Pelican Parts Forums - Is it just me or is candy not as good?

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Is it just me or is candy not as good?

Gotta admit that I've had my hand in the cookie jar lately. Seems like beginning with Halloween that there is more candy around. So I eat a Snickers, a Butter Finger and a Baby Ruth over the last 3 days.

All of them are nasty. I used to love a Mounds and an Almond Joy now and then, but I'm afraid I'll erase any memories if I eat any more of this junk.

What's in this stuff? Chews like chocolate infused cardboard.

Almond Roca was always tempting, but they aren't quite the same either. Not bad though. Maybe they used to have real butter in them or something.

Oh, my favorite was a Cup o' Gold. Can't get those nowadays. Probably a good thing.

I wish we had given the stuff away last Monday. See what I get?

High fructose corn syrup.
Evil incarnate.

Thats what happens when you take out the MSG

kitkat, twix original, and crunch are the best. werthers caramel hard candy is good too.,

almond roca sticks in my teeth.

I won't divulge the name of the company, but they make nut butters (peanut butter, almond butter, etc). They had a change in business ownership and the new folks had some great ideas for profit. Not always great for quality though...

For the peanut butter, they were using a particular strain of peanuts that is farmed in the US. It's a little expensive, but the peanuts are sweet and make a great butter. But peanuts from overseas are much cheaper. Catch was, they had to buy them in very large quantities which meant they had to be stored frozen until use. They weren't sweet to begin with and the storage/freezing didn't help.

The peanut butter was bland to the point of absolute tastelessness. It couldn't be sold in the boutique stores where it had long commanded a premium price, so the company made an agreement with certain big box stores to take the huge supply off their hands at a significant price drop. So many ways that this was short sighted for this company...

Makes me wonder if the lack of flavor in many current candies (especially chocolates and nut bars) is some story similar to this.

angela

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zeke (Post 6346364)

Oh, my favorite was a Cup o' Gold. Can't get those nowadays. Probably a good thing.

Saw them at Smart & Final....

Try eating a Twinkie nowadays and see what you think!

(PS: My eldest daughter did a food rotting science experiment, and we kept the Twinkie-in-a-bell-jar as a momento. It's been sitting in the front window of our living room for most of a year and still no decomposition aside from the color fading.)

Maybe it's my taste buds now days, but candies are just sweet and tasteless. It all goes along with those "large" eggs, 1.5 qt. ice cream cartons, thin material clothes are made out of, etc., etc.

I love Caramilk, so much so I eat the little ones only at Halloween, this year they taste like dog poo. Also another fav, Reeses PB cups are smaller and taste bland.

I wonder how many of these brands are being manufactured offshore these days. Guess I won't bother raiding the kids treats this year.

Not candy, but have any of you who grew up in the 70's had a Ding Dong lately?

When we were kids, DD's were individually wrapped in foil and were baked by the gods.
Absolutely fantastic, I can still taste them.

Now they are in loose plastic, taste like brown colored wax wrapped around stale cake with some horrible white crap in the middle.

What happened? Hostess used to rule the world, never had any real competition I ever tasted to make them cheapen their product. Is nothing sacred anymore?

Ding Dongs were okay. My Grandfather ran the cake and cookie division of Langendorf Bakeries in the San Francisco/ Bay Area in the 50's thru 70's. They had these things called "Banana Dreams" that were a spiced shortcake cup filled with banana cream filling. Now those were GOOD! They were bought out by another bakery (Hostess or Mother's Cookies) and the Dream Boats were never seen again.

I attribute it to the substitution of HFCS for sugar.

I just had a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup and not only was it not as good, it was smaller that usual.

Mark - Get yourself to a UK import shop in TO and buy a UK Cadbury Caramilk. We just had one up here and they are night and day compared to the normal stuff you get.
AM

I agree and thought the same thing before seeing this post. Had an Almond Joy out of our treat bowl on Halloween. It was sickeningly sweet and the cococonut was like mush. The good part about that was that I had no desire for another.

My daughter shared a "fun size" pack of M&Ms with me after trick or treating. I'm sorry, but 6 M&Ms in a bag are NOT fun. I'm sticking with good quality dark chocolate.

Chocolate has gone way down hill too. Hershey used to be good, no longer.

When I buy chocolate, it's usually the German or Swiss stuff - Milka, Ritter Sport, Toblerone, Lindt, etc. Once you've gotten used to that, American stuff tastes like it has dirt in it. And even if you buy Mars products in Europe, they're so much better there than here because the chocolate is made there. Their version of Almond Joy is called Bounty and it's sinfully good. Kit Kat and Twix are way better there too. I just bought some leftover Kroeger brand candy corn for $1 and it tastes like garbage. Going in the trash.

Quote:

Originally Posted by andrew15 (Post 6347112)

Mark - Get yourself to a UK import shop in TO and buy a UK Cadbury Caramilk. We just had one up here and they are night and day compared to the normal stuff you get.
AM

But that will make me fat....there's a reason I only ate the Halloween Caramilks, it only happens once a year;)

If you US guys don't have Cadbury Caramilk....pity. :D

I've never liked sweet snacks. Salty stuff I love.

