What has happened to chocolate?

[rosemole]

I haven’t eaten popular brands of chocolate for years because they all started adding palm oil to their ingredients, but I still missed the unique taste of Cadbury’s and Milky Bar.

Anyway this Christmas someone gave us a box of Quality Street and I decided to eat one - the green triangle - but it tasted absolutely rank!
And today I noticed a bar of Milky Bar doesn’t have palm oil (maybe changed) so I thought I’d treat myself to memory lane. It’s disgusting. Not that yummy moreish flavour of years ago. Or have my taste buds changed?

YABU - it still tastes the same
YANBU - chocolate is not what it used to be and is full of cheap ingredients

That's the normal taste of US chocolate apparently. It's something to do with the way it's processed. They don't think it tastes vomity, because that's just normal chocolate taste for them!

Cadbury still tastes amazing 👏

Americans have grown up eating the oily horrible low cocoa ‘chocolate’ so they’re used to it.

I miss proper roses and creme eggs. Smooth galaxy

This is the thing isn't it. Chocolate is meant to be a treat. If it isn't, people won't buy it.

Where do the companies think they're going with this? To me it looks like they're go bust.

It's part of the enshittification of everything from clothes to chocolate.

It’s crap isn’t it. Problem is, I don’t like expensive fancy chocolate. I like cheap chocolate like flake/fruit & nut.. or used to anyway!

Tony's is horrible. It doesn't melt in the mouth at all so you just have to crunch through it.

I can demolish a tray of Aldi seashells though

Cocoa shortage. The other day saw Mcvities and said chocolate flavour (rather than chocolate) and it made me sad.

@Barrellturn Are the seashells just as nice as they always were? I'm afraid to try them because if they've got to shit as well my dreams will be dashed.

Enshitification is completely spot on. Perhaps the reason they survive is like the Hershey’s thing - the younger generation don’t know how good it used to taste so they buy it and keep it going, whereas we do know but it doesn’t matter so much. Sad.

I don't know, my tastebuds aren't as refined as most mumsnetters', so I can't tell that much difference in taste, just in texture. When I look at the ingredients, most don't have palm oil, so it can't be that, but soy lecithin (emulsifier) is present. Not sure if that would make a difference? What I have noticed very recently, is the massive price increase in chocolates of all kinds. Is it because people are buying less, because of the poor quality, so they are trying to recoup their profits?

Lindt was a special treat since childhood, but I swear to God that, whatever about messing up an old recipe as revoltingly Cadbury’s have done, Lindt is now far too sweet to be desirable.
Suchard too used to be dead posh when I was a child, but Ive not seen it in yonks. (Swiss chocolate was overtaken by Belgian in the ‘80s, maybe.)

We’ve a brilliant chocolate shop in our covered market here, and I’m sure he’s selling the best a gal can get…..but loads of it is extremely challenging dark chocolate, and tbh I just want the level of palate discrimination which old-style Cadbury’s used to give us, now that I’m broken down by age and sex, as they say in the Central Statistics Office!

(Annalisa Barbieri ( sp?) in The Graun is an enjoyable and enthusiastic writer on chocolate, and she always has some excellent suggestions for really superior stuff, but Ive never found one ‘artisan’ chocolatier who’ll ship outside GB, sadly)

I agree about seashells - they don’t have palm oil in them, that’s why. They are still good.

I bought some baklava recently from Lidl too and noticed the taste was off - I hadn’t noticed (or expected, how naive of me) that they also were steeped in palm oil. It’s getting ridiculous.

Pisses me off that it’s in EVERYTHING yet you can’t buy a bottle of palm oil in the oil section. Funny that.

Really? I think it just tastes like sugary wax! Mind you, it was never exactly high quality chocolate back in the day either.

You are correct, but it is great bc I have virtually stopped eating chocolate as it tastes awful.

@MillytanteSuchard! That’s a blast from the past. Sure it was luxurious and good, can’t remember a specific bar though.

you’ve just reminded me of Le Piat D’Or - that was amazing.

I got some Galaxy smooth mint before Christmas for nostalgias sake and it's still sitting there. Horrible chocolate taste, horrible mint taste, horrible after taste and claggy texture. 2 peices have been eaten, neither of us wanted another. Absolutely vile. Now checking and avoiding things like this with palm oil, and shea which seems to have crept in. Just nasty. I cannot understand how someone can want to pay and eat this stuff. But they must or manufacturers wouldn't keep degrading things.

Are there any chocolates that are still as good as they used to be? I haven't had any for a few years as got fed up of the quality but I'd like to get some decent stuff. Is green and blacks any good?

I got some from Hotel chocolate in sale, no palm oil in my current box. Bit expensive for every day though.

It really does. I can’t taste the difference at all

I used to make my own truffles from cake crumbs, nuts or ground almonds, fresh cream and good quality dark chocolate with a hefty slug of your spirit of choice

The extra dark milk chocolate from Ecuador in M&S is good. Tesco do something similar.

Even Toblerone was awful this year. A new low.

Lidl do nice chocolate with a high cocoa percentage. I don't think the palm oil stuff should legally allowed to be called chocolate or even passed off as such by selling it under brands that used to be chocolate but now isn't.

Does anyone make decent chocolate anymore?

There's nothing much in the Hotel Chocolat sale - I probably missed it because I only thought to look today

I've never tried Tony's, but a couple of posters here saying it's not good

I last bought some decent chocolate in Aldi ages ago. I'm no longer near an Aldi. I've got a real hankering for some chocolate but it's flipping freezing and I'm not getting on the bus to Aldi 😂 and maybe theirs has gone downhill as well - anyone know?

Cadbury's has been inedible for ages.

I'm out of the chocolate loop because I was losing weight - maybe it's just as well for me if chocolate has just gone wrong across the board! 😂