They also had a large hand in the construction of the Hershey medical center in... wait for it... Hershey Pennsylvania. Its one of the east coasts best hospitals. So like em or hate em Hershey did do a decent bit of good will.
Hershey makes chocolate filled with the same glutamates you find in tyrosine crystals you see in hard cheeses like parmesan. This is due to a fluke of the way they keep there milk vacuum sealed to extend its shelf life. This creates a chocolate that has the same msg tang you get from extremely nice cheeses. Itâs also the same flavor profile as stomach acid and itâs absolutely understandable that people not used to it would hate it. That said if Hersheys chocolate wasnât so ubiquitous and was sold as a luxury item it would be treated like one of the best chocolates in the world as fancy msg chocolate
Hershey's sour flavor is from butyric acid, which is a byproduct of lipolysis during the "hershey process."
Butyric acid isn't a glutamate, and the hershey process really shouldn't be compared to more complex aging processes.
E: glutamates also form during the hershey process, but they aren't the source of the sour flavor and aren't comparable to aged cheeses. Most milk chocolates you buy will use milk solids that are high in glutamates, hershey's isn't special in this regard.
So this is not actually true. The flavor you're picking up on isn't glutamates, it's butyric acid. This comes from the breakdown of fat in milk into short-chain fatty acids; I can't remember why butyric accumulates so much, I think it has to do with the original length of the triglycerides in milk. But it's in aged cheeses like parm (and, when too strong, is indictive of mishandled milk), vomit (especially baby vomit - they drink milk, which has similar fats breaking down similarly in their stomachs), rancid butter, and Hershey's. I'm not sure offhand if it's because of how the milk is stored, but I do remember reading it was a side effect of using different cocoa powder in the past that created the flavor, which is recreated now.
That said if Hersheys chocolate wasnât so ubiquitous and was sold as a luxury item it would be treated like one of the best chocolates in the world as fancy msg chocolate
At best it would be treated as some weird novelty item. I have never met a single non-American who tried Hershey's and thought it tasted good, or even just okay. Everyone is appalled by it. And even in the US, it's far from being unanimous, though in my experience, Americans who don't really like Hershey's don't hate it nearly as much as non-Americans who try it for the first time. They just think it's meh.
I mean Dubai chocolate is literally worse then the some of its parts. Novelty and cost has a large impact on how a product is received. Hersheys is incredibly commonplace and affordable and has been for a long time. But in a world where it was new and marketed like Dubai chocolate was it would be the biggest trend in chocolate with other chocolatiers trying to do there spin on the msg flavor.
Yeah, and Dubai chocolate is quite far from being the best chocolate in the world, no matter how they want to market themselves. Only Instagram influencers buy into that.
Just like nobody thinks miller is really "the champagne of beers".
But also Dubai chocolate tastes fine. Nobody has an instant disgusted reaction when trying Dubai chocolate (unless they hate pistachios). That can't be said for Hershey's.
I donât get the whole Dubai chocolate thing. Itâs like someone said what if we filled a candy bar with Wheaties. The old kind before they were squares.
My theory is some PR agency got paid a bucket load to get influencers to make 'dubai choclate" trend to out flood the negative associations with modern slavery and so on that shows up on searches for Dubai.
Also kinda interesting, Milton Hershey's fortune paid for my ticket to Reptiland once
It's like this little reptile themed zoo in PA. They were doing some kind of marketing event for this like, private school for orphans that Hershey made cause he didnt have no kids of his own or something. At least that's what I remember
Hershey has updated the Reese's cups formula to the point that it is barely chocolate and peanut butter anymore. On some of the products they even call it milk chocolate candy and peanut butter creme to skirt around the legal definitions.Â
I just bought a whole box of cups. After eating one, Iâm handing that shit out for Halloween. I only buy one box a year and something absolutely changed between then and now.
For national level, Ghirardelli is my favorite. The best chocolate though is going to be regional, so if you visit just ignore the national brands and look for the regional ones. I can't give you a literal list of regionals sorry, you could research 'best chocolate in x area' where x is where you're visiting. Then search the shelves for what people recommend.
Each state also has its own sub, you could post on a state sub and ask for recommendations on good brands to check out! The locals should steer you right .
Tonyâs Chocolonely is pretty good if youâre just looking for a brand. Most candy stores in the U.S. also sell fudge or chocolate coated treats. Fudge is legitimately gods food.
