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Not to be outdone, Trump had the following announcement from the White House:
"Today, the USA introduced its new chocolate bar, priced at over $10. Made of 0% cocoa, hydrogenated corn syrup, and trans fats. No natural ingredients, no milk, no vanilla. It's bigly on flavor and very, very, tasty. We are taking pre-orders now at USAChocolate.gov."
The lady doing the presentation said that it has 35% of cane sugar.
Also behind her you see "hecho con azúcar de caña" which means "made with cane sugar".
Cane sugar is generally at least a bit refined merely to purify it (so unlike High-Frutose Corn Syrup it's not made by chemically transforming something else).
That said, it's unclear if they use unrefined sugar cane, though that stuff is a complete total pita to work with hence I doubt it's not in the least bit refined.
Mind you I looked around and the info on this is all over the place: like for example saying "no added sugars" but then a bit further it turns out it has "cane sugar", which does mean that sugars were added (as the cocoa plant doesn't produce cane sugar, that would be the sugarcane plant).
Mind you, by all indications this beats almost all North American chocolates, but that hardly a tall barrier to overcome. It's pretty common to find similar stuff in European supermarkets.
She also said it contains soy lecithin (just a little!) and salt
Oh yeah thanks for reminding me this is just another way the Government is taking money for the Lopez family
Why'd they ruin it with powdered milk? 😣
Probably to make milk chocolate? They'll probably make dark chocolate too if they aren't already.
Milk chocolate is ruined chocolate.
Edit: I'll elaborate. The primary health benefit of chocolate is the high antioxidant levels. So if a chocolate producer wants their product to lean on the health-promoting side, the last thing they want to do is include an ingredient that eliminates the primary benefit that a thing is known for. Dairy literally acts as an antinutrient in this sense, blocking the absorption of antioxidants in chocolate. It's been shown to do this to coffee, tea, and berries as well.
Soy milk would be a relatively better choice, but then again, like dairy, soy is one of the most common allergens. So I would argue oat milk would be the best choice for "milk" chocolate.
I suppose that is true, but there's already plenty of health based chocolate companies. This chocolate is just supposed to be candy, which means they want it to not be bitter. Incidentally, I know someone who is allergic to oat milk, someone's always going to be allergic to something.
I dunno, I've yet to see a chocolate bar product that actually gets everything right. I think that it's entirely possible to make a chocolate bar that is not only every bit as much candy as any other, but is completely health-promoting as well. The bar here is really just the status quo.
I prefer my chocolate bars in liquid form!
if chocolate goes extinct I dont think im gonna make it, man
Hershey chocolate bar is rejected as chocolate because it doesn't have enough cocoa and is contaminated with lead.
Hershey's milk chocolate contains around 11% cocoa solids, meaning it doesn't meet the European standard according to some sources. Therefore, in some European countries, Hershey's is labeled as "chocolate-flavored" or "chocolate-flavored candy bar" rather than simply "chocolate".
contaminated with lead.
All dark chocolate is
Makes me think of "American Cheese Product," "cheese" that is closer to plastic but tastes and feels like cheese.
tastes and feels like cheese.
X
For reference, this is the legal definition in France (which still allows for some shitty chocolate BTW) :
Chocolat :
a) Désigne le produit obtenu à partir de produits de cacao et de sucres contenant, sous réserve du point b, pas moins de 35 % de matière sèche totale de cacao, dont pas moins de 18 % de beurre de cacao et pas moins de 14 % de cacao sec dégraissé.
Rough translation:
Chocolate is the product obtained from cocoa and sugars which shall contain no less (although see point b) than 35% of dry cocoa solids including 18% cocoa butter and 14% dry degreased cocoa.
Point b covers specialty chocolates, such as guanduja, etc.
Full text here(fr)
Edit: better formatting
What is the objective behind selling the chocolate bars? I will have to delve deeper into the topic.
I would presume it's because they're low in sugar. Due to exploding diabetes rates, Mexico has been making a concerted effort in the last few years to stem the consumption of sugary foods, drinks and snacks, particularly amongst kids. You can't have a cartoon mascot on a box of cereal, for example. They put big stickers over Tony the Tiger before changing the packaging completely. And the cost of snack foods has skyrocketed, making it largely unaffordable for lots of Mexican families. A bag of chips there costs more than it does in North America.
My guess is that this is part of that effort.
Mexico is in North America
She said it has 35% cane sugar, which pretty much means 35% of hydrocarbons just from that (if the sugar is refined, down to 32% if it's totally unrefined) plus about 8% of the powered milk is also hydrocarbons, so let's say it's 40g hydrocarbons per 100g of product which is very bad for diabetics.
And this is without going into the total caloric level, which must high, not only from all that sugar but also because cocoa butter is pretty caloric.
There's 100%-cocoa chocolate (or even the 90% one) and that stuff is very sour, so totally different.
This is fine for kids, because it avoids artificial ingredients, but it's not for diabetics.
But has healthy food become cheaper?
Man, I hope so.
When I worked in one of the poorest places in the US, those people literally couldn’t afford to get quality food.
They had no refrigeration so they’d walk to the dollar general and get microwave tv dinners super cheap and heat them up at my store.
You take that cheap shit away and don’t provide alternatives and those people literally starve.
I’ve heard people say, “those people just need to get a job.” When I was in my 20s I tried very hard to employ them. (My uncle owned a chain of gas stations and, despite his issues, he cares about people and tries to help where he can in his way).
One story that stands out in my mind. Dude shows up with the application, gives a great interview. Apparently social services were going to cut him off if he didn’t get a job. He worked for less than a week, then drank a half a gallon chocolate milk to cause issues with his diabetes so he could leave without confrontation via ambulance.
When I got his paperwork, he could not read or write and was scribbling random gibberish. There’s no telling how much just went out the door because he didn’t know how to handle it.
I was so angry at the person who trained him because she didn’t say anything about this. She just coldly said, “he’s an idiot. He isn’t going to last.”
The world shits on people like him. He was denied his disability over and over again.
Kind of ironic. Chocolate is naturally high in saturated fats, which hypothetically might contribute more toward diabetes than the sugar. On the other hand, high fat plus high sugar will certainly do a lot more damage than just one or the other.