Why Europeans Hate the Taste of American Chocolate - Cheddar Explains

While we Americans mindlessly nibble on our Hershey's bars, some of our friends across the pond are a little disgusted by what we eat, even though it

taste

s good to us, they've said that American

chocolate

taste

s like vomit and they call it earwax. Sour and bitter in some parts is a matter of taste, yes, but there is actually a scientific reason why Europeans think our

chocolate

tastes so bad. First we have to debunk it a little if we look at the nutrition labels on a European Cadbury bar and an American Hershey bar. You will see all ingredients listed by net weight.

You may notice that in the Hershey's bar the first ingredient is sugar, but in the Cadbury bar the first ingredient is milk, so you might think that's a reason why some Europeans say American chocolate is sickly. sweet, but actually you would be wrong in the US milk is weighed in its evaporated powder state whereas in the UK it is weighed in liquid form so they are actually more or less the same, the other difference The main thing is that they use different emulsifiers that soften the chocolate. Hershey's uses soy lecithin and PGPR, while Cadbury uses e442 and e476 again.

This seems like a big difference, but actually e476 is just the European name for pgpr. Wow, that's a mouthful. Another common argument you may hear is that there is a different amount of cocoa in the United States. Compared to European bars, the US requires 10 percent, while EU law dictates it must be at least 30 percent cocoa. US law says that 10 percent can only be cocoa powder, but the EU 30 percent contains cocoa solids, also known as cocoa powder and cocoa butter. so again they end up being more or less the same, you might be starting to think this is hopeless.

They are practically the same chocolate, but these theories focus on the wrong ingredients. Now let's turn our attention to the most important ingredient. Milton Hershey, it was 1894, when the manufacturer of Canyon, Milton Hershey, 37 years old, decided to produce sweet chocolate as a coating for his candies, it was a novel concept for the time, considering that milk chocolate was an unusual gift for the rich and famous, before that time, the intensive production process simply did not exist. It's not possible on a large scale, but Hershey was inspired by Henry Ford's production line and decided to apply that process to chocolate.

It was a huge success and its flagship factory in Lancaster, Pennsylvania became the Hershey Chocolate Company in 1900. The company began producing milk chocolate in bars, wafers and other forms with mass production, Hershey was able to reduce the unit cost and make milk chocolate at a low price. Hershey had been competing with other chocolate companies to have the cheapest chocolate bar in stores and therefore the most affordable was a smart businessman he knew. That increasing quality or flavor would result in reduced profit margins, so he decided to focus on the back end, also known as the ingredient buildup, after fine-tuning his cocoa, he decided to focus on the next most important ingredient in a bar. of chocolate: milk and At that time, in the early 1900s, fresh milk could not legally be stored for more than 72 hours, which was a real cramp for Hershey's style, considering that after 72 hours the milk Unused had to be thrown away and having fresh milk and chocolate meant it couldn't be stored.

It can't be stored for that long, even in bar form, so Hershey developed a process to make something out of the milk in 1930. It actually remains a trade secret to this day, but experts speculate that it created a secret process to alter milk and kept the milk fresh. 72 hours gave Hershey the leverage to make milk chocolate cheaper and more accessible, but that process had an unexpected effect on the chocolate itself. The secret method is known today as lipolysis where lipolysis enzymes introduced into milk break down the fat globules into smaller and more stable ones. Fat Molecules To start this process, you first need butyric acid.

It is a compound that partially sours milk but gives it a longer shelf life. The resulting flavor is instantly recognizable. It is also found in Parmesan cheese and vomit, and in particularly high quantities. They are found in the vomit of babies. It is sour and bitter, sometimes in a good way like spicy cheeses and sometimes in a bad way. It was obviously first discovered in 1814 by French scientist Michael Chavrel, who was interested in finding the chemical responsible for the buttery smell it had. gone bad, it's also the chemical responsible for the wet dog smell secreted by dogs' anal glands, so try not to think about that the next time you eat a Hershey's kiss, but don't worry, the butyric acid in chocolate is for milk, today European chocolates are preserved for similar periods of time by using different chemical preservatives and specially sealed plastic packaging, but Cadbury still recommends that its milk chocolate be consumed within a year of their production, as does Hershey's, so they are quite similar now.

Lipolysis allowed Hershey chocolate to take a commanding lead in the American chocolate wars, but World War II was what made the flavor of this chocolate conquer American palates during the war. Hershey's Chocolate landed a coveted contract to manufacture military rations for the U.S. Army in 1945. Hershey produced about 24 million. bars a week for soldiers these bars were a staple in the diets of the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who were at war. They were so beloved that Hershey received five electronics production awards from the Army Navy, in contrast to Cadbury Hershey, the largest European competitor, offered its factory to manufacture airplane parts and manufacture wartime supplies, they did not manufacture any food and, In fact, in Britain chocolate was rationed, this allowed Hershey to establish a monopoly on the flavor.

Almost every American soldier came home wanting chocolate that tasted just like the one they had. I've been eating it for years since all the bars Hershey made for the government used this top secret method of milk stabilization. The soldiers became accustomed to the unique flavor, in fact, they became so accustomed to it that it became their new normal due to the huge popularity of Hershey's. After World War II, other chocolate companies in the US added butyric acid to their chocolate to imitate the flavor of Hershey's, which all the soldiers loved. It became a staple of American commercial chocolate.

If you're in the US like me, you probably won't. You don't even notice it when you're eating that cvs chocolate bar nowadays lipolysis is not necessary due to chemical advances in food chemistry. Hershey still makes it because the flavor is what we all know and love that some smaller independent chocolate brands have. He stopped adding butyric acid to his chocolate to market it as similar to European chocolates with trends moving towards an appreciation of pure organic foods. Hershey's may not be on top of the chocolate world for much longer, but it's hard to beat that they're super cheap. super affordable chocolate so don't expect it to go away anytime soon but Europeans are certainly noticing as none of their chocolate companies use the lipolysis method or supplement their chocolate so on behalf of Americans I am very sorry that our chocolate It tastes terrible to them, but it's not our fault.

Thank you so much for watching and let us know if you've ever tried anything strange in your chocolate. Make sure you like this video. Click subscribe and be sure to tune in to Cheddar Originals on Wednesdays at 8 p.m. m., see you next time.