I've tried chocolate from outside the US side by side with Hershey's. I've gone without chocolate intentionally for weeks on weeks, and tried Hershey's with more expensive, supposedly higher quality chocolate.
I can't taste it at all. The supposed vomit taste.
And that's coming from someone that's eaten specific Thai and other Asian cuisine made with butyric acid, which if you've ever had you'd know a very distinct and noteable experience where not having an acquired taste will really have a dish evoking vomit.
It's supposedly in Hershey's, but I just can't detect it.
Yeah, It's a real personal taste thing. We get the odd bit of import Hershey's stuff in the UK, and I don't get that vomit taste connection at all, although I'm sure some people really do.
Now don't get me wrong, it's shit chocolate. But I do actually like a couple of them (the thin cookies and cream bar, and the thin strawberries and cream one). They scratch a certain itch.
Yeah, theyâre basically âfast foodâ chocolate. And just like garbage fast food, once in a while it can be oddly comforting if youâre in that mood.
I had a KitKat recently in the UK and I swear I could taste that vomit taste in it. I don't know if our chocolate has it now but it was incredibly horrible.
I had no idea they were owned by Hershey in the US. But no I'm British so I'm talking about proper KitKats. Honestly they've tasted bad since NestlĂŠ took them over, but now they're terrible. The smell is putrid.
I think a lot of our chocolate has gone downhill repeatedly in recent years. Not even counting the great cadbury enshittification (god I miss ye olde recipe dairy milk with the biscuit chunks in it).
Hasn't there been some price spike in cocoa beans or something, so they're all either adding filler, lowering the amount of actual chocolate, putting the price up, or all three at once? Even more than regular capitalism would lead to.
Yeah, I was coming to say something similar. I've had chocolate from Asia, from Europe, and from the US, and whatever this puke taste people are picking up on, I just can't taste it.
Iâm just gonna say it. I think hersheys chocolate is the best tasting. Iâve had other brands, Iâve hard milka and some beloved German thing I donât remember the name of. A friend brought a bunch back from living there for a few years. He says itâs the best chocolate in Europe and maybe the world. It tasted bland. Hersheys slaps. No clue what people are talking about with the vomit thing but I hear it everywhere.
I'm actually a professional confectioner (candymaker) and I can actually confirm that we have a lot of really good chocolate here. HOWEVER, there's a ton of what's called 'compound chocolate' which is sold at grocery stores, pharmacies, and even some candy stores, that really sullies the description of chocolate.
Compound chocolate is chocolate that has had all of the cocoa butter removed, and instead it has palm oil to work as the underlying fat. This is because you will still have some chocolate flavor, but companies no longer need to worry about tempering the chocolate (so it doesn't get those ugly streaks). It looks good and is easier to keep looking good, but it is not as good and feels waxy.
It is the butroc acid that gives it that flavor , the oil thing is also true , but in my personal opinion a lot less offensive and actually works better for a milder flavor
Yes that, I donât know for the us, but in a lot of place outside they are not even allowed to call it chocolate anymore, itâs just candy bar, what most people describe in this comment section is mo longer considered chocolate
I think Hersheyâs is more of a hold over from a bygone time. Few people eat it as is anymore. They market themselves as the chocolate for sâmores or some different flavors
More like a baking chocolate now than anything where youâre not supposed to eat it as is. The Kisses are often used for a baking treat I forget the name of. A cookie with just one of them jammed into the top
Peanut butter kisses is what Iâve called them. A peanut butter cookie with a Hershey kiss smooshed into it while itâs still warm from the oven. Iâve had some where they did a sugar cookie instead of a peanut butter cookie, but the peanut butter ones are way better in my opinion.
Ya thatâs it. Partially why I call it a baking chocolate. Tastes weird as is but any alteration via cooking really brings it out
I have a big ass bag of Herseyâs baking chocolate minis I bought years ago. Iâll occasionally snack on it to get a little chocolate boost and it tastes bad enough that I donât feel like eating a whole ass bowl of them. I made some baked oats like a week ago and tossed them on top last second. Added a very nice bit to it and took an otherwise ok but basic baked good an elevated it with bittersweet chocolate
I mean, that's basically wine in a nutshell. First try is just an extremely bitter and nauseating taste but it supposedly gets better as you get used to it.
