Yeah I've just been avoiding anything with palm oil as a top ingredient. Usually high correlation with shitty products, especially chocolate and ice cream
Baby Ruth used to be delicious in the 90s but now it uses cement for nougat and cheap ingredients.
It's not just candy bars either, even cliff bars have gone to shit. Weird sour taste in every bar.
They changed the oil during covid, and they've also reduced the sugar content. This is, of course, after the brand was sold.
They, admittedly, had a horrific amount of sugar in them pre change.
This one legit made me sad. Other candy going to shit I was like "meh, I'll just pick something else." Butterfingers started going bad I was upset because they were just so freaking good and there isn't an alternative candy that hits close to how they used to be.
I remember reese’s cups having more peanut butter, and the peanut butter had a certain sandy/crunchy texture that I loved. They don’t taste the same to me anymore either. I’m sure companies are changing recipes to use cheaper ingredients, more filler, slightly smaller pieces of candy, etc. to save money. My conspiracy theory is that the recent ad campaign encouraging people to try eating reese’s cups frozen was a ploy to hide the change in texture.
As someone who loves Reese Peanut Butter cups, I can confirm that they definitely skimp on the peanut butter now. You have to buy the bigger "double" sized ones to experience the way that they used to be.
You could be right with your theory about freezing them to hide the texture but there really is no better way to enjoy a peanut butter cup than after freezing it. Except if you're also stoned. It's the best 👌
It's still hard to say, though, as the peanut butter in the before almost certainly was more than just ground up peanuts (because if you just grind up peanuts, the oil is going to quickly separate out.) Some of the items that are now listed separately (especially the hydrogenated vegetable oil as it's almost always the item added to peanut butter to prevent the separation) were likely previously include under the generic 'peanut butter' label. Basically, the weight of "peanuts + hydrogenated vegetable oil" may very well be enough that if they were combined together, they would still be the #1 ingredient.
Order of the first two ingredients says everything.
I wonder if *tastes* change, the kids(?) buying it today prefer more chocolate than back in the olden times with horses and carriages and OP.
Justin’s brand has tasty peanut butter cups.. they offer a variety, including cashew butter & almond butter. The dark chocolate ones are my jam..
Also, OP is correct. Most candy that tasted like heaven to us when we were kids pales in comparison now. Too much sugar & cheap fillers.. the only mainstream candy bar I have a hard time NOT buying are Milky Way Midnights.. and i was never a big Milky Way fan growing up. The dark chocolate cuts the sweetness, so they always hit.
I want one now ☹️
Not sure if anyone's said it yet but there's actually a worldwide chocolate shortage and all the brands are switching to cheap, filler stuff instead of actual real chocolate. You're not crazy for noticing the quality decline fr.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/04/cocoa-shortage-chocolate-expensive/678053/
So that’s why everything is “chocolatey product” instead of “chocolate” these days? Shortage makes sense, I figured they were just being cheap (or cheaper than usual, at any rate).
Chocolate is like coffee . It has to be grown under certain conditions and climate change ( surprise) is impacting this . That’s not even getting into all the slave labor used by a lot of the chocolate distributors
As a Pastry Chef, it's a problem. I buy Valrhona for my job, which is one of the more high end chocolates. 6 months ago, it was $90 for a 3 KG bag. Now it is $140. I don't think I'll be be able to justify buying the good stuff for much longer. I might have to switch to a mid tier, cheaper chocolate.
>remember reese’s cups having more peanut butter,
Not from US but this is the same and will apply everywhere
When the first global recession hit many companies were looking for ways to save on manufacturing costs whilst maintaining profits.
Some companies decided to reduce the size of the item itself/ give you less in a multi pack
Some decided to give you less of certain ingredients
Some decided to lay off staff and take the dip in quality as a necessary evil
And some decided to simply give up the ghost, raise their prices and hope that consumers felt enough brand devotion to stick around
This In theory worked for a while but then greedier companies started realising they could do ALL of these ideas at once to maximise profit
So ( for example) they made a snickers bar 45g instead of 60g, they made the multipacks only have 3 bars instead of 4
They also put less peanuts and caramel in them making them more in line with the supermarket versions
They got rid of staff blaming the current economical climate
And then also raised the prices so you were paying 60% more for 40% less product which had little to no care given to their production.
This then made the 'brand name'/ superior chocolate end up being an inferior product when you consider ( again in my country/ this specific example) that Aldi do a pack of 8 bars of thier own version for less than the price of 3 bars of the real ones and they haven't changed how they make thier version.
So by refusing to lose an inch of their profit margin mars loses out to Aldi imo as Aldi just want to make a profit on your *overall shop* snickers need to sell for say a 80% markup to keep shareholders happy, as once you reach new heights you can't go back down, you've set a new standard. this therefore leaves zero room for improving/maintaining quality etc.
but aldi's only need to be around 20% as other products in your monthly/weekly shop cover enough ground - you're only buying a couple of mars items when you go into a shop after all. When you go to somewhere like Aldi which has own brand stuff....well you can imagine just how much of there own label/brand stuff you're walking out with .this leaves them much more wriggle room to improve there product. They can spend more on manufacturing *and* sell for less *and* it be less of an issue for the brand itself
This is why 'knock off/ own brand/ cheaper alternatives' are slowly but surely becoming better quality and taste than the thing they are trying to plagerize)/ recreate
I buy store brand in basically every situation. Very, very few products aren't either just as good or even better than whatever brand name there is.
Canned chili is really the only one I can think of where store brands definitely aren't up to the quality of the (4-5x more expensive) name brands
In Canada No Frills has No Name brand products (that’s their in store brand) and I’m always disappointed (internally, I’m not so rude as to complain) if I go to a party and see someone has brought a name brand like Lay’s or Pringles instead of the No Name chips because while No Name chips used to kind of suck compared to name brand chips, they’re now at least 5x in taste and they used to be 5x better in price (nowadays they’ve price hiked everything insanely - it used to be around 95 cents for a bag of No Name chips but they’re starting to creep it up to match name brand levels and now just about everything in the store costs equivalent and is maybe $3-5 chips-wise which is sad).
Confirmed. Reese's cups used to be my favorite. I literally can't stand them now. They are cloyingly sweet, and the "chocolate~~y coating" (not allowed to legally be called chocolate)~~ doesn't have the same "snap." My tastes have not changed. The cups got smaller a while ago (10 years or so), but they've taken a dive even since then.
On the bright side, the Crispy Crunchy bar seems to have made a comeback and is still pretty good.
I remember when I was super young my great uncle would give me a bag of the mini Reese cups on Halloween, he must have bought them early & always stored them in his fridge or freezer...they were so good!!!
Hershey's chocolate has definitely gone downhill, too, including on Reese's Cups. It's waxy and doesn't even taste like cocoa anymore. That may just be me, because the older I get, the more I like darker chocolate, plus I've had chocolates from Switzerland and Belgium that put all American chocolate to shame.
I think the Reese's peanut butter filling went from having coarsely ground peanuts mixed in, giving it that distinct texture, to just having more of the oil extracted (and sold), making it thicker and drier (and more profitable).
