Hacker News Reader

Comment by nikole9696 | Hacker News Reader

This might explain my recent experience too. I've been on a health journey and stopped eating most junk some time back. Recently, I decided to go ahead and splurge and get a chocolate bar that I always used to love. It tasted like hot garbage. Whether that's because my taste buds have changed or the product did is probably debatable, but I'm thrilled it's no longer a temptation to buy it!

They ruined Cadbury Eggs years ago for me, and now "fun size" snickers too!

View on HN

Check the ingredients in that chocolate, and it will probably have something called "PGPR" in the list. PGPR is a flavorless, odorless, waxy solid with a similar (but not identical) melting profile to cocoa butter. Now cocoa butter is expensive and getting more expensive, and companies like Reese's, Cadbury's and a lot of others just started cutting much of the cocoa butter out and added in PGPR as filler.

That's just one way these products became flavorless, waxy, and generally unpleasant. Of course to combat this more sugar is often added, just to keep people coming back. More broadly though highly processed food is just too salty, too sweet, and often has a background of off-flavors... but it takes time away from them to start noticing it.

PGPR is polyglycerol polyricinoleate -- an emulsifier made from glycerol and fatty acids. It's used to modify the flowability of molten chocolate and is typically less than 1/2 percent of the chocolate mix. If a company is using more than that the chocolate probably isn't going to harden... It's one of the hundreds of "mostly harmless" additives you see everywhere these days not a filler. Whether all these additives are really ok once you put them in every single thing has yet to be seen.

That makes a lot of sense. I recall thinking that it just tasted like slightly chocolate flavored sugar and was waxy - no flavor at all, just sweet and waxy. I guess you get what you pay for - my other splurge lately was a tiny chocolate from a specialty shop that was $1 for a single small piece, which I balked at, but it was DELICIOUS.

I feel like it's kind of case by case with the chocolate bars. Overall, quality has declined, but some more than others. I think Snickers are still ok, but for example KitKat is absolute trash, along with Milk Duds, Whoppers, Baby Ruth ...

Source: eating my kids' leftover Halloween candy

There must be separate quality lines because the stuff they put in the Halloween variety bags always tastes bad but getting a standard KitKat is better. I've definitely noticed the variety packs also pick up each others flavors.

Do you want to hear the fun part - all of those taste amazing in East and South East Asia for some reason. They have the best American junk food there for some reason.

Wondering how much this depends on locale?

Perhaps the degree to which people's tastebuds are trained on real foods, determines how much skimping on ingredients (in pre-packaged and/or junkfoods) is tolerated there?

Would be nice to see some research on that.

Butterfingers used to be great. They're awful now.

I'd wager taste buds. When I moved to the USA from Europe a decade ago I couldn't stand how horrible Hershey's chocolate is. After a decade of nibbling it I now find it totally palatable.

Maybe one day I'll get used to Coke with HFCS instead of cane sugar.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com