Beer too. I still can't drink more than a few sips though.
Actually most hard alcohol is also rough, but that's less of a taste thing because you can barely taste anything over the burn.
Hershey's is weird. It's not good, but I find myself easily nomming down an entire bar. Give me some high quality chocolate and I'll savor the flavor of a square or two and just be satisfied.
So, Milka is owned by Mondelez, an American company.
As for why Hershey's chocolate tastes like vomit, it's how they process their milk. Basically the way they heat it causes it to form butyric acid, which is also something your body produces when you're about to vomit. Generations of Americans just sort of accepting this has kind of made a lot of people enjoy the taste of a Hershey bar. But yeah, it's got that back of the throat burn for me and I hate it.
As far as American chocolate brands go, try Tony's Chocolonely (edit: theyâre Dutch but screw itâs I like their product anyway) or Chocolove. Tony's just released a new bar that's ganache filled that's absolutely stellar. They also actively combat slavery which is a real problem in the chocolate industry.
All good. They are sold all over in American stores so I understand the thought. They are an incredibly moral company though which is why it's a bit pricey
Iâm an ex-chocolatier. More specifically, I know how to temper chocolate and dip strawberries courtesy of a now defunct retailer. However, I did love it so much I considered making a career out of it. But the supply chain is just disgusting with the sheer volume of human rights abuses in it.
Wait youâre telling me not all chocolate gives you the back of the throat burn?! What??? I have been bothered by that my entire life and just accepted that all milk chocolate tastes that way. So i started eating dark chocolate instead
It's called mere-exposure effect or familiarity principle.
It's not only about food taste, it's about everything taste. People think that Mona Lisa is something special because of it, for example.
Pretty aure they've done studies, and very little kids from UK don't get the vomit taste from Hershey's chocolate. So it seems to be more exposure to vomit that makes Hershey's taste bad than exposure to Hershey's makes it taste good.
Probably not. Hersheyâs is just cheap on the ingredients, so it doesnât taste very good. But people latched onto the butyric acid explanation because butyric acid is in vomit. Even though the taste of vomit isnât created by butyric acid, not alone.
And Hersheyâs hate is a more recent phenomenon, caused by declining quality over the years. Butyric acidâs been part of the recipe from the beginning, ever since Hershey first tried reverse engineering Swiss milk chocolate.
I wonder if anybody would even equate the taste of Hersheyâs to vomit without the influence of the internet. I agree it tastes bad, but nothing like vomit
I agree, though it could possibly be explained if there was an issue with the dosing across batches or if some people are really sensitive to butyrate compounds etc etc
I think it's just out of the ordinary and that makes it stand out more. If you're used to something having a balance of three different flavors no matter where you get it, but one place also adds a fourt flavor, that fourth flavor will really stand out. You haven't normalized it yet. It's like eating chips and one bag of chips is like flavored. The lime will stand out compared to every other bag of chips because you haven't normalized it.
Milka is shit now and fell from one of Germanys favourite brands to one of the most disliked. Why? Enshitification. Worse formular, worse packaging, less content.
What upsets me is that the americans bought Cadbury, the most famous British chocolate brand and immediately ruined it by changing the formula to be cheaper.
The worst part is that their strategy is working, their hold on the UK market took a hit but they expanded aggressively into the rest of the EU and other foreign markets (places that never tried it when it was good) and are now making more money than ever.
Pro tip, if it says Dairy Milk on the wrapper then it still tastes good. Their buyout was conditional that they don't change the Dairy Milk recipe, so instead they just started making more and more Cadbury's products not use Dairy Milk.
If it doesn't say it's Dairy Milk on the wrapper then it will be the cheap crap.
even americans know hershey is among the worst of the worst chocolate. and this will be hard to believe, but it's not the only brand available either. in fact, milka is even sold in the USA!
Don't you know. America only has American food and we're completely ignorant of all non-american food. I hear this all the time on the Internet. So, it must be true.
Butyric acid is present in American chocolate and not so much in European.
If you canât stand Hersheyâs specifically, this is probably why. Some people have a height edges sensitivity to butyric acid. And it makes American chocolate inedible.
Actually, you can blame that on the founder. He was trying to copy the heavily guarded milk chocolate making process from Europe by using food scientists. The guy who managed to make him a chocolate bar was like "oops, I messed up and soured the milk, but that is easily fixable" and the founder decided that the sour taste would make the chocolate bar stand out in the market. As if undercutting the imported chocolate price by a huge amount wouldn't.