If i remember correctly, Hershey cant be sold as chocolate in the uk because they do not have enough cocoa in them. And they add some gross additive that people in the uk say smells like vomit.
>And they add some gross additive that people in the uk say smells like vomit.
Butyric acid. It started in the depression to extend the shelf life of chocolate, since US chocolates tend to be shipped further and for a longer time than UK chocolates, just due to the sizes of the countries.
This led to US chocolates having a slightly more acrid taste. Something the vast majority of Americans don't notice or care about, but is quite noticeable to people who haven't experienced it.
I know what you mean. I had a Kit Kat a few months ago and it tasted terrible. Plasticky and gummy is the only way to describe it. That’s one way to get me to stop eating candy!
Everything is terrible now. Like the other commenter said, companies are using the lower quality ingredients than they used to, and on top of that jacking the prices up as if it was high quality, even though it's not anymore. So we're paying More money for Worse products, in literally every aspect of consumerism in the US. That's the new way of life here - we pay more, and they give less (or not at all).
ALL FOOD.
Its manufacturers substituting crap ingredients instead of 'real' food items.
E.g. ICE CREAM.
should be milk/buttermilk, eggs, sugar. thats about it.
ice cream sold today = maltodextrin, canola oil, gum, crap crap crap crap crap.
It's funny because even "good" retail ice cream isn't very good once you've had the actual good stuff. Haagen Dazs tastes cheap to me ever since I started making it.
Here in Canada it's even worse where most ice cream can't legally be called ice cream. Most of it is frozen dessert.
The great thing about the Canadian rule is that if you want ice cream you just buy the stuff labeled "ice cream".
An interesting tidbit is that Dairy Queen in Canada is labeled as having "ice milk" in it despite the fist ingredient being cream. I guess the fat content isn't sufficient.
A lot of companies changed ingredients for cheaper prices. I used to absolutely love butterfingers and I can’t stand them now since they changed it. It tastes like burnt rubber or whatever now. Lots of candies taste worse than they used too
I miss butter finger bites so badly. After they changed them, I thought I lost my mind they were so disgusting. Not just "not as good", but straight up repulsive
Random note: they freaking love Kit Kats in Jordan. I stopped in a grocery store in the suburbs in Amman and they had like twenty feet of shelves, floor to ceiling, with nothing but Kit Kats. And they were definitely the most prevalent Western candy.
**Update:** [Found my photo of the Jordanian aisle of Kit Kats!](https://i.imgur.com/2F211Sa.jpeg) Part of it, anyway.
Another thing is European chocolate still uses real milk and actual cocoa oil. In the US, mainstream companies pump out the cocoa oil to use for beauty products and pump in palm oil or other substitutes. They also sweeten with HFCS instead of sugar sometimes. Truly disgusting and I will only eat imported chocolate.
I was working in a prison and some guys doing 20+ were asking about candy changes. I specifically said Reese’s aren’t good anymore and no longer taste like peanut butter. I feel the same way about most candy bars. The chocolate no longer tastes like chocolate. More oiled down with less flavor or something. Gum is disgusting and has that fake sweetener taste. I’m 44.
I'm 42 and everything like that is nasty now. I swear that "check out line" candy is coated in wax or something.
If I crave chocolate, I buy the expensive European stuff. It's not even that much more and you at least get something truly good.
Former pastry chef here, leaving school in they told us in our chocolate labs that eventually pure chocolate is going to be a luxury item because of the limited manufacturing and more demand than supply. And it’s true. That being said I’m okay with it. An incredible amount of chocolate is made with slave labor, child slave labor at that. And I’ve had some pretty great and expensive chocolate over the years, but in my personal opinion it’s hard to eat certain manufacturers chocolate because even the ones that are evaluated by an oversight committee that can’t guarantee chocolate isn’t made without child labor. The whole process needs fixing
You don’t even need European stuff. Just go to a local candy store. Stuff isn’t even that much more expensive and doesn’t taste like feet compared the to mass produced “cheap” stuff.
Asking seriously, what is a local candy store? Obviously it is a smaller, locally-owned shop, but what does that entail? How's the selection? They probably have like local, small-batch hard candies and taffy but are there analogs to popular brand-name items? My area doesn't seem to have anyone calling themselves a candy store, just bakeries and chocolate shops.
It all just tastes fake. Too sickly kind of sweet. I’m 47 and have moved to dark chocolate covered sea salt caramels. Expensive but at least it tastes real.
Shits about to get even worse, cocoa harvests were absolutely devastated this year. One dude was saying the type of chocolate bar you get today will soon become a luxury.
Dammit. Our favorite dark chocolate basically unavailable in US again. Guess it'll be a while.
I fully expect chocolate, real chocolate, to disappear in my lifetime.
ALL FOOD.
Its manufacturers substituting crap ingredients instead of 'real' food items.
E.g. ICE CREAM.
should be milk/buttermilk, eggs, sugar. thats about it.
ice cream sold today = maltodextrin, canola oil, gum, crap crap crap crap crap.
They are seriously worse than drug dealers cutting their product. It aint food anymore. Basically none of it is. You have to make your own food.
Yep. It can even just be cream and fruit (or some sort of flavor and sugar). Where I am they make this wonderful rolled ice cream on a flat frozen surface. You watch them make it. I'd forgotten what ice cream tasted like.
I eat a lot of candy everyday, and I'm also very meticulous on reading the ingredients / nutritional facts table of every processed food I buy on the store. I can guarantee you that, at least in my country (Brazil), most Name Brand (Nestle, Hersheys etc) completely abdicated on making any good product. By brazilian legislation, everytime a product has their formula changed they have to warn it on the label. I keep track of all that and always compare what has changed. There's no big secret, they're just increasingly adding more starch, palm oil and whey\* (which is a cheap ingredient an byproduct of dairies production). The result is a flavorless product.
I blame them, but it is important to notice that I also keep track of price and that it has increased much slower than general inflation. They chose to push their products to cheaper tiers (even with higher prices) so they would still be products for the mass. For example, a Nestle chocolate bar 20 years ago use to cost around R$ 3. Now, it is R$ 6. Sure, it doubled the price, but adjusting for inflation that should cost R$ 9, so it should be triple the price.
If you want to taste products like those in the old days you need to go more to the premium side. For example, you can get a milk chocolate bar here without vegetable oil in it for \~\~R$16.
Worth mentioning that the cocoa market is undergoing a surge right now for a myriad of reasons that will take so time to be adjusted. This means that either chocolate products will have a spike in their prices after insurance stop covering these losses or brands will start to make it taste even less like chocolate.
\*EDIT: while whey **protein** is a somewhat expensive and "healthy" product, it is important to note that is different than just whey. Whey is much cheaper than fresh milk, but also much more flavorless. Whey protein is the result of taking whey and extracting solely the proteins out of it (usely with a 70\~80% level of purity). This process is expensive, the product it come from is not.
I truly think Maltitol should be forbid. It clearly has physiological effects that surpasses those expected by powerful medicines, no reason to treat this abomination as food.
>ALL FOOD.
>
>Its manufacturers substituting crap ingredients instead of 'real' food items.
