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Comment by qlm | Hacker News Reader

The quantity of chocolate for sale in bulk certainly is surprising. Unfortunately I find American chocolate to be borderline inedible.

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That's like saying you don't like American beer because you tried Bud Light, Coors Light, and Miller Lite and didn't like any of them.

There are a lot of great chocolate makers in the US.

And cheese too! but you will hardly find good cheesemaker at a piggy wiggly (or even in SF more reputable supermarkets). The best i had was one from Hungtinton's Farmer market (WV), easily a top4-top3 goat cheese.

As someone from Wisconsin, I can say with certainly that you can in fact get great cheese at Piggly Wiggly. I have no idea if they exist in other states though, and if they do the cheese is no doubt worse.

> There are a lot of great chocolate makers in the US.

Ghirardelli are decent, but I've been relatively hard-pressed to find decent American chocolatiers otherwise. In general, European chocolatiers are in a different league.

You won't generally find the best in the supermarket--probably either in the US or Europe. There are actually some pretty good more artisanal chocolate bars you can get in many supermarkets to my tastes. But they're still by definition mass market and (often) not as good as what some specialty maker with a small store has.

I promise we have good chocolate here, just stay away from anything labeled Hershey's or Cadbury because it's the malk equivalent of milk.

You only really see kids eating m&ms. There's good American chocolate too, american chefs can read and follow a recipe just fine.

Best not to think of it as “chocolate” similar to how cheese whiz is only loosely related to cheese.

You're thinking of the cheap stuff like Hershey and other candy bar crap. It's all sugar.

I don't think it's just the sugar, Hershey uses butyric acid in its process and some other manufacturers copy them because that's the taste US consumers associate with chocolate. To people used to chocolate made without butyric acid, it tastes like vomit.

More accurately, Hershey is thought to use milk that is partially lipolyzed, and this process generates butyric acid -- which, according to the wikipedia page, is also found in Parmesan cheese. Does that taste like vomit?

I find European chocolate tastes sickeningly sweet, so to each his own.

> is also found in Parmesan cheese. Does that taste like vomit?

I don't think it does taste like vomit, but it does smell like it.

As an American, I agree with you. Most things we call chocolate are painfully and literally disgustingly sweet. We have plenty of good chocolate too. However, anything darker than about 40% gets called "dark chocolate" in America, which is just stupid, so even that isn't a sure sign that it's not loaded with sugar.

Most grocery stores will have a few dozen chocolate bars in their candy aisle that actually say a percentage on them. Not only does this tell you what's not sugared to death, but companies that do this tend to make higher quality chocolate anyways. Anything 70% and higher tends to be tasty.

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