This is all horse shit. Hershey was solving a different problem, they had more challenging logistics when trying to keep dairy fresh. Hershey needed a more stable form of milk and a byproduct of that process was butyric acid.
Triolade is my favorite Milka bar. It's a giant bar with milk, white, and dark chocolate. I used to eat it often when I lived in Austria. Unfortunately, they don't have it in the international shops in my area. But when I have a hankering, I can always grab Kuhflecken (cow spots) which is milk chocolate with "spots" of white chocolate, from a local store. Way better than the cheap chocolate we have in the US.
we do have milka in the US, but you should try some smaller brands and see how they compare. i used to live in pennsylvania and they had two small local chocolate companies that i thought were really good: sarris, and betsy ann.
I really need to compare American dark chocolate brands to European dark chocolate brands one of these days. I know milk chocolate is noticeable different, but I haven't had the time to test if dark chocolates have noticeable differences.
I know someone who worked at Ghirardelli and Lindt. They arenât that different. And since Ghirardelli was bought up by Lindt, they even upgraded their bean source to Lindt levels so their darks taste even more similar (by upgrade, I mean some previous European colonizers tend to have first go at certain African beans including Lindt). However, this assumes the same composition of cocoa solids. Some European nations have higher thresholds for minimum cocoa solids. Different compositions and beans will taste different and also depends on if the plant allows for remelt. Remelt usually tastes the worst.
Also, American milk chocolate is made differently from most European milk chocolate so only darks are comparable.
American chocolate is up there with every other countries chocolate. Hershey's is just one specific brand that maintained a unique flavor from when it was first developed.
When folks come to America for food, why go for the D rank?
Like yeah, Hersheyâs is gross. But we donât even eat Hersheyâs that often. Same thing with fast food. I really donât want to be represented by McDonaldâs, Burger King, or IHOP as the defining traits of American cuisine when it can get SO MUCH BETTER.
Beer and cheese* face the same issue. A lot of people outside the US only ever have the shitty mass produced stuff that we export. The good stuff is local brands that don't even distribute across the whole country, let alone over seas.
Granted, I can't name any local chocolate brands to me because I'm not a big candy eater.
*I made a note for cheese because there are a lot of areas don't have any local good cheese, but the areas of the us with dairy farming usually have fantastic cheese.
Good point, there are soooo many amazing 'micro' breweries but outside of the states everyone thinks it's all just bud lite lmao. I appreciate the people who visit and experience actual American culture and notsolely the mass produced, over marketed brands they've heard of back home
This is a surreal thread, I always loved kisses, didnât know they were hated apparently? Is this like a DNA thing where some people taste it bad and others taste it good?
US chocolate includes butyric acid which has a kind of vomit taste. It seems to be a preservative decision that originates from earlier days that has remained.
Itâs not about Kisses, itâs about American chocolate. It does taste off to most non-Americans. I donât get the vomit taste personally but thereâs something funky about it for sure
Buttic acid is in Hershey's chocolate which is a component in vomit, but I honestly don't taste it. Probably from growing up with it. To me it just has a very slight cheesey bite
I prefer my Norwegian chocolate when I can get it. By comparison Hershey's tastes bland and unfulfilling. I've never considered it to taste like vomit tho. That's a new one
Eh, Hershey isn't the only company that make shitty vomit chocolate, they're just the most notable. There are, of course, companies that don't/or are better.
I know a lot of mass produced and seasonal chocolate uses the butyric acid, like the chocolate eggs that go in Easter baskets and such. Also most generic brands at places like walmart. Also, its hard to tell, because companies do not list butyric acid as an ingredient. If I understand the chemistry correctly, it forms at as byproduct of the drying process that Hershey pioneered and other chocolatiers have imitated for mass production.
This article says NOTHING matter of factly it's all speculation followed by quotes from official hershy people saying no that speculation is false then more speculation there's no real answers in that article lmao
Of course if the French had invented milk chocolate they would tell us we just don't have a sophisticated enough palette to appreciate the vomit taste.
Never understood what people are talking about with this supposed "vomit taste". It's just not there for me. Heck, while typing this comment I had some of their chocolate, still tasted fine to me.
