> The second example: thanks to harmonised EU rules you can put palm oil in your chocolate without loudly declaring it and still call it chocolate on the packaging. (You just have to mention the palm oil in the fine-print list of ingredients.) By and large, German customers don't like palm oil in their chocolate. So German supermarkets mostly only carry 'proper' chocolate. So we private companies regulating the German chocolate market, to give consumers what they want.
Except, Hershey has been using vegetable oils in Chocolate in the US, due to lower costs and lax regulation, for decades. It hasn't stopped them at all and is the primary reason the cheap commercial chocolates in the US "taste like vomit", to foreigners.
The vomit taste comes from butyric acid, I believe - which seems to be a breakdown product of milk:
The process is a company and trade secret, but experts speculate that the milk is partially lipolyzed. This produces butyric acid, a compound found in substances such as Parmesan cheese which stabilizes the milk from further fermentation. This flavor gives the product a "tangy" taste that the US public has come to associate with the taste of chocolate …
My understanding was that butyric acid was a byproduct of the overall process. I am not an expert at all though, so thanks for the correction.
I think that just further reinforces the point though, that the market doesn't correct for a (generally regarded) subpar product, on its own. It requires external influence; whether it be regulatory, cultural, health-based, etc.
Americans prioritized the price over the accuracy of the product, and at this point the "vomit" flavor is what Americans prefer. Same deal with other foods full of oil like American cheese. Same thing with other artificial ingredients like gums (cream cheese, ice cream, etc.).
These foods are deeply ingrained with the culture now. It's much more complex than just having an opinion about how things are made and assuming that opinion is correct.
Just because a vocal minority complains about the quality of a product doesn't mean the majority agrees or stops buying it. People vote with their wallets.
This is just moving goalposts based on your weird biases. Even on an almost 1:1 comparison, you're handwaving away because "Americans just like shitty food".
OP claimed that the market would balance things out when given subpar foods. When Hershey first made these subpar chocolates the market didn't correct it, despite OP's claims. Just like how the market didn't correct meat glue use in Europe, until it was regulated out.
> OP claimed that the market would balance things out when given subpar foods.
No, I never claimed that. The claim that I wanted to make is the one that sublinear made: the market provides what the people care enough about that they are willing to pay for.
Eg Germany has good pork and decent chocolate in mainstream supermarkets. But the boil-in-bag rice those places sell would make your average Asian through up a little.
Consumer regulation does the least harm, when it is the least necessary: when the mainstream consumer already agrees with it, and when it's reasonably easy for knowledgeable people with different tastes to side-step.
Eg the German 'Reinheitsgebot' purity law has some strict rules about what you can put in your beer and still call it 'Bier'. But it doesn't actually restrict the knowledgeable consumer: your supplier can concoct whatever they feel like, they might just have to get creative with the name.
If Americans like 'shitty food', that's up to them. Who are we to judge them?
Your point might apply if Lindt, Ghirardelli and Guitard weren't the most popular chocolates after Hershey's; all considered pretty high quality. That's like saying "Germans like shitty meat because you can buy cheap, low-quality sausages at the corner store" (which I can attest to myself, anecdotally).
The point being, a lack of regulations allowed for low quality chocolates that are available and some people purchase. There's no reason to believe the same wouldn't happen in other countries; Germans, French, Japanese, etc aren't somehow more enlightened about food.
I never made a statement towards my personal preference for or against regulations, because it's moot to the topic.
I simply was countering the claim that regulations were unnecessary to block the production and sale of low-quality foods, based on cultural merits (or, in general).
If my personal opinion matters at all, I'm a hardline libertarian on any issues that directly affect (to avoid going down a conversational pigeonhole of obesity affecting the medical system, or otherwise) solely the individual.
Drug consumption, food, prostitution (e.g. a single person/entity choosing to sell their body/intimate services to another person/entity in a consensual and legally protected manner), personal data encryption, etc: zero regulations, beyond commercial ones forcing full disclosure by corporations ("our food was sprayed with these pesticides", etc)/the authority entity (full disclosure on STD testing by sex work provider and consumer).
Trafficking (including the less savory forms of sex work, such as pimping and brothel work that constitutes servitude/slavery), gun ownership/sales, drug sales, fraud, employer relations, tenant protections, etc: regulated (including banning, in many cases) in favor of the general public.
If someone is fully aware that Hershey's has butyric acid and vegetable oil in it, and still chooses to consume it; go for it. If Hershey's add a heavy carcinogen to their recipe which increases general risk for cancer, probably should regulate it. It's a muddy line, but it's like they say about porn: "you know it when you see it"; and one feels like a clear societal problem.
It's more like saying that Germans like shitty meat because the best selling kind was the cheap, low-quality sausages at the corner store. Your attestation is the cherry on top.
It's not the Hershey's chocolate bar that this impacts, and makes it taste of vomit, as already mentioned it's the soured milk that causes that. The extra vegetable oils impact the white chocolate more obviously.
Have you tried American white chocolate, like the white Kisses? Candles have more flavour.
My grandparents used to have a fruit bowl that looked extremely tempting. However there were not real fruit, and even though I was a child, that waxy tasteless mouthful of disappointment has never left me.
My MIL has white chocolate kisses (and those grim white chocolate mint ones) every Christmas, and they remind me of that same day if I ever feel like I might have been too hard on them and try one.
Candles might have dripped melted wax on some birthday cakes, in my past...
(( But even so, I can't say any kind of white chocolate tastes like or has less taste than candle wax. White chocolate has distinctive tastes...which I don't like, and stubbornly refuse to believe the tosh that it's chocolate. ))
I'm from the US and I've had this same thought about American chocolate tasting like vomit. I figured I was just overly sensitive to the taste, sort of like how coffee smells like skunk sometimes.
Except, Hershey has been using vegetable oils in Chocolate in the US, due to lower costs and lax regulation, for decades. It hasn't stopped them at all and is the primary reason the cheap commercial chocolates in the US "taste like vomit", to foreigners.