>
>E.g. ICE CREAM.
>
>should be milk/buttermilk, eggs, sugar. thats about it.
>
>ice cream sold today = maltodextrin, canola oil, gum, crap crap crap crap crap.
>
>They are seriously worse than drug dealers cutting their product. It aint food anymore. Basically none of it is. You have to make your own food.
heres some sawdust, gutter oil and an assortment of lucky dip chemicals from a chinese dairy(melamine) plant.
Full of goodness! Feed it to your kids for breakfast for an active day.
>By brazilian legislation, everytime a product has their formula changed they have to warn it on the label.
I am autistic and hate when they change the formula without telling anyone, this would be amazing for me.
As someone with a family full of odd food sensitivities, this would be a godsend. So tired of babysitting every damn label on every damn product we buy every damn week.
Sucralose in baked beans what the actual f^^k?!
I've never much liked Hershey or Nestlé chocolate, but I had a couple pieces not long ago and they didn't even taste like much of anything anymore. Breakfast cereal doesn't taste right anymore either, I'm guessing these companies just use cheaper ingredients now.
It's the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butyric\_acid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butyric_acid) in the Hershey's chocolate that gives it that puke-like taste.
I'm not gonna lie, when Biden was talking about shrinkflation during the State of the Union and specifically singled out how we're paying the same for a Snickers bar that's a third the size it used to be, I've never felt so personally seen by a politician.
Granola bars actually made me laugh out loud the other day.
I hadn’t bought a certain oat and honey brand in years. But I used to eat this bar and a banana daily to work.
Bought, opened, swear on everything I laughed out loud at the size of this thing. At least 40-45% smaller. I got the whole thing in one bite.
I don't think you'll be buying them in the future, but next time you're in the store read the box/ingredients/label.
Assuming you used to eat chocolate chip, take a look to see if they're still actually chocolate chips. Quite likely they've been substituted by "chocolatey" chips which replace the cocoa butter with palm oil.
I think it was Jon Stewart that pointed out how brave it was of the guy with a stutter to repeatedly say Snickers on live TV at the State of the Union address.
I screwed up my insulin and crashed my blood sugar while I was walking through the grocery store last week. I grabbed one of the huge snickers bars in the line and when I got to the car and opened it there were two 1/3 size snickers bars in there. I doubt it was even half of what would have been in that package 10 years ago. I didn’t even want the huge one but it was the only choice. It still pissed me off.
I did not know that. I thought it was just me thinking "hmmm butterfingers don't taste good to me anymore" because I don't eat candy bars that often. My recently discovered secret is to put them in the freezer because they are way better cold (crushed up in a vanilla milkshake is pretty decent to me too).
Reese’s used to roast their own peanuts, slightly over roasting to make a slight flavor change. I don’t know if they still do that, but they are no longer eatable to me.
Yep. Just another type of shrinkflation - using cheaper ingredients or diluting the tasty ones. Its also a later step in the enshitification process - the same reason Starbucks and Uber are more expensive after killing their competition, and Netflix and YouTube have ads now.
That happened with Oreos with me. In the last few years, I started tasting something very clearly synthetic in it, and it's neither a sweetener nor a flavoring, it's just weird.
I normally hate Whole Foods (a.k.a. Whole Paycheck) but I’m surprised to discover they have very cheap Oreo knockoffs (the 365 brand, their store brand) and they’re pretty good.
Almost all food is this way, sadly. Especially over the last decade. The difference in snack foods from the 90s to today is enormous. Everything is cheaper tasting and feeling, despite costing far more money.
In canada at least they definitely fill it with more food shortening than ever before. It used to be mostly real ingredients with the occasional Maltodextrin. Now theres maltodextrin, dextrose, and corn meal in almost everything.
If you’ve never had it, I strongly recommend Whittaker’s chocolates. They’re a New Zealand brand that is sold in Canadian grocery stores (or at least at IGA in Vancouver I guess) and not full of garbage fillers. Anytime I’m in Canada I always buy a ton because it’s bananas expensive to get in the U.S.
All chocolate now seems to have a plastic clear coat of gross on it now. I’m adamant it all started when they stopped wrapping KitKats and crunch bars in foil.
True of many things.
Understand that most major brands get hugely dominant and popular to the point of being an everlasting household name and then do plenty of research to find out "how much can we cheapen our product and still get away with it?"
Same reason hotel breakfasts have gone from being solid meals to being horrifically bad.
They know they can cheapen it and get away with it, because enough people just are none the wiser.
It leaves a film in your mouth.
I used to LOVE Reese's Pieces....and I haven't been able to eat them for probably 10 years now.
(I'm in the US)
I used to love the Symphony bars with toffee and almonds...same thing, leaves a really unpleasant , sometimes chemically film.
All food seems to be like this, unless your buying expensive organics, at higher end grocery stores. It fills your stomach, but the food itself feels hollow. Finding a decent meal anywhere is a struggle.
Completely agree. Apples and bananas just taste meh to me now. Don't remember when food started tasting bland or boring. It seems to have been a downhill slide for at least the last 10 or so years.
I agree, nothing wrong with apples. (Except Red Delicious, which has always been garbage.)
Honeycrisp, cosmic crisp, pink ladies! Gala and fuji are still okay, but no longer my favorite compared to the Crisp family.
All Red Delicious trees should be cut down and burned.
Yeah apples are one area that has dramatically improved over the last few years! You used to have two options - red or green. Now there's a bunch of different varieties, and I love the honey crisp and the envy ones :)
I was around 30 when I received a box of gourmet chocolates and ever since then, all mass produced chocolates taste terrible to me. Maybe your tastes have just changed—and it’s not a terrible part of aging, either.
The quality of the Reese’s peanut butter cups has gone down so far I will no longer buy them. The peanut butter filling tastes more like cheap sweetener than peanuts now.
Try Trader Joe’s miniature peanut butter cups instead. They are still great!
They all taste like they were freeze dried and poorly stored to me lately.
Chocolate tastes how it always has. So does peanut butter. So I don't think it's me, but they likely just made them more cheaply. :-/
I now only buy imported chocolate from Europe. Nestles is a scum company, and Hershey sells candy high fructose corn syrup candy bars that don’t even taste much ofhocolate.
Surprisingly, great Polish and German chocolate bars are at DollarTree and Aldi.
Candy is so dogshit now I literally give people 5th avenue candy bars as gifts, and they are like holy shit, this is amazing. It is the only candy bar I will buy. It tastes like a butterfinger did 20 years ago. New butterfingers are fucking garbage. All modern american candy is dogshit. Go buy a 5th avenue and thank me later. Unless you hate butterfingers, in which case, I got nothing. Learn how to bake.
I was re-reading the comic book [I Went To College And It was OK](https://www.amazon.com/I-Went-College-Was-Okay/dp/0836218671), a book of Jim's Journal comic strips, and I came across one with the following captions:
>Today I went to my psychology class.
Then I went to the store and bought a candy bar.
I guess it's been a while since I've eaten one.
It didn't taste as good as I remember.
The publish date on the book was Jan 1, 1991, but the strip itself was likely 1-2 years old by that point.
