h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I agree with some of your comments on American chocolate. Having tasted their own makes (Hershey's, etc) and our own (Cadbury's, Terry's, etc) our chocolate is far superior in quality. And even when I was in Australia, I'd go to the shop for a Dairy Milk or a bag of Malteasers, and the chocolate still tastes different; this was very strange as Cadbury's has a factory in Tasmania so the chocolate should, in theory, taste exactly the same.

However, I wouldn't say that the Americans aren't as cultured as we are when it comes to chocolate - American food is mostly processed and there isn't as much taste in it (but Americans are so used to it they don't notice), but for things like chocolate and sweets, their food licensing laws are a lot stricter than ours; ingredients used here quite legitimately are banned in America - for example, you can't get red Smarties there because the red dye is banned. That's why when Americans come over here, they load up with huge bars of chocolate in the duty free!

Incidentally, did anyone else know that because Britain's chocolate making standards are so high, a lot of Belgian companies have their chocolate made here...?

It's a funny thing, chocolate. One man's meat is another man's boiled bit of dead animal flesh.

I should stress there are NO opinions of my own in the entry - except for the footnotes. The body text is a verbatim copy of the intro to the book, and those comments date back, as it says, to the early 1920s. I personally have never tasted American chocolate, so I have no opinion on it.

It's apparent that in general, whatever chocolate you personally were brought up with (e.g., in the UK, Cadbury/Mars/Nestle/Terry's etc.) are what you regard as "the best" and everything is compared to that, and usually fails the comparison one way or the other. For instance, the average Briton finds Polish chocolate smoky and crumbly, French chocolate hard and bitter, Belgian chocolate sickly and soft and American chocolate, well, you tell me. But the point is, all those people don't like English chocolate for a whole other variety of reasons to do with it being different to what they were brought up on.

As far as chocolate tasting different... Example: Cadbury's make Dairy Milk bars in Bournville, England, and also in Dublin, Ireland. Not that far apart... but they definitely tastes different (try a Flake - that's Irish Dairy Milk) You could put that down to a couple of factors - milk from Irish cows is different to milk from English cows, and the process used to make the chocolate is different between the two factories. They *should* taste the same, but they don't. It's no surprise at all, therefore, to learn that Australia's version tastes different. All that matters really is that the bar you buy today tastes the same as the bar you bought yesterday, and last week, and twenty years ago. Any company making something as mass market as a Mars bar is most interested in keeping its successful product consistent, and NOT changing it at all, even if the change could be seen as an improvement. (e.g. again, a few years back I saw a tv show on which kids were asking questions of a man who worked for Cadburys. One of them said that he had the distinct impression that Creme Eggs got smaller every year. The company man fixed him with a benevolent smile and said something along the lines of "young man, when you have a product as successful as a Creme Egg, you don't change it for *anything*.")

Which Belgian companies make chocolate in the UK, and where??? I haven't heard that, and as you can probably tell, I'm *into* my chocolate!

H.

Me too - that's why I've tried so many different types. When I was out in Australia, although I knew I was eating Cadbury's by the taste (yes, it wasn't that different! ) I thought that surely like Mars, there would be a constant standard. After all, their food laws aren't really much different from ours. I took some chocolate with me too, and people preferred the British Dairy Milk to the Australian version, so I don't know.

I'm not sure which companies make their Belgian chocolates here - I read a newspaper report a year or so back about things not being as they seem in the food world (i.e. Sunny Delight having no fruit juice in it, etc), but I too would love to find out.

In the meantime, have some