Milk Chocolate Bars
Image by Susanne Jutzeler, Schweiz 🇨🇠💕Thanks for Likes from Pixabay
Milk chocolate bars are a way to sell us low grade chocolate laden with sugar and added ingredients some of which are not healthy, can build up addictive tendencies and are not good for us.
Often nuts are added which are known, particularly on the part of peanuts, to have a tendency to make us want to eat more. Adding other ingredients such as so called ‘bisucit’ or ‘cookie’ pieces, caramel, nougat, honey, fruit, coconut, marshmallow, wafers, liquorice, jelly, and many other ingredients, are all crafty ways that are used to bulk out what is already low grade chocolate.
Up to a hundred years ago chocolate was a luxury item only afforded by those who were wealthy and could afford luxury items. The chocolate manufactures of the day realized that in order to expand their markets they would have to diversify their product ranges so as to attract new buyers and in particular the rising ‘middle classes’ who were becoming more affluent and could afford to buy luxury items but not necessarily the then very expensive chocolate. By lowering the quality of chocolate and adding in particular milk fat and sugar, the chocolate manufactures were able to produce a product that was cheaper to produce and could be sold at a lower price. This was the birth of the milk chocolate bar.
In europe, even to today, the term ‘chocolate’ is still upheld and some products are excluded from being allowed to be called chocolate but this has not stopped the chocolate manufactures from producing a product that is not chocolate but is still called chocolate.
It seems strange to me that many chocolate ( that is milk chocolate ) advertising is aimed at women, particularly young women with the products often displayed as ‘quality items’ that seem to give great pleasure to the consumer. The products themselves are more often that not based on sugar, processed carbohydrates and very little real chocolate.
I often hear and read food journalists who claim to be ‘addicted’ to chocolate and for example ‘quitting chocolate for x days or weeks’ to see if they can live without it but I would reason that if they were to eat real chocolate from real chocolatiers they would not have this problem as it is more likely the sugar and other ingredients that are causing them to think that they are in some way dependent on chocolate.
It makes me very angry that things like chocolate have been changed in all but name to be yet another vehicle for sugar and ultra processed carbohydrates.