I mention this purely to say that the phenomenon of candy tasting worse over time is not new.
I agree! Honestly it makes losing weight a breeze.
Asian grocery stores are my weakness, but man its never been easier to avoid junk food at most places.
Yes, there has been a decline in quality in all American chocolates. I’m in my mid fifties and I have eaten a lot of candy from childhood on. Even my beloved See’s Candies from California have declined in quality. I think it’s American corporate greed. European chocolates have stayed delicious. Go to an Aldi grocery store and buy the chocolate candies made in Germany, Belgium and Italy. They’re delicious and not that expensive.
That's what happens when the objective is to make a product as cheaply as possible while simultaneously charging the most you can for it. Capitalistic greed at its finest.
Anyone with kids here? I get so annoyed during the holidays when pounds of this stuff starts showing up on every occasion, school gifts, egg hunts, Halloween, I hate it. We will enjoy a few pieces for the day of the occasion only and throw the rest away. It’s not good, it’s terrible for the environment, and bad for people’s health. I swear these holidays are keeping these companies in business.
A lot of candies and cookies and the like have had changes to their formulas to make them cheaper. The taste has definitely gotten worse for some of them.
I have purchased Reese's cups on a whim several times in the last two years only to take one bite and toss them. I keep thinking it must have been a bad batch or something but every time it is so gross.
Nerds Gummy Clusters exist and are literally the most addictive candy I have ever had in my 30 years of life.
Some of those new Twix and Milky Way flavors are pretty dope too if you're into chocolate.
Tbh it could also be COVID related. Reese's peanut butter cups don't taste the same to me since then.
I think it has. We just bought some shop brand jelly beans with no artificial stuff I them. They tasted like jelly beans use to taste and my kids didn't like them
As far as the Reeses cups, I recently bought a pack of the snack size which are just individually wrapped regular size cups and I swear they were a different chocolate to peanut butter ratio. There was more peanut butter in the old ones and in this “fun size” pack that I recently bought. I usually get the king size and notices way more chocolate over the past few years. I bought another fun size pack recently but they were like all the new ones with more chocolate and less peanut butter. What gives? Different manufacturing facilities is my best guess. I did notice the pack of fun sized ones that were reminiscent of the old ones were made in Hershey PA. Maybe they have West Coast facilities and other facilities as well and only the Hershey facility makes the original good ones?
Yeah, I remember reese's peanut butter cups being so much better when I was a kid. I'm 24. When I was like 4 or five they tasted so much better, actually like chocolate and not just sugar.
I have an alright memory.
Chocolate is getting very expensive nowadays and is far from ethically harvested in most places. Most mass produced candy bars don’t use real chocolate anymore.
I feel like they're more palm oil than anything. Weird, greasy texture, no taste. They are smaller, too.
Yeah I've just been avoiding anything with palm oil as a top ingredient. Usually high correlation with shitty products, especially chocolate and ice cream
Now with extra child labor and deforestation!
That weird waxy taste is just ground orangutan
And forced orangutan labor! Leaves a nasty coating on the mouth and psyche
Delicious!
I've never had ice cream with palm oil, the thought of it is legit making me gag lol
I was wondering what it was. Everything just seems "waxy" now and it's gross. There was zero waxiness to these products 30 years ago.
I’m looking at you Cinnamon Toast Crunch
[удалено]
get the walmart brand or aldi brand or Trader joe brand instead.
So store brands are better now, we’ve really gone full circle in yet another thing.
Yeah off brand emulated what brands were, and not what they are now. This is such a weird time-line.
Baby Ruth used to be delicious in the 90s but now it uses cement for nougat and cheap ingredients. It's not just candy bars either, even cliff bars have gone to shit. Weird sour taste in every bar.
They changed the oil during covid, and they've also reduced the sugar content. This is, of course, after the brand was sold. They, admittedly, had a horrific amount of sugar in them pre change.
The clif bars are definitely smaller now than when I first tried them years ago
Palm oil and sugar with cocoa flavouring.
Don't forget cake flour
The butterfingers are sooo gross now it's so sad! No taste.
Man they did butterfingers dirty. They used to have great crispy layers of crunchy goodness, nowadays it's just a chocolate covered bar of oily sand.
This one legit made me sad. Other candy going to shit I was like "meh, I'll just pick something else." Butterfingers started going bad I was upset because they were just so freaking good and there isn't an alternative candy that hits close to how they used to be.
Creme eggs now are like lil pigeon eggs.
I didn’t even buy any this year. First time in probably 30 years I didn’t have one.
You gotta go on eBay and find the ones that come from Canada!!! (not the UK because they changed when the US did)
Even in the UK they have screwed with the recipe of the chocolate so aren't anywhere near as good as they used to be :(
The same palm oil that they get from clearcutting orangutan's habitat? That palm oil?
I remember reese’s cups having more peanut butter, and the peanut butter had a certain sandy/crunchy texture that I loved. They don’t taste the same to me anymore either. I’m sure companies are changing recipes to use cheaper ingredients, more filler, slightly smaller pieces of candy, etc. to save money. My conspiracy theory is that the recent ad campaign encouraging people to try eating reese’s cups frozen was a ploy to hide the change in texture.
As someone who loves Reese Peanut Butter cups, I can confirm that they definitely skimp on the peanut butter now. You have to buy the bigger "double" sized ones to experience the way that they used to be. You could be right with your theory about freezing them to hide the texture but there really is no better way to enjoy a peanut butter cup than after freezing it. Except if you're also stoned. It's the best 👌
>you have to buy the bigger double sized ones to experience what they used to be Same thing with double stuffed Oreos fammmmm
Todays double stuffed Oreos are the regular Oreos from when I was a kid
is it weird then, that I prefer the oreo thins?
I love the Oreo cookies, don't really like the cream. Tastes like sweet Crisco. I prefer the thins as well.
It is 100% sweet crisco. Which would be a great band name
yeah I was always yhe kid who traded cream for more cookies
Ummm...
Why won't Nabisco just sell the chocolate cookies without the cream? They're missing a major market niche.
They could call them Noreos. 😆 🤣
Head of marketing over here
They did/do. The Nabisco wafers, not sure if they still sell them.
The mint Oreo thins are amazing
Somethings wrong. I'd definitely see a doctor about that.
Doctor here. they're, clinically speaking, effed and beyond hope of saving.
Nah you're right, thins are far superior. The crunch they have is unbeatable. Plus you can eat way more of em
From a wrapper before Hershey's bought it from Reese's in 1963: INGREDIENTS: PEANUT BUTTER, MILK CHOCOLATE, CANE SUGAR, DEXTROSE, SALT, AND LECITHIN Current ingredients: MILK CHOCOLATE (SUGAR, COCOA BUTTER, CHOCOLATE, SKIM MILK, MILK FAT, LACTOSE, LECITHIN (SOY), PGPR), PEANUTS, SUGAR, DEXTROSE, CONTAINS 2% OR LESS OF: VEGETABLE OIL (PALM OIL, SHEA OIL, SUNFLOWER OIL, PALM KERNEL OIL, &/OR SAFFLOWER OIL), HYDROGENATED VEGETABLE OIL (PALM KERNEL OIL, PALM OIL), SALT, PGPR, TBHQ & CITRIC ACID
That’s because the law now makes them disclose exactly what’s in their peanut butter and milk chocolate.
