Fake Chocolate?

I was quite disturbed last week while watching the TODAY show and the story on how Hershey is removing the cocoa butter and replacing it with vegetable oil in many of it's chocolate confection products. Remove the cocoa butter? Isn't that what gives chocolate it's rich taste? Why would you do this? The reason....I am sure you guessed comes down to money. Vegetable oil is much cheaper than cocoa butter, so they made the change and hoped you wouldn't notice. But you did.

Mars Snackfood announced the day after this TODAY show about Hershey that they are committed to using only 100% coca butter and that they refuse to "lower the bar" on chocolate.

Chocolate manufacturers have strict standards of identity that require them to use cocoa butter in order to be called "chocolate." The Hershey products had to change the names on their labels to say chocolate flavor instead of the real term of "milk chocolate."

Mars has the very popular and tasty DOVE line of products. I personally love DOVE because they use a type of cocoa in that product that still have a high flavonol content. I say "Bravo" to Mars for upholding the quality that we expect. And hopefully Hershey will rethink this decision to cut costs and quality. Chocolate lovers such as myself are passionate about our chocolate and we demand only the best!

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