AlstonBibaculus: I have tried a wide range of “fine” or otherwise expensive chocolates, and the best I have ever had came from a little company in Vermont.
Here’s the link [www.lakechamplainchocolates.com]
Try the 5star bars.
@AlstonBibaculus: Any proper chocolatier should have something decent on hand for you. Almost any chocolate outside of the US will be better tasting (In my opinion. I’ve traveled a lot).
Lindt is good, but it’s nothing compared to real Swiss chocolate. My eyes were opened when I visited the country not long ago. I used to think Ritter, Godiva and Lindt were the epitome of good chocolate. Boy, was I wrong!
Hit up the chocolatiers that make their stuff from imported Swiss chocolate or cocoa mass. Their ingredients will be better overall. Higher cocoa content doesn’t neccessarily mean it is better chocolate, only that it simply has a higher cocoa content.
If you’re going for a cheap fix, get a Cadbury bar of any kind. The Canadian version isn’t the same as the British version, but it’s close. I would also like to point out that we call them chocolate bars in Canada, versus the US term candy bar. Notice the difference? hehehe.
Surely Hershey’s understands the difference between a “recipe” and an ingredients list – you know, the kind of list that’s put on every box of cold cereal . . . .
@jenl1625: Evidently they are too stupid to understand the concept.
I had a similar feeling at the grocery store the other day, when I noticed that they keep the “chocolate flavoured baking chips” right next to the “chocolate chips.” It even sounds inedible.
@Spamwich: I probably haven’t seen those “chocolate flavored” chips since the late 80′s/early 90′s. They are like vaguely chocolatey paraffin. Interesting that they’ve made a comeback.
Google is your friend:
[www.elook.org]
But I agree, Hersheys should be able to provide the nutritional information.
@JN2: He wants an ingredient list, not nutritional info
People love our fake chocolate! There is nothing to see here.
@MayorBee is getting what plants crave: LOL, I love the new Hershey’s company spokesman. If we update her, she might look a lot like Sarah Palin.
People will *not* buy what they don’t know. Hershey’s is so well known, as is their candy branding, that they could quite literally put dog food into the mix and people would still buy it. “Shut up Billy!” , “It’s Hersheys!”
Oh, and Google is NOT our friend. Google is evil. Sorry.
@MayorBee is getting what plants crave: there can’t be a more perfect use of “Baghdad Bob” on this blog!
As long as they don’t mess with the chocolate bar with almonds…
Personally I prefer Hersheys because I find that nestle and some Mars products are too sweet for me to eat.
I don’t know what could be nastier than the way Hershey’s has tasted for years, like supersugary clay. I’m not one of those dark-chocolate snobs, it would just be nice if so-called milk chocolate were milkier and no more than half as sweet. I’ve tried some chocolate candy bars my coworkers have brought in lately, and they’re so sweet they’re nasty.
@csdiego: Hershey’s chocolate always has this odd sour-milk flavor too, as if I threw up chocolate a little in my mouth.
@ChuckECheese: I know what you mean. There’s something slightly rancid about it.
@csdiego:
Actually I saw a show on Hershey’s recently and they do use sour milk in the milk chocolate. You must be a super taster!
What exactly qualifies as good chocolate that is readily available here in the states? I cant say I dont like the standard stuff, but I feel as if its one of those “you dont know what you are missing” situations. Can someone point me to a proper chocolate manufacturer?
@QuenbyJuicy: Try Lindt. I believe it’s Swiss, but readily available all over America. My favorite is the blue “Lindor Truffles” – darker than milk chocolate, but not too bitter.
“Consumers love this, and people prefer the change.”
Actually, consumers don’t like Hershey’s Kissables so much. I see them on clearance at Target quite a bit. The points on the kisses are sharp and not fun to eat when they stab into the roof of your mouth.
@twophrasebark: i see them at big lots all the time [in case this chain isn't near you, big lots is a closeout store]
Maybe they don’t want to disclose the melamine?
mmmmm…carnauba wax
They probably did some kind of general focus group on what people thought about kissables, without educating them on the change in ingredients.
I don’t like the Kissables because they taste like sugar flavored dirt. And, I know I never see anybody buying them so I wonder where they get their data comparing sales of the old product versus the new prompting them to claim “consumers love this, and people prefer the change.”
I didn’t realize that Hershey’s had changed their formula but it’s all making sense now! Someone gave me a bag of miniatures a few weeks ago and when I tried them I thought something was wrong with them. They tasted waxy – kind of like the cheap chocolate that comes out in the drugstores around Easter and Christmas. Nice to know it’s just Hershey making crappy candy – not a bad bag. Wait….what???