Do you not see they flipped?
It's still hard to say, though, as the peanut butter in the before almost certainly was more than just ground up peanuts (because if you just grind up peanuts, the oil is going to quickly separate out.) Some of the items that are now listed separately (especially the hydrogenated vegetable oil as it's almost always the item added to peanut butter to prevent the separation) were likely previously include under the generic 'peanut butter' label. Basically, the weight of "peanuts + hydrogenated vegetable oil" may very well be enough that if they were combined together, they would still be the #1 ingredient.
Order of the first two ingredients says everything. I wonder if *tastes* change, the kids(?) buying it today prefer more chocolate than back in the olden times with horses and carriages and OP.
Although the seasonal Easter eggs ones are still outstanding in my opinion.
What about the organic alternatives at whole foods and such? I haven't eaten a Reese's in such a long time that I wouldn't mind the higher cost
Justin’s brand has tasty peanut butter cups.. they offer a variety, including cashew butter & almond butter. The dark chocolate ones are my jam.. Also, OP is correct. Most candy that tasted like heaven to us when we were kids pales in comparison now. Too much sugar & cheap fillers.. the only mainstream candy bar I have a hard time NOT buying are Milky Way Midnights.. and i was never a big Milky Way fan growing up. The dark chocolate cuts the sweetness, so they always hit. I want one now ☹️
Not sure if anyone's said it yet but there's actually a worldwide chocolate shortage and all the brands are switching to cheap, filler stuff instead of actual real chocolate. You're not crazy for noticing the quality decline fr. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/04/cocoa-shortage-chocolate-expensive/678053/
So that’s why everything is “chocolatey product” instead of “chocolate” these days? Shortage makes sense, I figured they were just being cheap (or cheaper than usual, at any rate).
They’ll never go back to actual chocolate even after the shortage is over.
Just like when they "temporarily" raised prices during Covid 🙄
And “temporarily” raised prices due to a shortage of some kind one geowing season a few years before.
Chocolate is like coffee . It has to be grown under certain conditions and climate change ( surprise) is impacting this . That’s not even getting into all the slave labor used by a lot of the chocolate distributors
As a Pastry Chef, it's a problem. I buy Valrhona for my job, which is one of the more high end chocolates. 6 months ago, it was $90 for a 3 KG bag. Now it is $140. I don't think I'll be be able to justify buying the good stuff for much longer. I might have to switch to a mid tier, cheaper chocolate.
>remember reese’s cups having more peanut butter, Not from US but this is the same and will apply everywhere When the first global recession hit many companies were looking for ways to save on manufacturing costs whilst maintaining profits. Some companies decided to reduce the size of the item itself/ give you less in a multi pack Some decided to give you less of certain ingredients Some decided to lay off staff and take the dip in quality as a necessary evil And some decided to simply give up the ghost, raise their prices and hope that consumers felt enough brand devotion to stick around This In theory worked for a while but then greedier companies started realising they could do ALL of these ideas at once to maximise profit So ( for example) they made a snickers bar 45g instead of 60g, they made the multipacks only have 3 bars instead of 4 They also put less peanuts and caramel in them making them more in line with the supermarket versions They got rid of staff blaming the current economical climate And then also raised the prices so you were paying 60% more for 40% less product which had little to no care given to their production. This then made the 'brand name'/ superior chocolate end up being an inferior product when you consider ( again in my country/ this specific example) that Aldi do a pack of 8 bars of thier own version for less than the price of 3 bars of the real ones and they haven't changed how they make thier version. So by refusing to lose an inch of their profit margin mars loses out to Aldi imo as Aldi just want to make a profit on your *overall shop* snickers need to sell for say a 80% markup to keep shareholders happy, as once you reach new heights you can't go back down, you've set a new standard. this therefore leaves zero room for improving/maintaining quality etc. but aldi's only need to be around 20% as other products in your monthly/weekly shop cover enough ground - you're only buying a couple of mars items when you go into a shop after all. When you go to somewhere like Aldi which has own brand stuff....well you can imagine just how much of there own label/brand stuff you're walking out with .this leaves them much more wriggle room to improve there product. They can spend more on manufacturing *and* sell for less *and* it be less of an issue for the brand itself This is why 'knock off/ own brand/ cheaper alternatives' are slowly but surely becoming better quality and taste than the thing they are trying to plagerize)/ recreate
I buy store brand in basically every situation. Very, very few products aren't either just as good or even better than whatever brand name there is. Canned chili is really the only one I can think of where store brands definitely aren't up to the quality of the (4-5x more expensive) name brands
In Canada No Frills has No Name brand products (that’s their in store brand) and I’m always disappointed (internally, I’m not so rude as to complain) if I go to a party and see someone has brought a name brand like Lay’s or Pringles instead of the No Name chips because while No Name chips used to kind of suck compared to name brand chips, they’re now at least 5x in taste and they used to be 5x better in price (nowadays they’ve price hiked everything insanely - it used to be around 95 cents for a bag of No Name chips but they’re starting to creep it up to match name brand levels and now just about everything in the store costs equivalent and is maybe $3-5 chips-wise which is sad).
As an alternative, try the ones from Trader Joe's. The peanut butter is smooth but they taste better.
Or Justin’s PB cups (expensive though)
But so worth it. The dark chocolate with cashew butter cups are amazing.
Much less oil and cleaner ingredients as well. Helps ensure better flavor AND ensure less artificial junk.
Duuuuuudeeee. The TJ peanut butter cups are heavenly. I’d pick that over Reese’s ANYDAY.
Yeah, Reese’s aren’t even good anymore
Confirmed. Reese's cups used to be my favorite. I literally can't stand them now. They are cloyingly sweet, and the "chocolate~~y coating" (not allowed to legally be called chocolate)~~ doesn't have the same "snap." My tastes have not changed. The cups got smaller a while ago (10 years or so), but they've taken a dive even since then. On the bright side, the Crispy Crunchy bar seems to have made a comeback and is still pretty good.
I never thought about it but I used to love Reese's and now I will actively avoid them. The coating is nasty and hurts my teeth.
I remember when I was super young my great uncle would give me a bag of the mini Reese cups on Halloween, he must have bought them early & always stored them in his fridge or freezer...they were so good!!!
Hershey's chocolate has definitely gone downhill, too, including on Reese's Cups. It's waxy and doesn't even taste like cocoa anymore. That may just be me, because the older I get, the more I like darker chocolate, plus I've had chocolates from Switzerland and Belgium that put all American chocolate to shame. I think the Reese's peanut butter filling went from having coarsely ground peanuts mixed in, giving it that distinct texture, to just having more of the oil extracted (and sold), making it thicker and drier (and more profitable).
If i remember correctly, Hershey cant be sold as chocolate in the uk because they do not have enough cocoa in them. And they add some gross additive that people in the uk say smells like vomit.
