Why Europeans Hate the Taste of American Chocolate - Cheddar Explains

while us americans are mindlessly chomping away at our hershey's bars some of our friends across the pond are kind of disgusted by what we're eating even though it tastes good to us they've said american chocolate tastes like vomit and earwax called it sour and bitter in some parts it's a matter of taste yes but actually there's a scientific reason why europeans think our chocolate tastes so bad first we have to do some debunking if you look at the nutrition labels of a european cadbury bar and an american hershey bar this is what you'll see all the ingredients listed by net weight you may note 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 bingo there's the reason some europeans say american chocolate is sickly sweet but actually you'd be wrong in the u.s milk is weighed in its evaporated powdered state while in the uk it's weighed as a liquid so actually they're pretty much the same the other main difference is that they use different emulsifiers which smooth 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 might hear is that there's a different amount of cocoa in american versus european bars the u.s has a requirement for 10 percent while eu law dictates that it must be at least 30 percent cocoa u.s law says that that 10 percent can only be cocoa powder but the eu's 30 contains cocoa solids aka both cocoa powder and cocoa butter so again they end up being pretty much the same you might be starting to think that this is hopeless they're practically the same chocolate but these theories are focusing on the wrong ingredients let's now shift our attention to the most important ingredient milton hershey it was 1894 when 37 year old canyon manufacturer milton hershey decided to produce sweet chocolate as a coating for his caramels it was a novel concept for the day considering that milk chocolate was a rare treat for the rich and famous before this time the intensive production process just wasn't possible on a large scale but hershey found inspiration from henry ford's production line and decided to apply that process to chocolate it was a smashing success and their flagship factory in lancaster pennsylvania became the hershey chocolate company in 1900 the company began producing milk chocolate in bars wafers and other shapes with mass production hershey was able to lower the per unit cost and make milk chocolate for cheap hershey had been competing with other chocolate companies to have the cheapest chocolate bar in stores and therefore the most accessible being a savvy businessman he knew that increasing the quality or flavor would result in slim profit margins so he decided to focus on the back end aka the accumulation of ingredients after he fine-tuned his cacao he decided to focus on the next most important ingredient in a chocolate bar the milk and at the time the early 1900s fresh milk could not be legally stored for longer than 72 hours that put a real cramp in hershey's style considering that after 72 hours any unused milk had to be thrown out and having fresh milk and chocolate meant that it couldn't be stored as long even in bar form so hershey developed a process to do something to the milk in 1930 it's actually still a trade secret to this day but experts speculate that he created a secret process to alter the milk it kept the milk fresh past 72 hours it gave hershey the edge to make the cheapest and most widely accessible milk chocolate but that process had an unexpected effect on the chocolate itself the secret method is known today as lipolysis in lipolysis enzymes introduced to milk break down fatty globules into smaller more stable fat molecules in order to kick-start this process you first need butyric acid it's a compound that partially sours the milk but does give it greater shelf life the resulting flavor is instantly recognizable it's also found in parmesan cheese and vomit and particularly high quantities of it are found in babies vomit it's sour and bitter sometimes in a good way like pungent cheeses and sometimes in a bad way obviously it was first discovered in 1814 by french scientist michael chavrel who was interested in finding the chemical responsible for the smell of butter that had gone bad it's also the chemical responsible for that wet dog farmyard smell it's secreted from dog's anal glands so try not to think of that 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 amounts of time by using different chemical preservatives and specially sealed plastic packaging but cadbury still recommends that their milk chocolate is consumed within a year of it being produced so does hershey so by now they're pretty similar lipolysis allowed hershey's chocolate to take a resounding lead in the american chocolate wars but world war ii is what caused the taste of this chocolate to conquer american palates during the war hershey's chocolate scored a coveted contract to make military d rations for the american army by 1945 hershey was producing around 24 million bars a week for soldiers these bars were a staple in the diets of the hundreds of thousands of soldiers away at war they were so beloved that hershey was awarded five army navy e-production awards in contrast cadbury hershey's biggest european competitor offered up its factory to make airplane parts and manufacture wartime supplies they didn't manufacture any food at all and in fact in britain chocolate was rationed this allowed hershey to establish a taste monopoly almost every american soldier came home wanting chocolate that tasted the same as the one they've been eating for years since all of the bars that hershey made for the government used this top secret milk stabilization method soldiers got used to the unique taste in fact they got so used to it that it became their new normal because of the wild popularity of hershey's post-world war ii other chocolate companies in the u.s added butyric acid to their chocolate to mimic the flavor of hershey's that all the soldiers absolutely loved it became a staple of american commercial chocolate if you're in the u.s like me you probably don't even notice it when you're chowing down on that chocolate bar from cvs today lipolysis isn't necessary due to chemical advancements in food chemistry hershey still does it because the taste is what all of us know and love some smaller independent chocolate brands have stopped adding butyric acid to their chocolate in favor of marketing it as similar to european chocolates with trends moving towards an appreciation of organic pure foods hershey may not be at the top of the chocolate world much longer but it's hard to beat they're super cheap super accessible chocolate so don't expect it to go away anytime soon but europeans certainly notice since 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 tastes terrible to you but it's not our fault thanks so much for watching and let us know if you've ever tasted anything weird in your chocolate make sure you like this video click subscribe and make sure you tune into cheddar originals wednesdays at 8pm we'll see you next time

Channel: Cheddar

Views: 1,298,451

Keywords: Cheddar, cheddar explains, cheddar explores, explainer, chocolate, chocolate vomit, hershey, american chocolate, european chocolate, american chocolate vomit, sour, tangy, sour chocolate, chemistry, butyric acid chocolate, butyric acid, cadbury, hershey chocolate, cadbury creme egg, cocoa, science, food, sweets, candy, chocolate bar, lindt, milk, dairy, milk chocolate, dark chocolate, taste, sugar, uk chocolate, taste test

Id: jTpHLR60XSs

Length: 8min 32sec (512 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 01 2021