I’m Canadian, and every time I’ve been to the US and bought a chocolate bar, the chocolate has tasted “waxy” and fake. It doesn’t taste near as good or melt in your mouth like the chocolate we have here. I always wondered if they put more oil or cocoa butter in their chocolate and that makes it taste so bad. I sent a friend some of our bars in a care package a few years ago and he couldn’t believe the difference – even between bars of the same name (like Kit-Kat.) He gets a bunch every year now for Christmas.
As best I can find, a Krackel bar contains the following:
“sugar, milk, cocoa butter, chocolate, soy lecithin, vanillin, and artificial flavor. Crisp rice is added to the mixture to create a Krackel bar.”
took me about 2 minutes to find this info.
@wiggatron: I’m amused that vanillin is listed separately than “artificial flavor.” Perhaps people confuse vanillin with vanilla extract?
@wiggatron: and that info is wrong. That’s the old formula for the Krackel bar. The new formula is not real chocolate and has little or no cocoa butter in it (if the Mr. Goodbar’s ingredients are any indication). That’s my issue – they won’t tell me the new ingredients.
Yuck. I don’t even eat American chocolate anymore unless it’s specialty or Ghiradelli. It tastes like corny, chalky grossness. I am not surprised to hear most people can’t tell the difference since most people seem to think Applebee’s is a really great restaurant. If nobody ever taught your tastebuds differently, they react to what they know.
The only exception to the no-American-chocolate rule is peanut butter M&Ms. Those are awesome.
@nicemarmot617:
See’s and their supplier, Guittard, are still churning out some excellent products.
@nicemarmot617: Peanut Butter M and M’s are the fucking bomb!
It’s not like she wanted the “recipe” with the exact amounts of the ingredients and how to make it… she just wanted to know if she was eating animal rennet or some crazy thing! I’m not a vegetarian at all but just the fact that they won’t tell us what something has in it makes me want to never eat anything they sell. If I go to a restaurant and I ask the waiter what a dish has in it, I wouldn’t expect this reply
Actually “Mocklate” has made me rediscover my love of chocolate.
Fed up with the chocolate-free garbage the FDA lets them call chocolate, I started buying those Cadbury extra-dark chocolate bars.
I’m never going back. Never, never, never.
Swiss and Brazilian chocolates are also good.
@incognit000:
Careful with those, the Cadbury bars sold in most grocery stores are made (surprise!) by Hershey here in the States. The stateside versions have NOTHING on an imported one (try World Market for them).
@incognit000:
You do realize that Hershey makes Cadbury products for distribution in the US right? They are nothing like Cadbury in Europe.
Hershey is ultimately making the same mistake Coca-Cola did with their new “Coke” formula. How long till all their products become affected? Hershey already just effectively killed much of its product with this move.
HERSHEY’S CHOCOLATE IS PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Can you buy a stand-alone Krackel bar, or a Mr. Goodbar these days? They’d have to list the ingredients on those products.
@ludwigk: The stand alone Krackel bar was discontinued. The Mr. Goodbar in the new formula is available with full disclosure on the back and eensy print on the front revealing the change “made with chocolate and peanuts” instead of “peanuts in chocolate.”
You can witness the incongruity fully here (look at the images not just the text):
[www.hersheys.com]
Mr. Goodbar ingredients (circa 2006): Milk Chocolate (sugar, cocoa butter, chocolate, nonfat milk, lactose, milk, milk fat, soya lecithin and PGPR as emulsifiers and vanillin, an artificial flavoring) and Peanuts. [mikescandywrappers.com]
The present Mr. Goodbar ingredients (2008): Sugar, peanuts, vegetable oil (palm, shea, sunflower and/or safflower oil), chocolate, whey (milk), nonfat milk, contains 2% or less of milk fat, soy lecithin, salt, vanillin.
I’ve tried Kissables a couple of times since they were introduced, well before the change to non-chocolate, and have found them inferior to M&Ms. This just reinforces the notion that I have no desire to ever buy or eat them again.
Hershey’s has never made real chocolate. At least now they don’t pretend to.
I’m surprised that the “after” bag is still 1.5 oz/42 g; no GSR.
@ludwigk: yes, you can find stand alone Mr. Goodbars around where I live in the “full size” size. They’re absolutely HORRID now that they’re… yanno, not chocolate anymore. Krackel has been pretty much extinct as a full size stand alone bar for years now, at least where I live in the north east.
Sadly, most americans have never had real, quality chocolate. 95% of what’s produced in this country these days is garbage. I’m so gad many big box stores are now importing european stuff so I don’t have to hunt for it. I’ve totally given up on Hershey’s since they changed their recipes, which urts cause I used to like reese, kitk at and almond joy back when they were decent.
Ritter Sport, Frey’s, and a slew of other european imports is what i’m sticking with, now and forever.
It seems to me it would only take one good sized national retailer to get Hershey’s on the phone and say, “get this crap out of our stores or we’ll New Coke your asses outta here ourselves.”