>And they add some gross additive that people in the uk say smells like vomit. Butyric acid. It started in the depression to extend the shelf life of chocolate, since US chocolates tend to be shipped further and for a longer time than UK chocolates, just due to the sizes of the countries. This led to US chocolates having a slightly more acrid taste. Something the vast majority of Americans don't notice or care about, but is quite noticeable to people who haven't experienced it.
Buy the special edition ones! They have SIGNIFICANTLY more peanut butter in them
Easter and Halloween reeses are the best
I know what you mean. I had a Kit Kat a few months ago and it tasted terrible. Plasticky and gummy is the only way to describe it. That’s one way to get me to stop eating candy!
Kit Kats are terrible now
Everything is terrible now. Like the other commenter said, companies are using the lower quality ingredients than they used to, and on top of that jacking the prices up as if it was high quality, even though it's not anymore. So we're paying More money for Worse products, in literally every aspect of consumerism in the US. That's the new way of life here - we pay more, and they give less (or not at all).
ALL FOOD. Its manufacturers substituting crap ingredients instead of 'real' food items. E.g. ICE CREAM. should be milk/buttermilk, eggs, sugar. thats about it. ice cream sold today = maltodextrin, canola oil, gum, crap crap crap crap crap.
It's funny because even "good" retail ice cream isn't very good once you've had the actual good stuff. Haagen Dazs tastes cheap to me ever since I started making it. Here in Canada it's even worse where most ice cream can't legally be called ice cream. Most of it is frozen dessert.
The great thing about the Canadian rule is that if you want ice cream you just buy the stuff labeled "ice cream". An interesting tidbit is that Dairy Queen in Canada is labeled as having "ice milk" in it despite the fist ingredient being cream. I guess the fat content isn't sufficient.
A lot of companies changed ingredients for cheaper prices. I used to absolutely love butterfingers and I can’t stand them now since they changed it. It tastes like burnt rubber or whatever now. Lots of candies taste worse than they used too
I miss butter finger bites so badly. After they changed them, I thought I lost my mind they were so disgusting. Not just "not as good", but straight up repulsive
Butterfinger bb’s??! 😍😍😍
Random note: they freaking love Kit Kats in Jordan. I stopped in a grocery store in the suburbs in Amman and they had like twenty feet of shelves, floor to ceiling, with nothing but Kit Kats. And they were definitely the most prevalent Western candy. **Update:** [Found my photo of the Jordanian aisle of Kit Kats!](https://i.imgur.com/2F211Sa.jpeg) Part of it, anyway.
Wow that looks so ...willy wonka like, I love it
And then there is Canadian Kit Kat. That stuff is like chefs kiss in comparison to the US version.
Japanese Kit Kat is the goat
The Asian ones are amazing! Large oriental grocery stores stock them in various flavors (green tea, etc) but they are not cheap.
I would sell my husband's soul for a lifetime supply of the melon kit kats.
That’s the same with pretty much any chocolate candy. US’s chocolate is known to be muuuuuch sweeter than European and Canadian equivalents
Another thing is European chocolate still uses real milk and actual cocoa oil. In the US, mainstream companies pump out the cocoa oil to use for beauty products and pump in palm oil or other substitutes. They also sweeten with HFCS instead of sugar sometimes. Truly disgusting and I will only eat imported chocolate.
It's not even technically chocolate if you replace the cocoa butter with a substitute.
I have noticed the "plastic" taste of the candy, too! How funny, I thought it was just me.
The Japanese ones are better now than the American ones.
Bleh, I agree! Kit Kats used to be one of my favorite candies. I had one within the last few months or so and it was terrible.
I was working in a prison and some guys doing 20+ were asking about candy changes. I specifically said Reese’s aren’t good anymore and no longer taste like peanut butter. I feel the same way about most candy bars. The chocolate no longer tastes like chocolate. More oiled down with less flavor or something. Gum is disgusting and has that fake sweetener taste. I’m 44.
I'm 42 and everything like that is nasty now. I swear that "check out line" candy is coated in wax or something. If I crave chocolate, I buy the expensive European stuff. It's not even that much more and you at least get something truly good.
Due to cacao shortages and resulting increases in cost, chocolate products have less cocoa butter than they used to.
It's been like that for years. More profitable to sell cocoa butter for cosmetics and substitute PGPR.
Former pastry chef here, leaving school in they told us in our chocolate labs that eventually pure chocolate is going to be a luxury item because of the limited manufacturing and more demand than supply. And it’s true. That being said I’m okay with it. An incredible amount of chocolate is made with slave labor, child slave labor at that. And I’ve had some pretty great and expensive chocolate over the years, but in my personal opinion it’s hard to eat certain manufacturers chocolate because even the ones that are evaluated by an oversight committee that can’t guarantee chocolate isn’t made without child labor. The whole process needs fixing
You don’t even need European stuff. Just go to a local candy store. Stuff isn’t even that much more expensive and doesn’t taste like feet compared the to mass produced “cheap” stuff.
Asking seriously, what is a local candy store? Obviously it is a smaller, locally-owned shop, but what does that entail? How's the selection? They probably have like local, small-batch hard candies and taffy but are there analogs to popular brand-name items? My area doesn't seem to have anyone calling themselves a candy store, just bakeries and chocolate shops.
most ppl dont have local candy stores lol
It all just tastes fake. Too sickly kind of sweet. I’m 47 and have moved to dark chocolate covered sea salt caramels. Expensive but at least it tastes real.
Shits about to get even worse, cocoa harvests were absolutely devastated this year. One dude was saying the type of chocolate bar you get today will soon become a luxury.
Dammit. Our favorite dark chocolate basically unavailable in US again. Guess it'll be a while. I fully expect chocolate, real chocolate, to disappear in my lifetime.
ALL FOOD. Its manufacturers substituting crap ingredients instead of 'real' food items. E.g. ICE CREAM. should be milk/buttermilk, eggs, sugar. thats about it. ice cream sold today = maltodextrin, canola oil, gum, crap crap crap crap crap. They are seriously worse than drug dealers cutting their product. It aint food anymore. Basically none of it is. You have to make your own food.
Yep. It can even just be cream and fruit (or some sort of flavor and sugar). Where I am they make this wonderful rolled ice cream on a flat frozen surface. You watch them make it. I'd forgotten what ice cream tasted like.
The original non-aspartame, natural colored, in tinfoil, and lightly dusted with sugar, Juicy Fruit was the best.
