Blogcoven

I skimmed the New York Times article about chocolate and varying national tastes, expecting to read a lot of stuff I’ve been hearing and saying for a good long while. This bit, explaining what you’ll find if you buy a Dairy Milk that wasn’t shipped straight from the GMT, stopped me short:

It’s a different bar from the Cadbury bar available in the United States. According to the label, a British Cadbury Dairy Milk bar contains milk, sugar, cocoa mass, cocoa butter, vegetable fat and emulsifiers. The version made by the Hershey Company, which holds the license from Cadbury-Schweppes to produce the candy in the United States under the British company’s direction, starts its ingredient list with sugar.

The issue is the first ingredient. In these lists, ingredients must be listed by weight — so the first thing you read is what there is the most of. Real Cadbury’s has more milk than sugar. Fake Cadbury’s has more sugar than milk. No wonder it tastes funny.

I also realized recently that American Coke and Coke in the Rest of the World are differently sweetened: ours uses corn syrup, everyone else uses sugar. Ugh. I don’t drink Coke (I prefer the taste of Diet Coke, and try to avoid carbonated beverages anyway), but if I did I’d be a little miffed. Here’s a fun game to try if you live in the States: if you eat anything that’s not made from scratch, check out the ingredients list. Marvel at how many seemingly non-sweet things have sugar or (high fructose) corn syrup in them. Stop wondering why Americans are so darn fat.