>”Consumers love this, and people prefer the change,” [Hershey's spokesperson] said.
Is that based on volume sold? I buy one or two high-quality (read: $3 to $4 a bar) chocolate bars a month and eat about two squares a day. My co-worker buys several huge bags of chocolate candy for $1 or $2 – she’s the kind who started stocking up early this month “for Halloween” – damn near every week.
On a good note though, I swore never to eat milk chocolate again after eating a nasty mini Hershey’s at her house, and then I discovered milk chocolate Scharffen Berger out of Berkeley. Whoa, what a silky-smooth revelation. RIP the founder, who died this week.
@MissedTheExit: Sharffen Berger is owned by Hershey.
I’d like to get outraged over this, but honestly I’m more concerned about the taste than I am about the ingredients. I admit I haven’t taste-compared one candy bar against another, but if the new-fangled non-chocolate chocolate candy bars taste decent, that’s good enough for me.
Then again, I generally do not eat many candy bars these days because 1) I just don’t, and 2) They’re kinda pricy. I was on the road and grabbed one of the big bars (about three ounces) at the gas station earlier this month – and was shocked at the register that it cost over a dollar and a half. The “regular” size bars (1.5 to 2 ounces) now come in at 99 cents each. I remember as a kid going to the K-Mart in the early eighties for regular-size-bars-that-were-larger Butterfingers for a quarter each, and sometimes on special you could buy a variety of five or six for a dollar. Yeah, yeah, I’m an old fart and all, but still…
I just did scarf a handful of Hershey’s milk chocolate chips, which are still the same old chocolate as ever. Except, in a nod to the grocery shrink ray, I noticed some months ago that their bag of chips is 11.5 ounces, compared to all other manufacturer’s 12 ounce bags.
If Hershey thinks consumers like their fake stuff better, what does that really say about their so called “real” chocolate?
American chocolate is brown wax with a little bit of sugar.
One of the best chocolate bars I ever had came from Godiva Chocolatiers. For about 3 dollars, you can get a Dark Chocolate bar filled with a tart/sweet raspberry filling so good, you’ll want to track down this Godiva chick and fuck the living shit out of her!
@FuryOfFirestorm: Damn, that’d have to be one hell of a chocolate bar.
@FuryOfFirestorm: Now that’s what I call an endorsement!
@FuryOfFirestorm:
I love those things. I get them at Barnes & Noble all the time. Sometimes I go in there and don’t buy any books, but I always come out with a Godiva Dark Chocolate Raspberry bar!
This is why I miss being close to Canada, all the good candy. Smarties anyone? So much better than M&Ms!
one word – melamine.
People who REALLY know chocolate won’t be afraid to take this chocolate geography trivia quiz:
[www.nationalgeographic.com]
Until this came up here, I thought I was just a little nuts: I have noticed over the past couple of years that every decent chocolate I used to eat has either disappeared or changed so that either its ingredient list became unacceptable or it wasn’t good tasting any more. Huh.
I just spent the last two weeks looking for real milk chocolate, including at the organic grocery, and finally found it at World Market — E.Guittard 38% cacao “milk chocolate wafers for baking and eating” (they’re like flat chocolate chips) — for $10 a pound! Ingredients: pure cane sugar, full cream milk, cocoa butter, cacao beans, soya lecithin, vanilla beans. In other words, chocolate. And they are very good. The chips make for good portion control, too. Not in love with the price, but do appreciate that at least something is still real.
Okay… by the sounds of this I’m thinking maybe Hershey has figured out how to add healthy melamine. I’m not touching the stuff.
Totally agree that I don’t even bother with Hersheys if I want chocolate. I only buy dark chocolate Dove promises (though I miss they don’t have sayings inside them anymore, just dumb stuff) if I buy commercial, but I mostly buy chocolate in bulk from Whole Foods.
Hey, I read the Patriot News everyday! Not that anyone cares…it’s not everyday I see the local paper mentioned online.
People actually eat Kissables? Yecchh.
If the person did say they had an allergy, they probably would have found out what the ingredients were.
yeah, I used to like chocolate, now it just tastes waxy and coats the roof of my mouth. I stick to European candies and gummies, or Toblerone.
Not only do I hate the new Almond Hershey bars, but the plastic packaging really sucks. I have gotten some of the new minitures that tasted like they were just old and flacky, sold in a high turnover grocery store too. Darn…Hershey was something that Americans used to be able to count on. I am giving up on hershey bars now.
If I recall correctly, they replace the cocoa butter with other fats. It’s only allowed to be called chocolate if a certain percentage of the fats in it are cocoa butter.
this is the US, just eat your food and shut up. Lobbyists for the food industry have paid off your government and they have decided that you don’t need to know what’s in the food you eat.