To just want old chocolate back

[SideEyeSally]

I really rarely eat chocolate these days but thought I'd treat myself over xmas. All the ones I used to love and remember fondly Roses, Dairy Milk, Heroes, Quality Street just tasted greasy and dissapointing. My sister has suggested splashing out on high end Hotel Chocolate next year but I don't want posh chocolate I want cheap chocolate from 20 years ago. I would pay good money to a company that could sell me a perfect dupe of the Dairy Milk I grew up with.

Sustainability - palm oil which would also align it to contemporary thinking.

So it was nothing to do with changing the whole damn recipe 🥲

I read the same post and think it means it has everything to do with changing the recipe! Using palm oil is a sustainability disaster.

Also the ‘reduced supply’ of Cadbury to royal households will be a result of them not wishing to eat it anymore. Why on earth would they when they can afford to eat anything they like 😆.

The late Queen was a fan of Fortnum & Mason chocolates- they are truly lovely quality and made in England from proper ingredients.

This is exactly how I feel about all the fake butters, better to have the real thing than some god-knows-what's-in-it-and-yes-I-can-believe-its-not-butter crap!

Yes! I love good old fashioned butter. I refuse to have anything else. There’s a delicious unpasteurised French butter from Waitrose that I’m obsessed with.

We bought M&S Big Mix this year. The chocolate was significantly better quality than quality street et al. We both said that it tasted like roses/quality street etc used to taste! Think we'll just get the big mix from now on at Christmas (assuming they don't change the recipe). Will be trying their mountain bar after the recommendation above too!

What's happened to wispa bars too?
I used to love dipping one into my coffee quickly (sounds disgusting I know 😁) and the warm chocolate used to just melt in my mouth. Now, I can't even dip a bar in for even a nano second, or else the bar will completely disintegrate into nothing, as the wispas nowadays seems hollow inside.

Im often surprised on here when people describe things as "disgusting" or "inedible" saying they have thrown them because apparently even their children won't eat them.

I'm picky about things like coffee & wine but honestly while i can see the likes of quality street & roses have deteriorated, they still taste enjoyable to me, I mean they were always a sugary cheaper chocolate. My kids eat them just as they always have, they've tried plenty of better quality chocolates as well.

I suspect this is why the continued use of the likes of palm oil etc persist. Enough people do continue to buy them. I think a mnet is a bit of an echo chamber of people who view sugar in particular as toxic and thus have a palate that is very unused to very sweet flavours. In RL millions of people are sugar addicted and enjoy sweet cheap chocolate.

My biggest bugbear is the war on sugar & fat. I'd rather have things made with real butter & sugar than junky sweeteners and weird emulsifiers, as a result we don't really buy any cakes/biscuits/desserts from shops any more and bake them at home.

I think people also don't realise, those big tins of quality street & roses in the 80s and 90s were affordable to brits because the people growing the cocoa, sugar, vanilla and nuts were treated like crap and living in abject poverty.

Nowadays the costs of all the raw materials and labour are much higher compared to british wages. But most people would baulk at the cost if those companies tried to make them the way they used to.

That’s a very good point.

And to be honest anything that stops my chocolate addiction is a good thing.

Ah, very interesting - thanks very much for that info.

Milka used to be lovely. Unfortunately, it's now owned by Mondelez - same as Cadbury's - and it's now been blanded down and the taste removed too.

Ah, thanks for the tip - I'll pop down the Spar now and see if they have the F&M choccies in

I can't eat dark chocolate so I'm stuck with cheap shit milk chocolate which was fine until they started changing it all. I miss Kit Kats . Dairy milk is just about ok. Thorntons are good.

I really fancied a Dairy Box over Christmas and the last time I had one of them was years ago.. it was so disappointing- no real flavour at all 😞

Have they changed a lot in not exploiting the workers in poorer countries? It would be amazing if they have.

To be honest, it's not just about the cost for me. If you could have one of the old massive tins of the proper old Roses or Quality Street in them, I wouldn't object if it cost £25, £30 or whatever - as a true family treat to be savoured and to make it last - rather than a £4 tub of mush that you just munch on without thinking.

Lindt balls aren't runny inside.

The most recent ones that we've had have been. The standard milk chocolate ones in a red box. Not sure about the other different flavours.

@Noodlesnotstrudels

"The most recent ones that we've had have been. The standard milk chocolate ones in a red box. Not sure about the other different flavours."

I think that's likely because yours were stored somewhere too warm. I received some for Christmas in the red box and they were perfect and solid as they normally are.

Maybe I'll need to invest in a box from a different shop just to be sure... 🧐

I binned hotel chocolate and Tony's too, really revolting!

Ritter Sport.

That's a valid point many of us seem to have missed on our quest for quality chocolate from years gone by.

So sad that Cadburys was bought out and ruined (quite a number of years ago now). Hotel Chocolat is not nice, was given a huge box and really only the ones with alcohol were any good and that's because they had some taste due to the alcohol and so didn't just taste of sugar.

I eat much less chocolate now thanks to it all being shit but if I want something decent i get it from Artisan Du Chocolat. For something less posh but not cheap I go to ArtChoclat. I really miss Roses, Quality Street etc from the old days though.

I'd happily pay more for them to be the same quality. Cadbury's were bought out and I think that was the issue rather than the rise in costs. The brand has been making increasing profits and that is all they care about.

Yeah I hate sweeteners too and fake butter. The point should be to eat less sugar not use artificial sweeteners. Easier said than done I know.

It’s worth watching this years Royal Institution Xmas lectures The Truth About Food with Dr Chris Van Tulliken. He shows how the food industry bastardise our food I found the fizzy drink one enlightening. (Ep 3)