Could be a brand or just a type of chocolate
I go for anything dark and single origin, but I’m pretty easily pleased with anything that at least tried to not use slave labour
Apple brand chocolate. Buckle berry chocolate. I sometimes suspect bots troll here, asking questions like this in order to blindly consume data, & when I suspect it, I give them foil to chew on, like this response. Pennzoil motor oil chocolate. Xbox white chocolate Tesla Brand Free Speech Chocolate with the crunchy butthole center. There, does that answer your question?
Hey man, you gonna finish that Tesla Brand Free Speech Chocolate with the Crunchy Butthole center?
Yup, that name just rolls off the tongue haha
The best chocolate you’ll ever have: https://www.castronovochocolate.com/
She travels down to the communities that harvest the cacao and sources directly from them, then she hand makes the chocolate in her shop. Internationally award winning. So good.
Really goes to show what economies of scale can do. Castronova chocolate appears to have 65 gram bars at a price of $12. That’s only 5g/$.
Tony’s Chocolonely, a commonly touted ethical chocolate company, sells 180 gram bars for $6. 30g/$. Half the price for triple the chocolate comparatively.
That said, there’s not much to really compare. Castronova seems to be going after a different market with most of the bars being titled as their place of origin and composition, not what taste to expect. A smart move for a business with a smaller footprint.
The few bars I saw mentioning flavours were the lavender dark milk, lemon and lemon salt, and Fleur de sel - an apparently high end French sea salt. Quite different than Tony’s milk honey almond nougat or white raspberry popping candy.
They won’t be replacing our orders from Tony’s, but Castronova has a 12 pack I think we’ll get to see what they are like. Thanks for recommendation.
Toblerone: 45 g/$
Hershey bar: 70g/$
This is what theyre competing with.
I’m not entirely sure either Tony’s Chocolonely or Castronova would see Toblerone or Hershey’s as direct competition. Maybe Tony’s would, given their lower price point. But if the main allure to a brand is the ethically sourced nature of the product, you’ve already lost most chocolate consumers.
At that point, you can afford to price higher as you’re in a market where people that care more about the societal, humanitarian, ecological, etcetera impact than the impact on their own wallet.
If the goal is to actually change the chocolate industry, they’re going to have to start caring about price. If a company’s product is priced at 14 times the most common forms of chocolate, theyre not doing anything other than catering to the minority of people that are willing to pay that premium. The meat substitute industry has the same problem. Price things at what their niche is willing to pay rather than at a price that people that are more on the fence are willing to pay. So the result is that the cheap brands continue to fuck up the environment and exploit workers with little reason to do otherwise.
I see what you’re getting at, but there will always be the higher and lower end of any type of product. Many companies charge orders of magnitude more for goods or services that most people get elsewhere for cheaper.
As with most any issue of a company damaging the environment or abusing their workforce, the answer could lie with stronger regulation, but that’s getting a different subject altogether.
Except… these brands market themselves as environmentally friendly/fair trade. But in reality they’re luxury brands. Which isn’t compatible with that goal because luxury brands are niche products not products that actually cause real change. Something that actually causes change needs to be sufficiently widely adopted.
Thing is… I actually want things to improve. It matters to me that environmentally friendly products that dont exploit the people that make the materials used in them actually get popular enough to start forcing the industry to change. And while the law is a useful tool to acheive that change, it cant do it on its own. Peoples’ buying habits need to be taken into account. You cant just… brute force everything.
Anything from Aldi. Here in the US they put butyric acid in the chocolate. It’s partially because it’s what people associated with chocolate because if early Hersey production and partially because it increases the shelf life. It’s also the acid you find in rancid butter and vomit. European chocolate doesn’t do this and so you get a smoother chocolate without the gross bite.
Before living near an Aldi I could only afford to get good chocolate on a rare occasion but even the junk Easter egg chocolates at Aldi are amazing and affordable! So now I can actually say I like chocolate!
As a Swiss person who likes chocolate, that sounds disgusting 😱
As a German who lived in the States for a year, it is. I love chocolate but barely ate any in the states.
It’s so much worse than it sounds. On top of that, most Americans are born into this and find well made European chocolate too smooth and decadent which spurs the idea that it has to be exorbitantly expensive.
