Short version: American companies add wax to American chocolate.
this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2025
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US chocolate covers the entire range from shit that can barely be described as chocolate to the highest quality chocolate that can be produced. I find it easy to buy high quality chocolate at the grocery store whenever I want, its just as accessible as shitty chocolate. Trying to paint US chocolate as one thing is disingenuous or ignorant.
This seems to happen with Beer too. Yes, America makes shitty beer but also lots of great beer.
The problem is not the fact that they put foreign stuff into it. The problem is that they still call it "beer" then. Or "chocolate".
This is fraud. They should outright forbid that!
Do you still call it water when there is 25% sand and 25% cement in it?
Do you still call it running when they sit down and rest after every 10 meters (or feet or whatever)?
Do you still call it running when they sit down and rest after every 10 meters (or feet or whatever)?
No, I believe Americans call that "Football"
10 meters is something like 100 miles, right?
The only Miles I know is Miles O'Brien, and he calculates the light years.
Very true. You can get great locally made beer in every single state. The US has an incredible brewing scene, you can find the highest quality examples of almost every kind of beer in the US. You can also find plenty of the disappointing mass produced bullshit beers just like in every other beer drinking country. I feel bad for all the beer lovers who buy into that bullshit and think its representative of US beer because they are really missing out. There's plenty of things to criticize the US for but a lack of quality beer or chocolate is not it.
plenty of things to criticize the US for but a lack of quality beer or chocolate is not it.
It most definitely is. Things which are called "chocolate" or "beer" in the USA are often unfit for human consumption and at least they wouldn't be able to call these beer/chocolate in Europe.
They have the commoner stuff and the rich people stuff, and because the rich people stuff exists they get to claim it as better.
Americans are all temporarily embarassed millionaires, thats why they bote against their own interests.
Yeah you genuinely do have to treat us like we are in a cult.
The difference between USians is at any one point how much do we realize we are trapped in a cult?
Most of the time I am self aware, most.
Thag perception is because the "shitty" chocolate is mass marketed and widely available. You're not gonna find gourmet artisan chocolate at a 7-11.
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Well, the point is, our lowest quality shit chocolate still does not taste like vomit.
...come on. That is how things are done, its the same as US beer, in general its shit but I am sure there are loads of microbreweries that everyone here will declare as prime beer. The reality is the everyday common and known brands, making up most of the market are dogshit.
"
the highest quality chocolate that can be produced
Do ye hear yourselves.
wf has the bougie high quality chocolate which is important, but nobody buys it because its expensive.
Not to defend the US on pretty much anything, but there's basically tiers of chocolate. Low quality mass produced chocolate (hershey's, kit kat, etc) is almost always waxy, overly sweet, and sometimes has that weird butyric acid additive. Mid tier is like your Ghirardelli: popular nationally but more expensive than your low tier chocolate, still often quite sweet but you can at least get dark chocolate. High tier is usually regional artisan chocolate. I like Theo in the PNW but I think that's going national lately.
All of this is NOT a recommendation to buy these chocolates of course. Go get Tony's Chocolonely if you can find it.
I was all about Tony's until it came out it's high in lead and cadmium. Ghirardelli is the only easy to buy brand for me that isn't high in lead or cadmium.
There's an update that came out at the start of this year. You can find it here.
Long story short - it's as safe as any other dark chocolate on the market.
It's not as safe as other chocolates that have significantly less lead and cadmium. Furthermore, in some cases the contamination comes from the processing machinery, not the soil, so it completely under their control to immediately eliminate it. Yet they didn't say they planned to address the problem. They could also begin the process of eliminating cadmium by replanting on uncontaminated soil.
Do you have a source for this?
https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/lead-and-cadmium-in-dark-chocolate-a8480295550/
Annoyingly, instead of saying they were going to address the problem, Tony's response was "it's in the soil" and CR used "California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA)" standards. Which ignores that their chocolate is still higher in lead than some other brands.
https://tonyschocolonely.com/blogs/other/a-small-update-on-health-and-safety-and-heavy-metals
But what do you want them to do? It is literally in the soil and cocoa plants are accumulators for heavy metals.
Furthermore they aim for only working with slave free cocoa plantations. So they are limited in who they can buy from. Those two things together probably don't leave a lot of possible sources of cocoa.
Apples and rice in the US were found to be contaminated with arsenic from the soil. Farms are moved, soil is treated, processing is changed.
Here what can be done for Chocolate:
Some brands of chocolate do not have high lead. It's not a necessary part of chocolate production.
Thanks for that link, didn't know that lead is mostly from human sources.
But the common "cheap" chocolate like Hersheys is compared to common similarly priced chocolate in Europe. You can find much cheaper chocolate in Europe that is just as bad or worse than Hersheys, but you expect it for that price.
tony doesnt have super dark chocolate though.
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Because we get rid of as much of the bitterness as possible. Same reason most of us have a little coffee with our cream and sugar.
I like my sugar with coffee and cream.
The drop in black coffee consumption in the US is a relatively recent trend. Only 18% of people prefer to drink their coffee black โ a 56% decrease from 2022.
If all you're getting from your coffee is bitterness then it's not very good coffee.
But that's how I like it! Not that I can taste bitterness anymore.
Some people do. I used to have a local 24hr diner that had the carafe that sat on a burner all day and there was just something about the tar black, bitter abyss of that coffee that I liked.
Once I tried good coffee that was bitter, and floral, and nutty, and somehow also a little sweet; really just a well balanced flavor, I understood the difference.
Everyone has different tastes and it's probable better to say coffee that's only bitter is not quality coffee bean coffee.
My tastes, as do my personality and even uh...IQ, change often and drastically.
Black Starbucks coffee is amazing, though. Somehow you people got that right.
It's over-toasted burnt coffee.
People are allowed to like it though, and obviously they do (with 400 calories of sugar-fat poured in to make it palatable)
Because it's fake. Or poison. Like most american food.
Calling it fake is a bit cynical, although I understand where you're coming from. They just pad it with fillings or other stuff to reduce the chocolate content and presumably increase the profit margin. Also possibly to distinguish from other brands. Which isn't to say that chocolate with a higher cocoa content doesn't taste better. It does and I prefer a higher dose of cocoa myself too.
Peanut butter is the same. I started eating 100% peanut spread instead of peanut butter. It's so good. Now whenever I get regular peanut butter, it barely tastes like peanut to me.
Fun fact, a German company has been working on synthetic chocolate for a while now. Apparently it is indistinguishable from real chocolate. Haven't tasted it myself though.
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This is partly due to the use of butyric acid, which gives US chocolate a slightly sour note โ which is often unsettling to European palates
It is not "unsettling", it is disgusting. Taste like vomit.
cheap chocolate, like hereseys use butyric acid
It isn't chocolate if you didn't add a nearly lethal amount of high fructose corn syrup to it, the rest of the world are such fools lol
However, the market is now growing rapidly and is replacing traditional sweets, especially among younger people. "Indian chocolate is considered an insider tip at the moment," says Julia Moser, "The cocoa beans there have a very distinctive fruitiness with a nutty note."
Indian chocolate would sell well in the US: Americans love anything nutty.
additives such as corn syrup or vegetable fats
What The Forgotten...?
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(1 replies)
US chocolate is trash.
US food companies would add sawdust to everything if they could get away with it.
DW does great articles and reports about food. I liked their documentary on tomatoes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPFmhaWHIRg
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