Chocolate is very bitter. The darker and bitterer a Chocolate bar, the more Cacao it has (and the better it is).
For more than 3000 years Americans have been consuming Chocolate. Sugar has been part of the mixture for about 10% of that time. The Mayans and Aztecs of the Americas consumed Chocolate bitter and often added chilies. It was used by the common people as a spice, while the royalty drank it straight and bitter. In Latin America, Cacao is often used in it's original role as a bitter spice. Try a Molé burrito sometime. Yum! Cacao did not know sugar at all until the European love for sugar combined them.
The sweeter something is, the more sugar it has and the less Cacao it has. Chocolate is not sweet. Sugar is sweet. Candy is sugar. If it is sweet, it is not Chocolate, it is candy. Cadbury®, Hersheys®, Nestlé®, Milka® and Kinder® bars are not Chocolate, they are candy, as is all milk chocolate.
In milk-chocolate-candy, what you are tasting is NOT Chocolate. A Hersheys® Bar is about 11% Cacao! (And it is only that high because the United States Food & Drug Administration REQUIRES a minimum of 10% Cacao solids!) Cadbury®, Kinder® and Milka® are less then that! Snickers® is less than 2%. These bars all contain very tiny portions of Cacao and huge quantities of sugar and other additives. All milk chocolate contains more sugar than Cacao! This is not Chocolate; Sugar is the largest portion, the primary ingredient, and the selling point. (People call candy bars like Snickers® "chocolate" but they have a much higher percentage of both sugar and nuts than Cacao. They should be called "Nut Candy".)
Since the mid-1990s a number of the smaller chocolate manufacturers have introduced bars that are 60% - 90% Cacao. These are real Chocolate. They are the only Chocolate i buy. You will notice that some of the bars that list a high Cacao content which have weak or unpleasant flavor. Nestlé makes a 70% bar that is just awful. The addition of extra Cocoa Butter into the bar can weaken the flavor and there are many different levels and qualities of Chocolate. See the Varieties Page for a discussion of the primary cultivars.
Sugar, vegetable oils, artificial flavors, fillers and milk solids are all
much cheaper than Cacao. The candy companies use any filler they can to cut
down on the quantity of Chocolate they use, in fact, since flavorless Cocoa
Butter is cheaper than Cacao Paste, they even raise the quantity of that, all
to avoid Chocolate. Low Cacao solids means less Chocolate flavor, less money
for the farmer and a higher profit margin for the manufacturer.
Cocoa Butter has a very high resale value and is therefore often replaced by
vegitible or milk fats.
people think it is vanilla
"Today the taste that most people associate with Chocolate springs primarily
from the vanilla and other spices mixed with the Chocolate. Cocoa Butter has
yielded to flavored forms of vegetable shortening, and now people ingest real
Chocolate in such minute quantities that most of the narcotic effect has been
sacrificed to the sugar rush that substitutes for it. -- Jack Weatherford
Milk chocolate is, by definition, less than 30% Chocolate and few, if
any milk chocolate bars ever exceed 20%. In milk-chocolate-candy, what you
taste is not Chocolate. Milk-chocolate-candy is primarily sugar and
spices with almost no Chocolate at all:
There is of course, nothing wrong with candy, or with liking candy, but don't
call it Chocolate. Don't pretend you are ingesting Chocolate, and don't call
yourself a Chocoholic if you eat only milk-chocolate-candy.
There are two kinds of White Chocolate, both are
not Chocolate.
Most People Don't Know What Chocolate Is!
White Chocolate
White Chocolate is everything that is in candy bars that is
not Chocolate.
[Milk Chocolate is Candy],
[Most people don't know what Chocolate is!].
[White Chocolate].
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