What the fuck have they done to chocolate?

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I just treated myself to a nice bar of galaxy....

It's grim

whatsinanothernameChagne

"Remember, chocolate is supposed to be a 'once in a while' treat. A luxury. Not part of your daily life."

get thee gone!!

go on... scram!

I get a bit irritated by the ‘single origin’ wankery. I just want a bar of straightforward (usually milk) chocolate, nothing fancy, I don’t care if it’s been harvested by Guatemalan goats or Ecuadorean nuns. Just nice chocolate that tastes like it did when I was a child.

I agree, I don’t mind a bit of wankery but in the main I’d like the big chocolate companies to stop the race to the bottom in ingredients. Why any company is using palm oil when it destroys rain forests - why isn’t it just banned?

I feel a bit like that about plastics - why isn’t their more govt regulation in this area?

Ok, I've been to Asda today and these contain NO palm oil or fat.

I can't post them all as only allowed so many images a day 🙄
I've bought the Asda Peruvian milk one and will assess later.

Harvested by Peruvian llamas, no doubt 😄

I went into the Cadbury's shop last week (I remember fondly buying the misshaped bags once upon a time when they tasted good ) and they had some of the "retro" labelled bars in them. I bought some out of curiosity, didn't think the chocolate would be retro inside but was happy to discover the chocolate was in block shapes like before as opposed to the shitty rounded shape dairy milk has now. It made the chocolate taste better for some reason and wasn't waxy in texture!

Interestingly the Co-op have just changed their milk bar to a purple wrapper. It also contains no palm fat. I was going to buy some of that too but I remembered that I'm not keen on chocolate any more and would have loads of chocolate that I didn't really want. I might wait until the Love Cocoa delivery then do a massive taste test. Not sure what to score it all on though? Texture, meltiness, snapabity, aftertaste, stickyness, moreishness? Any other suggestions?

My heart sinks whenever I see a ‘new improved recipe’ on a favourite food. I just know they will have ruined it.

To me chocolate now tastes over sweet and no actual taste of chocolate. Is it the Americans taking over, as I’ve heard their chocolate is horrible? Oreos too, taste of nothing but sweetness.

I've looked at chocolate tasting notes on a few sites, they all seem pretty similar. Here's one. The only thing to add, is if you are tasting more than one type in a session, start with the lowest % first.

I've ordered a couple of flavoured bars from LC - the orange, & the dark G&T amongst others - so I'll probably try them out separately.

I agree about the taste of most cheap chocolate now, Almonds. I suspect it's a combination of increased proportion of vegetable fats, decreased cocoa mass, & increased sugars of various kinds - they don't all just use traditional sugar any more.
I don't begrudge paying £2-3 for a bar of good quality chocolate, I read on MN somewhere that a typical single serve bar of chocolate used to cost the equivalent of £6. It's quite ludicrous that a family sized bar can now be bought for £1 in most supermarkets - it's cheap fillers & corporate greed. (And modern production methods, admittedly.)

@Jozxyqk thanks for the link, it's really interesting and I'm now educated as to how to taste my chocolate and also learnt about all the different notes of which I knew nothing before

Twirl's are still nice. They are the only ones I buy. I used to live Cadbury's snack bars, now they are horrid.

Perhaps a review of what you like / don’t like about each bar Perverse and then overall marks out of 10 for each?

I am pathetically over-invested in this thread

I don't get why people rave about Cadbury's Fingers. The chocolate is rank. I used to love Flake Dipped. Still like a Wispa. Kitkats ate yack but used to love the chunky ones. Smarties aren't nice anymore either. Lindt milk is too smooth and creamy for me. Don't like Thornton's either. Anyone would think I don't actually like chocolate but I used to consume about 250g a day easily. Then they changed things I'm no thinner for not eating it either which is very disappointing!

Green&Blacks stopped making my favourite Hazelnut and Raisin.

I'm still heartbroken.

Ha! I went to York Chocolate Story a while ago, - video not taken by me, I just found it on Youtube. The round table thing that the plate of chocolate is standing on is a tasting notes wheel - normal sweet flavours like cream, butter, caramel, but there were also some really odd things on there like leather, wood, rubber etc. I'm not suggesting we do the nose pinching thing, BTW, although it was funny to see the look on some of the faces of the chikdren, & others in the group who obviously hadn't paid attention in biology!

FGS. Children. WTF does my tablet always autocorrect to chikdren? It's not even a word!

I spent £4.50 on a small Green and Black selection box on sale. I kinda fell in love.

I know, PerverseConverse, me too. I should be like a stick, given how my chocolate consumption has dropped over the last 10 years. I was, and still am, an utter chocoholic - I'm just in permanent semi-withdrawal & craving my next fix which I have to ration out.

I think it's because we are getting older. The sickly sweet treats don't have the same appeal anymore.

I'm a bit late to this but can also recommend Iceland's own brand chocolate which is palm oil free and the mint one is v nice.

The largest british confectioner now is thorntons.

I can’t stand any of the “regular” bars anymore. I may have to start shopping at hotel chocolat, as i’ve never been overkeen on thorntons.

All iceland products are palm oil free !

Ooh just read the tasting notes. Made me salivate. Can't wait for my Love Cocoa order to arrive now, though not sure my palate is sophisticated enough to pick out 400 notes!