Why is American chocolate so bad?

[Anonymous]

Can get Lindt and Baci here, both good.

[Anonymous]

This thread is too long so I didn’t read it all.

Someone may have already mentioned that American chocolatiers/manufacturers remove cocoa butter from chocolate and replace it with vegetable oil. American chocolate is also allowed to have much less cocoa than what is required in various European countries. Last, American chocolate contains butyric acid as a preservative. All of this makes it taste drastically different than chocolate made elsewhere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The problem is that folks in flyover country and what not don’t realize that they are getting horrible chocolate

What is this elusive flyover country? And what's with all the nasty American chocolates sold in every convenience store in DC and NYC? Just curious.

Flyover country is anyplace we have to flyover (in an airplane) to get from a decent city on one coast to a decent city on the other coast. NY to LA. DC to Seattle. Boston to San Francisco. Chicago is an exception, and any place south of DC on the east coast isn't a decent city

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What a strange thread. Are the US-haters in this thread unaware that literally any grocery store sells good chocolate?

They feel cosmopolitan for “noticing” that European chocolate is “better”, not realizing that they’re making fools of themselves and sounding provincial for not realizing that with globalism that global food supply is fairly similar. And that many Euros go crazy for American junk food. They’ve clearly never lived abroad

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What a strange thread. Are the US-haters in this thread unaware that literally any grocery store sells good chocolate?

They feel cosmopolitan for “noticing” that European chocolate is “better”, not realizing that they’re making fools of themselves and sounding provincial for not realizing that with globalism that global food supply is fairly similar. And that many Euros go crazy for American junk food. They’ve clearly never lived abroad

Yea it’s hard not to roll your eyes at it. Like are these people shopping exclusively at 7/11? Even Walmart has a huge chocolate selection with plenty of good ones that have the same ingredients as European chocolate. And Europe also has crap chocolate that tastes like @ss too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This thread is too long so I didn’t read it all.

Someone may have already mentioned that American chocolatiers/manufacturers remove cocoa butter from chocolate and replace it with vegetable oil. American chocolate is also allowed to have much less cocoa than what is required in various European countries. Last, American chocolate contains butyric acid as a preservative. All of this makes it taste drastically different than chocolate made elsewhere.

Partially correct. Some American candies do remove cocoa butter and replace it with oil, but then they cannot call it chocolate. Instead, they have to call it chocolaty or something similar. Whoppers does this, and I agree it’s cheap garbage (Hershey ruined whoppers with this cost cutting move). But of it says chocolate, then by regulation it has to contain a minimum amount of cocoa butter.

Btw—what Hershey did to Whoppers is similar to the way Breyer’s, which was once known for ice cream without artificial ingredients, ruined many of their products. While they still sell some legitimate ice cream in core flavors, most of their product is now so filled with junk that they cannot, by regulation, call it ice cream. Instead, they call it “frozen dairy desert.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The problem is that folks in flyover country and what not don’t realize that they are getting horrible chocolate

What is this elusive flyover country? And what's with all the nasty American chocolates sold in every convenience store in DC and NYC? Just curious.

Flyover country is anyplace we have to flyover (in an airplane) to get from a decent city on one coast to a decent city on the other coast. NY to LA. DC to Seattle. Boston to San Francisco. Chicago is an exception, and any place south of DC on the east coast isn't a decent city

So DCUM. I’m not from “flyover” country but find this thinking nauseating. No decent cities south of DC?!???!?!?!

As for the chocolate…you don’t have to go to Europe for the good stuff. As mentioned earlier, globalism, which is good and bad, has brought us a lot of things, especially to our plates. You don’t have to fly overseas for amazing Korean food, great Italian, OR decent chocolate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have tons of high quality, local chocolate. The OP’s complaint is like saying pizza here is bad because we have Dominos. We have everything, and it’s all insanely easy to get. You’re just whiny.

Exactly. Whenever someone starts whinging about American food they actually just reveal how provincial they are. Only someone who has only ever lived in the United States could take one look at an American grocery store and not be blown away at the breadth and width of the selections we have. People in other countries could only dream of the endless aisles and massive stretch of a Kroger, Giant, Fred Meyer, etc. We really are spoiled for choice in the US and compared to almost anywhere else in the world have an insanely huge selection. If you want European chocolate it's easily obtainable. If for some reason youre grabbing Hershey off the shelf despite other options that's your own problem and choice.

But a lot of the products found in American grocery stores are ultra-processed crap. Twenty varieties of Oreos is not something to be proud of.