Author Topic: Warning....Are you SURE you know what you are eating?  (Read 4912 times)

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Warning....Are you SURE you know what you are eating?
« on: September 20, 2008, 10:40:00 AM »
Well, like other women, I love chocolate.
A little piece is just what you need sometimes!

Hersheys has changed some of its brands to "mocklate" instead of chocolate.They have removed cocoa butter from some of the candies and replaced it with vegetable oil.
These products can no longer be called “milk chocolate”.
Now they must carry the words: “chocolate candy,” “made with chocolate” or “chocolatey.”

Untouched are: the Hershey's bar, Hershey’s Kisses and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and Heath bars.

But take a closer look if you eat any of these:  Krackel and Milk Duds (two favorites of mine), Mr. Goodbar, Hershey’s Kissables and Whatchamacallit no longer have milk chocolate!
Almond Joy (LOVE these in the little snack size) got changed then changed back after a firestorm of complaints.

There are five things that bother me about this change:
1) I Feel betrayed. These products have a history, a taste, that should not be tampered with.  Selling a product that is lesser quaility for the same price, under the same name is telling the consumer that "we know you are too stupid to notice the change".
2) Vegetable oil is not as healthy for you as cocoa butter. Lets face it, we don't each chocolate for health reasons. But in reality, taking out one of the good ingredients and replacing it with something that has less beneficial effects (and less taste/texture satisfaction) is wrong.
3) The company hid the changes. Packaging is so close that you don't know of the change til you taste it. Yes, I am one of the 50% that can taste the difference.  At first I thought I got a bad bag of candy...just didn't taste right.
4) They have changed long-standing products and tried to hide/disguise what they have done.  They have even lobbied the FDA to change the definition of "milk chocolate". 
5) Hersheys has launched a campaign called "Pure Hersheys" and print/tv ads tout the purity of their candies. YA. RIGHT!  Saw the tv ad twice last night and that made me so mad I had to post.

So... This halloween, when I buy the candy for the office and my home, I will strongly consider what I give out.
And when I go to the theater, I will no longer buy the Milk Duds that we always shared together.
I will spend a bit more and get REAL chocolate.

I recommend you READ the labels on everything you buy these days. Yes sizes are getting smaller, but ingredients are changing too. Can effect taste, texture, allergies, and even recipes if you use the ingredient to make other things!

Read more about this:
Today show program Sept 19, 2008 about Hersheys change    and
a blog entry that described what happened to a lactose intolerant person that ate the new versions of the mocklate.
-Samantha
TNG: "Sometimes, you can make no mistakes, do everything right, and still lose" - Capt Picard to Data
(:turtle: In memory of Turtle: May 22, 1944 - Nov 24, 2007  GURU, mentor, and really nice guy! :turtleleft: )

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Re: Warning....Are you SURE you know what you are eating?
« Reply #1 on: September 20, 2008, 04:30:45 PM »
This whole subject is a big concern as I recently discovered that lettuce has 25 times more pesticides that oranges. The reason is the lettuce is much more susceptible to pests than oranges and when you measure the time to market of a lettuce compared to an orange it has 25 times less chance on working out its pesticides than an orange yet they get similar dosages. And here I thought it was healthy to eat my greens. Also, there is less milk, cane sugar, cacao, etc. in almost every processed product on the market and there is less every year too. There are however more other things, such as added designer vitamins, dextrose, a sugar substitute, etc.

The reason for there being less of the real thing is due to business pressures (or logic that's gone wrong). Generally raw material prices go up. Business do not want to reduce or lose market share by absorbing the increased prices and passing them on to their customers. On the contrary, they want to be more competitive and reduce prices, in that way they can increase their market share. So they devise new substitutes that cost less than the wholesome goodness of the real thing. They even do tests to see how many and how much additives, pesticides, etc. the human body can handle before becoming ill. This scenario repeats year after year. They think that they cannot be productive at a faster rate than what their costs increase. Where does it end? When the company needs to bailed out by the state coffers because they are too big to collapse. Excuse the pun.
:dogwalksm: Ed

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Re: Warning....Are you SURE you know what you are eating?
« Reply #2 on: September 21, 2008, 08:39:52 AM »
Any thing processed or not certified organic is suspect to me anymore. What I don't get is why for example a can of palm hearts from South America is required to be marked as to the origion of the country it was imported from. But processed foods that have multiple ingredients are not required to state where any of the ingredients are from. Its nuts.

And don't even get me started on where do our drugs come from. Some countries turn out horrible quality of drugs barely checked and yet there is no labeling required.

Its terrible that chocolate is now being tampered with.I agree - it should be labeled hugely and noticable to any one buying a product.

This subject is alway sdisturbing to me. We don't really know what we are eating anymore in most cases. I wish they labeled which meats were cloned as well.

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