It’s not about Kisses, it’s about American chocolate. It does taste off to most non-Americans. I don’t get the vomit taste personally but there’s something funky about it for sure
AMERICAN Hershey’s. Canadian doesn’t taste like that. And Hershey’s owns production rights over most mass produced chocolates in America, so a good majority of them taste like that.
I don't know all the legal stuff but I know Hershey's manufactures KitKats in the US (which are made by Nestle elsewhere), and I think Cadbury chocolate too. I've had KitKats sent to me by my friends in Canada and they were very different chocolate. But they definitely don't manufacture all chocolate.
Chocolate, and confectionery in general, is (relatively) cheap to produce, but setting up production is expensive. Importing is also very expensive, so utilising existing factories is often a no go as well.
What happens is that brands will work out a deal with an established brand to produce their confections, slap their logos on them, and send them out to market. This ends up meaning that a lot of the actual chocolate is produced in the same factory with the same recipe.
Cadbury's and Nestle for example use them for a lot of their chocolates, meaning a KitKat in the EU tastes completely different to a KitKat in the US.
There are benefits to this outside of money as well. Hershey's is already the most popular chocolate in the US, using their chocolate when making your confections means its already adjusted to the American palate.
Lol eww you guys must have terrible chocolate cuz you're actually eating hershey's?! That's arguably the absolute worst chocolate. America has no taste buds so we don't count. And we have no shame. So we don't count. But you guys? I thought you were better than that.
Hershey’s in Canada is a different formula due to different manufacturing standards. I’d argue it’s better. You’re basing your opinion off the American formula
You’ve got to be trolling. I don’t eat exclusively American chocolate lol, I actually prefer dark chocolate so I only eat it when it’s made avalible, like at my office
?? People just eat what's there, and if it doesn't taste like vomit like it does in the States people aren't gonna think about it lol. Why would Canadian's know the American version of the chocolate tastes bad if the Canadian version is fine?
It's butyric acid, which is also found in vomit. It's a byproduct of how Hershey's specifically (not all American chocolate) manages their milk. Most European chocolates will use dried milk or combine the milk and sugar into a concentrated product to preserve it. Hershey's wanted to use fresh milk, so they came up with a process that uses natural enzymes to partially break down the milk fat. One of the byproducts of this process is butyric acid. There's nothing weird or wrong with said acid, and a lot of people greatly appreciate the flavor it adds to the chocolate. Some people cannot separate the slight smell/taste it imparts as they are too immediately reminded of vomit. As an American, I've yet to meet anyone personally in real life for whom this is even slightly an issue, but online we are often informed by our European friends that this is actually intolerable.
Slight correction. If I remember right, it's a wartime change that carried over after. Milk was rationed, and fresh milk hard to come by. So Hershey's patented a process for using spoiled milk, which has that acid in it. After the war when milk was common again, people complained that it tasted different, so they add it back in now to make it taste "American".
It's yet another war time temporary measure that was anything but temporary.
That is a widespread story but it's just a story. The butyric acid was present in Hershey's original chocolate around 1900, predating both world wars. Hershey's did make some special wartime rations for the military in WW2 but it is decidedly not the origin of the butyric acid.
American Chocolates used to taste better when I was a kid. The corporate enshitification of what were once good products is ruining everything, including sweets.
17
u/DathomirBoy 5h ago
It’s not about Kisses, it’s about American chocolate. It does taste off to most non-Americans. I don’t get the vomit taste personally but there’s something funky about it for sure