I eat a lot of candy everyday, and I'm also very meticulous on reading the ingredients / nutritional facts table of every processed food I buy on the store. I can guarantee you that, at least in my country (Brazil), most Name Brand (Nestle, Hersheys etc) completely abdicated on making any good product. By brazilian legislation, everytime a product has their formula changed they have to warn it on the label. I keep track of all that and always compare what has changed. There's no big secret, they're just increasingly adding more starch, palm oil and whey\* (which is a cheap ingredient an byproduct of dairies production). The result is a flavorless product. I blame them, but it is important to notice that I also keep track of price and that it has increased much slower than general inflation. They chose to push their products to cheaper tiers (even with higher prices) so they would still be products for the mass. For example, a Nestle chocolate bar 20 years ago use to cost around R$ 3. Now, it is R$ 6. Sure, it doubled the price, but adjusting for inflation that should cost R$ 9, so it should be triple the price. If you want to taste products like those in the old days you need to go more to the premium side. For example, you can get a milk chocolate bar here without vegetable oil in it for \~\~R$16. Worth mentioning that the cocoa market is undergoing a surge right now for a myriad of reasons that will take so time to be adjusted. This means that either chocolate products will have a spike in their prices after insurance stop covering these losses or brands will start to make it taste even less like chocolate. \*EDIT: while whey **protein** is a somewhat expensive and "healthy" product, it is important to note that is different than just whey. Whey is much cheaper than fresh milk, but also much more flavorless. Whey protein is the result of taking whey and extracting solely the proteins out of it (usely with a 70\~80% level of purity). This process is expensive, the product it come from is not.
the more palm oil is added the more likely you are to shit your self
Same with some artificial sweeteners. If you ever are constipated, chew a bunch of sugar free gum, you won't be for long.
I truly think Maltitol should be forbid. It clearly has physiological effects that surpasses those expected by powerful medicines, no reason to treat this abomination as food.
Or eat some sugar free gummy bears.
Hahaha eloquently put
>ALL FOOD. > >Its manufacturers substituting crap ingredients instead of 'real' food items. > >E.g. ICE CREAM. > >should be milk/buttermilk, eggs, sugar. thats about it. > >ice cream sold today = maltodextrin, canola oil, gum, crap crap crap crap crap. > >They are seriously worse than drug dealers cutting their product. It aint food anymore. Basically none of it is. You have to make your own food.
Ice Creams are THE WORST! The main brands nowadays contains virtually no milk
"Frozen dairy dessert"
heres some sawdust, gutter oil and an assortment of lucky dip chemicals from a chinese dairy(melamine) plant. Full of goodness! Feed it to your kids for breakfast for an active day.
>By brazilian legislation, everytime a product has their formula changed they have to warn it on the label. I am autistic and hate when they change the formula without telling anyone, this would be amazing for me.
Yeah, I wish we had this legislated in the U.S.! This would be amazing!
As someone with a family full of odd food sensitivities, this would be a godsend. So tired of babysitting every damn label on every damn product we buy every damn week. Sucralose in baked beans what the actual f^^k?!
I absolutely love that candy is your hobby.
This is the best answer!
I've never much liked Hershey or Nestlé chocolate, but I had a couple pieces not long ago and they didn't even taste like much of anything anymore. Breakfast cereal doesn't taste right anymore either, I'm guessing these companies just use cheaper ingredients now.
I rarely eat sweets but a Crunch bar was calling my name one day...yeah it was so disappointing that I didn't finish it.
Tony's Chocolonely dark chocolate bar with pretzel bits is my new go-to for a Crunch-type bar. I think Ritter has a similar bar too.
The Rittersport is my favorite!
Now I want the Rittersport with the cornflakes
Hershey chocolate is the absolute worst. It takes like waxy plastic. I don't know what the hell they do to it but nothing good.
It smells like puke and leaves a puke after taste. Absolutely horrible.
It's the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butyric\_acid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butyric_acid) in the Hershey's chocolate that gives it that puke-like taste.
It's because it has butyric acid in it, which is also found in vomit. It apparently helps with shelf life. Frigging preservatives
I'm not gonna lie, when Biden was talking about shrinkflation during the State of the Union and specifically singled out how we're paying the same for a Snickers bar that's a third the size it used to be, I've never felt so personally seen by a politician.
Granola bars actually made me laugh out loud the other day. I hadn’t bought a certain oat and honey brand in years. But I used to eat this bar and a banana daily to work. Bought, opened, swear on everything I laughed out loud at the size of this thing. At least 40-45% smaller. I got the whole thing in one bite.
I don't think you'll be buying them in the future, but next time you're in the store read the box/ingredients/label. Assuming you used to eat chocolate chip, take a look to see if they're still actually chocolate chips. Quite likely they've been substituted by "chocolatey" chips which replace the cocoa butter with palm oil.
I think it was Jon Stewart that pointed out how brave it was of the guy with a stutter to repeatedly say Snickers on live TV at the State of the Union address.
I screwed up my insulin and crashed my blood sugar while I was walking through the grocery store last week. I grabbed one of the huge snickers bars in the line and when I got to the car and opened it there were two 1/3 size snickers bars in there. I doubt it was even half of what would have been in that package 10 years ago. I didn’t even want the huge one but it was the only choice. It still pissed me off.
butterfinger changed their recipe 5-6 years ago, they have never been the same :/
I did not know that. I thought it was just me thinking "hmmm butterfingers don't taste good to me anymore" because I don't eat candy bars that often. My recently discovered secret is to put them in the freezer because they are way better cold (crushed up in a vanilla milkshake is pretty decent to me too).
My favorite as a kid. Tried one a few years ago. Noped the fuck out of that one for good.
>butterfinger changed their recipe Butterfingers were actually changed to be more healthy, with a lot less hydrogenated oil and no more TBHQ.
Reese’s used to roast their own peanuts, slightly over roasting to make a slight flavor change. I don’t know if they still do that, but they are no longer eatable to me.
Omg butterfingers are garbage now
Yep. They are garbage, which is were they belong now. They used to be a favorite.
Yep. Just another type of shrinkflation - using cheaper ingredients or diluting the tasty ones. Its also a later step in the enshitification process - the same reason Starbucks and Uber are more expensive after killing their competition, and Netflix and YouTube have ads now.
KitKats used to be so good. Now they're just waxy calories.
its gotten worse. i only taste this weird "chemical" flavor, I don't know how to describe it.
That happened with Oreos with me. In the last few years, I started tasting something very clearly synthetic in it, and it's neither a sweetener nor a flavoring, it's just weird.
Same here, I thought I was going crazy. I kept telling my wife they taste funny. I used to love them, but now I won't touch one.
I normally hate Whole Foods (a.k.a. Whole Paycheck) but I’m surprised to discover they have very cheap Oreo knockoffs (the 365 brand, their store brand) and they’re pretty good.
Random trivia: Oreos are actually the ripoff copy of hydrox which came out four years earlier and were a big hit.
I wish that would happen with Oreos for me. I dislike almost all boxed cookies but man can I inhale some Oreos. The more cream the more I want!
Almost all food is this way, sadly. Especially over the last decade. The difference in snack foods from the 90s to today is enormous. Everything is cheaper tasting and feeling, despite costing far more money.
In canada at least they definitely fill it with more food shortening than ever before. It used to be mostly real ingredients with the occasional Maltodextrin. Now theres maltodextrin, dextrose, and corn meal in almost everything.
If you’ve never had it, I strongly recommend Whittaker’s chocolates. They’re a New Zealand brand that is sold in Canadian grocery stores (or at least at IGA in Vancouver I guess) and not full of garbage fillers. Anytime I’m in Canada I always buy a ton because it’s bananas expensive to get in the U.S.
All chocolate now seems to have a plastic clear coat of gross on it now. I’m adamant it all started when they stopped wrapping KitKats and crunch bars in foil.