I can literally buy the cheapest stuff in my grocerie store here and it still tastes somewhat decent… Shouldn’t have to be expensive. Making decent chocolate isn’t exactly rocket science. But hey we are talking about the US where fresh bread apparently still is kind of rare and most people eat Wonder Bread (why it’s even called bread is beyond me though…)
Lol it’s a wonder it’s considered bread
That Aldi chocolate can’t be beat!
Have you tried their little burnt caramel chocolate bars by the check out? The smokiness in the caramel with that smooth chocolate finish is to die for!
Tony Chocolonely is fucking amazing, but you can break your teeth trying to bite its weirdly shaped pieces of.
Seconded. Good stuff that A) you can actually find without heading to some weird chocolate boutique and B) you can feel marginally better about buying because they really try to make sure their supply chain is as fair as possible.
They are making a positive impact but not quite well enough to be recognized on the Slave Free Chocolate website.
Excellent callout, thank you!
I don’t think I’ve ever seen these in Canada, I’ll have to try them when I go elsewhere.
Its a dutch brand thats become very popular around these parts in the last few years
I came here to say dark Chocolonely. (Sea salt is good too.)
Stolen.
Ah, my favourite kind.
My favourite part about that scene is how he just immediately changes the subject after dropping that epic line
Ethically sourced and not too sugary. I make sure to grab a selection of Tony’s Chocolonely bars whenever I’m in the Netherlands. It’s second to none.
Belgian chocolate is of course also great. I love Galler, it’s good but not overly pretentious/expensive.
Dark chocolate in small doses; if I want to go wild a milk chocolate with something salty (sea salt, salty roasted almonds, salty caramel, freaking corn flakes for that matter) is always a treat.
Tony’s Chocolonely
Better check the lead levels on that one.
I read the Consumer Reports article you linked, but honestly I can’t imagine lead levels in chocolate is something anyone would need to be concerned about.
The testing methodology CR used boils down to ‘we sent the chocolate to a laboratory for testing and turns out there’s lead above the safe limit in each bar.’ Consumers aren’t going to do this.
Also, the list on the article is flawed in my opinion. It shows the amount of lead and cadmium found in each chocolate bar, but doesn’t scale it to the size of the bar. CR estimates in their risk assessment the daily consumption of chocolate by looking at the portioning of the bars on the nutrition label, and the average by the FDA of 30g.
In Tony Chocolonely’s case, these figures are the same. As their regular bar size is 180g and the portioning is 1/6 a bar - 30g. This means that the CR listing a Tony’s bar at 134% of the daily limit of lead, it would also mean eating 500% the amount of chocolate the FDA expects.
If you adhere to the average of 30g, Tony’s is only 22% your daily lead limit.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve eaten a full bar in a day. But it’s far from a daily occurrence, and I’m certainly not thinking of the health ramifications when I indulge.
Even at 265% the lead limit, the Hershey’s bar is 120g, so a portion is 66%. The most frightening thing about that bar is that it’s Hershey’s.
If you EVER limit yourself to a portion of a bar you’ve got to be the only person in the world who does that.
Consumers aren’t going to do this.
Of course not. That’s why consumer reports does it for them. You don’t believe samples are representative? That’s ridiculous.
If you eat several bars of chocolate every day you probably have other things to worry about than lead poisoning.
Who said several?
Look, I’ve no interest in arguing the percentage of people that eat a full chocolate bar in one sitting vs not.
What I will point out is that according to a couple headlines I skimmed just now, Snickers appears to be America’s chocolate bar of choice, weighing in at 50g. In the comment you replied to, I was talking about a 180 gram bar of of chocolate.
You won’t catch me eating three and a half Snickers.
Moving on.
I like Consumer Reports. The samples of bars they chose across the chocolate industry seem fine to me. Where I take issue is in the way the data is presented. The article represents neither the manufacturers portion sizing on the nutrition label nor the FDA daily consumption figure.
Also, I’m sure it’s only a fraction of people that bother to read the nutrition labels before purchase. If lead content was written there, then that small group of people would see that information.
I only meant that even these people wouldn’t bother with this type of due diligence - that it would necessitate an organization like Consumer Reports. While it’s an important thing to check, and I am glad they did the checking, my overall point was that the results tell me that lead and cadmium levels in chocolate are not something anyone needs to be particularly concerned about.
If you EVER limit yourself to a portion of a bar you’ve got to be the only person in the world who does that.