These days, milk chocolate tastes like plastic. I liked it when I was young, but now I can't stand it, and it makes several of my teeth hurt. Dark chocolate is good, but my favorite treat is rice cakes. I take a rice cake, pour a tablespoon of olive oil on it, and some seasoning like Tony Chacheres, and I am in heaven. The Muscovy ducks behind my house totally agree- they love the rice cake crumbs.

N!

I agree - these days a lot of the mass-market stuff is just crap. I try not to eat a ton of candy, but when I do, I stick to premium dark chocolate or Trader Joes goodies.

My wife and I brought many pounds of Halloween crap to our offices to get rid of it...

Most of the candy nowadays is made in China.. If you read the label not one says made in xxx. They all say "under license of Nestle of whatever"

Maybe your taste buds are all burnt out.....

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joe Bob (Post 6347416)

Maybe your taste buds are all burnt out.....

("Chews like Chocolate infused cardboard." ) --me

Maybe, but I still have all my teeth. :)

This across the board change has happened in just the last three years or so.

I agree that Kit-Kat is one of the least affected.

Quote:

Chocolate has gone way down hill too. Hershey used to be good, no longer.

Also no longer made in Pennsylvania (as it was for years in the town bearing the same name). now Hecho en Mexico.

Quote:

I've never liked sweet snacks. Salty stuff I love.<br>
N!

I think that's common knowledge 'round these parts...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tobra (Post 6347202)

Chocolate has gone way down hill too. Hershey used to be good, no longer.

Some of the Hershey products can't even be considered chocolate anymore.

Quote:

Oh, milk chocolate. Wherefore art thou?

Apparently not in some Hershey’s products that contained milk chocolate for years, and that has passionate chocolate aficionados fighting mad.

Products such as Whatchamacallit, Milk Duds, Mr. Goodbar and Krackel no longer have milk chocolate coatings, and Hershey’s Kissables are now labeled “chocolate candy” instead of “milk chocolate.”

What’s going on here? On Friday, TODAY consumer correspondent Janice Lieberman reported that Hershey’s has switched to less expensive ingredients in several of its products. In particular, cocoa butter — the ingredient famous for giving chocolate its creamy, melt-in-your-mouth texture — has been replaced with vegetable oil.

The removal of cocoa butter violates the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s definition of milk chocolate, so subtle changes have appeared on the labels of the Hershey’s products with altered recipes. Products once labeled “milk chocolate” now say “chocolate candy,” “made with chocolate” or “chocolatey.”

Some say the label changes are too difficult to spot.

“A lot of people don’t notice it. The package looks exactly the same,” said Cybele May, who has chronicled the changes in detail on her Candy Blog. “I feel betrayed by Hershey’s. They’re giving me an inferior product and they’re not even telling me …

“I call it mockolate, which is basically a fake chocolate product.”

Crunched by rising costs
In a statement, Hershey’s told TODAY that consumers love its products and all its candies are clearly labeled. It still offers real milk chocolate in Hershey’s Kisses, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and its classic chocolate bar.

“And recently it put back the milk chocolate in Almond Joy because consumers complained,” Lieberman said Friday in her report.

Experts say that while many manufacturers cope with higher costs by increasing their prices or reducing their product sizes, Hershey’s change was meant to be less noticeable to customers.

“Clearly food costs, commodities costs have been rising for some time now,” Harry Balzer of the market research firm The NPD Group told TODAY. “The real question is, how will they pass along these costs to consumers without hurting their profits?”

May said the recipe change has ruined the Hershey’s taste for her. But in a blind taste test conducted by TODAY, about half of the participants said they liked the new Hershey’s Kissables even better than the Kissables with cocoa butter.

Nevertheless, some taste-testers were alarmed to learn about the switch from cocoa butter to vegetable oil. One woman said she felt “kind of cheated.”

Fudging the standards?
In terms of calories and fat content, the change from cocoa butter to vegetable oil hasn’t affected the candies significantly. Nutritionists do point out that cocoa butter can offer health benefits — specifically by protecting chocolate’s antioxidant properties. What’s more, cocoa butter doesn’t raise cholesterol levels.

Last year, a number of industry groups lobbied for a change to the FDA’s definition of chocolate — a change that would have allowed cocoa butter to be replaced with vegetable oil. At the time, Hershey’s spokesman Kirk Saville told the Harrisburg Patriot-News that “there are high-quality oils available which are equal to or better than cocoa butter in taste, nutrition, texture and function, and are preferred by consumers.”

The proposed definition change caused a furor among chocolate connoisseurs, who sent hundreds of outraged letters to the FDA. In June 2007, the agency assured them that they had nothing to fear.

“Chocolate lovers need not be alarmed about the future of their favorite product,” the FDA said in a consumer update. “Cacao fat, as one of the signature characteristics of the product, will remain a principal component of standardized chocolate.”

Well, that about sizes it up for these smaller sized impostors of what was.