I'm half convinced it's just a cilantro soap gene situation lol
I always ate Hershey's as a kid and never had issue. I went to Germany for an exchange program in college, had German chocolate. About a year or two after that I got a Hershey bar, hadn't had one in years, but I used to like em. That's when I got hit with the vomit taste, and I had no idea it was a thing when it happened.
It's the butyric acid. If you are used to chocolate that doesn't have it then it's immediately apparent in the flavour. But if you grew up on it then you wouldn't notice.
Guys the "vomit flavor" thing is so stupid. The butyric acid that people say makes Hersheys "taste like vomit" is also heavily found in Butter, cheese, and milk.
It's like people claiming Chinese food gives them a headache because they're "allergic to msg" but have no problem eating pizza or spaghetti or ketchup.
I've had people tell me about their MSG allergy while literally eating out of a bag of cheetos. I pointed out that they have monosodium glutamate in cheetos. Whoosh!
Lol, im old enough I remember the whole Chinese msg scare. Then everyone suddenly was the same. Group thinking is a powerful thing. Makes brand names famous
So like does your product have to be shit to become "global" in the US? Like I know I can get good candy and good food at ethnic stores, bodegas, regional chains or even specific statewide stores - but why is it that all the US food products that "make it big" enough to export all taste like unfettered ass?
Logistics. Best example of it is McDonalds. McDonaldâs sucks, but it tastes exactly the same basically everywhere. Being able to pump out cheap slop efficiently allows you to expand way faster than quality does.
Most of them didn't start that way. They made good products, became popular, then started cutting every corner humanly possible to lower cost of production in order to maximize profits, turning the product into garbage, but maintaining some brand recognition while also staving off more expensive and higher quality competition.
Traditionally Americans favored consistency over quality. Historically in food production some amount of average quality needed to be sacrificed to ensure high consistency.
Millennials as a market force have kind have broken this trend, hence the "Millennials are killing Applebee's" meme or the association of millennials with craft beer. American corporate restaurant chains like Applebee's serve bad food, but the entire experience will be identical in every location. Budweiser tastes like piss, but every can will taste and feel identical.
Scale mostly. The US, despite what many might have you believe also produces a variety of fantastic goods, but we also basically consume all of them and there isnât a market incentive to ship food goods abroad that often. They already are selling almost all of their goods to one of the highest paying markets anyway, so why go through the trouble of distribution internationally? So instead itâs mostly the massive large scale products that make it abroad.
I never liked chocolate as a kid because my taste buds are sensitive to that flavor. It was only when I became an adult that I realized it was a Hershey problem not a chocolate problem.
Most of my life I've enjoyed Hershey's, but there was one instance in the last few years where I got some and it did, unironically, taste like vomit, and I have no clue why.
It's far from the best chocolate, but it's not so bad as to be offensive, except that one single time
Theres an actual chemical preservative in Hersheys that is found in vomit actually. Thats why when you aren't used to the taste thats all you'll notice
As a person from the USA I don't like eating the brands here, I always go to the Asian or European markets and get the chocolate there, tastes much better
I always find it really funny when Europeans complain about Hershey chocolate tasting like vomit when they hold up stuff like Parmigiano Reggiano as an amazing cheese.
Granted that's apples and oranges, because Parmigiano Reggiano is an amazing cheese where Hershey's is cheap, mass produced candy. But they both have butyric acid and so they both equally "taste like vomit".
To explain milk chocolate requires milk, but this meant that chocolate wouldnt be shelf stable.
To combat this Milton Hershey developed a new way to process the milk that made milk way more shelf stable, but caused lipolysis (milk fats breaking down) that makes it taste sour.
The chemical produced from lipolysis is called Butyric Acid, which is found in parmesan, butter and vomit
I think it's more of a most of the rest of the world doesn't put that specific acid in their chocolate, thing.
So yanks and Canadians who have Hershey's readily available to them are used to it and don't notice it.
Much like how beer or coffee is pretty unappealing until you convince your body that it ain't trying to poison you and you slowly begin to enjoy the flavours
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u/FuiyooohFox 5h ago edited 5h ago
USA has much, much better chocolate companies than Hershey. They just have a stellar marketing department really, and a neat little park đ¤ˇ
Edit: I just realized Hershey makes other candy like Reese's cups, so I'm not totally down on them I guess lmao