I buy large bars of milk chocolate and break off a row of 4 squares to eat at a time. If I’m feeling extra “snacky”, I’ll take another row. I think that’s still less than one of their regular-sized bars.
A lot of candy bars, I’ll eat half at a time, or split it with my partner.
I’m about 6’ tall and on the upper end of a “healthy” BMI.
I know the question didn’t ask for it, but I don’t like chocolate, ha!
But I love two specific types; salted dark chocolate or chilli dark chocolate. Especially with a glass of tempranillo. Brand don’t really matter, but generally the bigger brands just don’t do dark chocolate well and put way too much sugar in. I don’t have a sweet tooth and all other chocolates—including other dark chocolate—I don’t really care for.
Here here! I also am not a big fan of chocolate, but dark chocolate, with chilli! Ooh la la.
Ooh yeah, same opinoins here. I’ve never tried chilli dark chocolate though - I’ll have to be on the lookout for that.
Non dairy! All the best chocolate is non dairy. I didn’t realize this until I was on opioid pain meds for a few years and had to get off dairy entirely. All the American crap uses cheap milk fat as a filler. Once I started only consuming chocolate that is non-dairy the difference is substantial. Anything is pretty much great if you simply use this trick. The easiest way is just look for vegan marketing. All vegan deserts are best, seriously, and I’m no vegan.
I still follow my food rules like, I don’t eat in a chemistry lab storage cabinet, and all flavorings are, at best “strawberry from a beaver’s butt gland” level of natural. If you are not familiar with the reference, there was a 60 Minutes episode 10-20 years ago on the flavorings industry. One of the highlight remarks was the origin of
naturalstrawberry flavor… I consider all additive flavorings of any kind as drugs. Not in a tin foil hat sense, but more of a ‘Madd Hatter CEO has no ethics’ and makes a junk product with no real value sense. I’m not eating chocolate flavored sawdust.I don’t agree. I’m Norwegian though, so there is a bit of a difference in how our chocolate is made with regards to additives. Our Milk chocolate is the shit! Additives to it is also great, but they come in the form of actual pieces of dried fruit or salted corn chips, tiny pieces of fudge, brownies etc, etc.
Freia milk chocolate is the shit. Especially the one with salted almonds.
In continental Europe (except Benelux) I find milk chocolate often gets too sugary, while dark chocolate is usually more expensive but maintains a high quality. I have never been to the US, but I am inherently sceptical of what they might pass as chocolate over there.
As far as Norwegian chocolate goes, I share my favourite chocolate with a lot of senior citizens: Mokkabønner are amazing. Dark chocolate beans with a hint of coffee, amazing with a cup of java in the morning.
Oh yeah, mokkabønner are awesome! And I don’t really enjoy dark chocolate that much in general. I get really sad every time I have gotten Kremtopper by accident. Why are those boxes so damn similar anyway? And often stocked in the same shelf as well…
If you’re American try other countries chocolate. Not something like Cadbury you buy at Walmart, but go to an international grocer or pay for a box of chocolates and have them shipped to you and eat them over the next 3 months. Most American chocolatiers try to mimic Hershey flavor because that’s what’s most popular.
I really like the chocolate from kinder. All of them, but the schoko-bons the most
Tony’s and toblerone are probably my favorites rn, i love how creamy they are
Anything that’s at least 50% cocoa.
The kind without lead or cadmium. So I’ve pretty much cut it out. https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/lead-and-cadmium-in-dark-chocolate-a8480295550/
“CR used a very conservative threshold for determining ‘high’ levels of the metals, which are not backed by major regulatory and health agencies, including the World Health Organization and the Food and Drug Administration. While pressuring chocolate companies to do more to keep contaminants out of our treats is a reasonable goal, this is not something anyone needs to fret about.”
Edit: Obviously, chocolate production is problematic due to the exploitation of labor (and the use of child labor and even slave labor). Edit #2: Fixed quotation marks inside article quote.
I thought I liked dark chocolate then all the studies came out about certain brands having lead. After checking the brand I guess I just liked lead.
Nothing from Hershey’s, Nestle, or Mars, that’s for sure. Shits so waxy and bland. At least as far as chocolate goes. I don’t mind their candy bars so much, but I couldn’t tell you when the last time I had candy was.