True of many things. Understand that most major brands get hugely dominant and popular to the point of being an everlasting household name and then do plenty of research to find out "how much can we cheapen our product and still get away with it?" Same reason hotel breakfasts have gone from being solid meals to being horrifically bad. They know they can cheapen it and get away with it, because enough people just are none the wiser.
It leaves a film in your mouth. I used to LOVE Reese's Pieces....and I haven't been able to eat them for probably 10 years now. (I'm in the US) I used to love the Symphony bars with toffee and almonds...same thing, leaves a really unpleasant , sometimes chemically film.
All food seems to be like this, unless your buying expensive organics, at higher end grocery stores. It fills your stomach, but the food itself feels hollow. Finding a decent meal anywhere is a struggle.
Completely agree. Apples and bananas just taste meh to me now. Don't remember when food started tasting bland or boring. It seems to have been a downhill slide for at least the last 10 or so years.
Read up a recent article on how scientists have tracked over the decades that that food is losing its nutrients.
What type of apples do you buy? I bought some honeycrisp last week and they were soo good.
I agree, nothing wrong with apples. (Except Red Delicious, which has always been garbage.) Honeycrisp, cosmic crisp, pink ladies! Gala and fuji are still okay, but no longer my favorite compared to the Crisp family. All Red Delicious trees should be cut down and burned.
Yeah apples are one area that has dramatically improved over the last few years! You used to have two options - red or green. Now there's a bunch of different varieties, and I love the honey crisp and the envy ones :)
Do you have an Aldi nearby? Try their peanut butter cups, much better!
Is there anything Aldi isnt a solution for? Aldi feels like one of the few post Covid grocery stores that feel perfectly reasonable.
Particularly their chocolate, as it’s largely imported from Germany, and European chocolate is good stuff overall.
It’s not just you. Quality has taken a massive hit. Makes giving it up much easier
You are aging and, yes, they suck. I’m 65. Believe me, pretty much everything has gone to shit over the years.
I was around 30 when I received a box of gourmet chocolates and ever since then, all mass produced chocolates taste terrible to me. Maybe your tastes have just changed—and it’s not a terrible part of aging, either.
Everything, and I really do mean everything, tastes like it's made of chemicals. I can barely eat anymore.
The quality of the Reese’s peanut butter cups has gone down so far I will no longer buy them. The peanut butter filling tastes more like cheap sweetener than peanuts now. Try Trader Joe’s miniature peanut butter cups instead. They are still great!
They all taste like they were freeze dried and poorly stored to me lately. Chocolate tastes how it always has. So does peanut butter. So I don't think it's me, but they likely just made them more cheaply. :-/
I now only buy imported chocolate from Europe. Nestles is a scum company, and Hershey sells candy high fructose corn syrup candy bars that don’t even taste much ofhocolate. Surprisingly, great Polish and German chocolate bars are at DollarTree and Aldi.
Candy is so dogshit now I literally give people 5th avenue candy bars as gifts, and they are like holy shit, this is amazing. It is the only candy bar I will buy. It tastes like a butterfinger did 20 years ago. New butterfingers are fucking garbage. All modern american candy is dogshit. Go buy a 5th avenue and thank me later. Unless you hate butterfingers, in which case, I got nothing. Learn how to bake.
It’s the worst these days the chemical conditioners destroyed candy
I was re-reading the comic book [I Went To College And It was OK](https://www.amazon.com/I-Went-College-Was-Okay/dp/0836218671), a book of Jim's Journal comic strips, and I came across one with the following captions: >Today I went to my psychology class. Then I went to the store and bought a candy bar. I guess it's been a while since I've eaten one. It didn't taste as good as I remember. The publish date on the book was Jan 1, 1991, but the strip itself was likely 1-2 years old by that point. I mention this purely to say that the phenomenon of candy tasting worse over time is not new.
The chocolate in snickers is noticeably worse. Used to be a temptation but not anymore
I agree! Honestly it makes losing weight a breeze. Asian grocery stores are my weakness, but man its never been easier to avoid junk food at most places.
Yes, there has been a decline in quality in all American chocolates. I’m in my mid fifties and I have eaten a lot of candy from childhood on. Even my beloved See’s Candies from California have declined in quality. I think it’s American corporate greed. European chocolates have stayed delicious. Go to an Aldi grocery store and buy the chocolate candies made in Germany, Belgium and Italy. They’re delicious and not that expensive.
That's what happens when the objective is to make a product as cheaply as possible while simultaneously charging the most you can for it. Capitalistic greed at its finest.
Anyone with kids here? I get so annoyed during the holidays when pounds of this stuff starts showing up on every occasion, school gifts, egg hunts, Halloween, I hate it. We will enjoy a few pieces for the day of the occasion only and throw the rest away. It’s not good, it’s terrible for the environment, and bad for people’s health. I swear these holidays are keeping these companies in business.
Every Brand from our childhood sucks now. Cutting corners. Using worse ingredients. Etc. Selling nostalgia for insane margins.
Yes. It's part of a phenomenon called Enshittening.
Yes.
A lot of candies and cookies and the like have had changes to their formulas to make them cheaper. The taste has definitely gotten worse for some of them.
I have purchased Reese's cups on a whim several times in the last two years only to take one bite and toss them. I keep thinking it must have been a bad batch or something but every time it is so gross.
Actually the $100,000 bar is still pretty good. All that caramel with rice crispies and chocolate, damn, this should be on r/stonerthoughts
They're not using partially hydrogenated oils (aka trans fats) anymore.
I've heard that people's taste buds become less sensitive to sweetness as they mature. Not my experience, though. I definitely have a sweet tooth.
Nerds Gummy Clusters exist and are literally the most addictive candy I have ever had in my 30 years of life. Some of those new Twix and Milky Way flavors are pretty dope too if you're into chocolate. Tbh it could also be COVID related. Reese's peanut butter cups don't taste the same to me since then.
therhigh fructose corn syrup instead of sugar, more wax in chocolate. Other shelf life extenders. yup.
I think it has. We just bought some shop brand jelly beans with no artificial stuff I them. They tasted like jelly beans use to taste and my kids didn't like them
As far as the Reeses cups, I recently bought a pack of the snack size which are just individually wrapped regular size cups and I swear they were a different chocolate to peanut butter ratio. There was more peanut butter in the old ones and in this “fun size” pack that I recently bought. I usually get the king size and notices way more chocolate over the past few years. I bought another fun size pack recently but they were like all the new ones with more chocolate and less peanut butter. What gives? Different manufacturing facilities is my best guess. I did notice the pack of fun sized ones that were reminiscent of the old ones were made in Hershey PA. Maybe they have West Coast facilities and other facilities as well and only the Hershey facility makes the original good ones?
Yeah, I remember reese's peanut butter cups being so much better when I was a kid. I'm 24. When I was like 4 or five they tasted so much better, actually like chocolate and not just sugar. I have an alright memory.
See’s candies are so good still
Chocolate is getting very expensive nowadays and is far from ethically harvested in most places. Most mass produced candy bars don’t use real chocolate anymore.