Why is European candy so better than American candy?

I think we put in more sugar and milk. And it's realy just uk chockie bars, the versions you get in Spain, France, Germany, etc are more like the American versions. In hi school we used to do a thing called achievers international, which was kind of loge running a small business from the classroom. Schools in the uk were paired with schools in the USA or caneda and were encouraged to trade goods with each other. We ended up importing mac makeup and exporting box loads of our good candy. Honestly it was like catnip for you people, we couldn't send boxes quick enough. And we also learned valuable lessons for business and life, like how to get arround the FDA import restrictions.

Because we put almonds in our Mars bars and the English do not.

Hershey tastes like crap. And this is coming from Australia where our chocolate is treated so it won't melt.

I used to spend about half the year visiting the our NY office which had a high female to male ratio and was instructed before my first visit on pain of death always to bring as much chocolate as I could smuggle through.

Have you ever seen those clips of locusts descending upon crops? That's what it looked like. Never understood it until I tasted the local Hershey and Musketeer bars. They just tasted of sugar with no chocolate discernible. Grim stuff.

I was probably the only person who was happy when the BSD scandal led to a milk product import embargo against the UK, which meant no more having to schlep a skipload of Cadburys over there. The NY girls just looked as if someone had died.

Disagree about Spanish and German versions differing from the UK. For a long time, both German and UK Mars bars were manufactured in Venlo, for instance. The real difference only happens in high end chocolate rather than the cheap snack bars.

The only sweets that I liked in America that we don't have here are almond M&Ms. Mmmm....

Anyway, the chocolate in the UK is far less sweet and actually tastes of chocolate (I don't really like milk choc that much though) unlike the American one that is just sweet.

I think Cadbury's chocolate wipes the floor with almost every other brand, except Snickers As to actually why it's sometimes considered better by people, it might be do with the combination of coco/milk, maybe....I have no idea.

I love tolberone chocolate bars. Delicious.

helenwhite82 said:

In my opinion, European candy is not better than American one. Both of them are very delicious. However, each of them have their own flavor. You like European candy's flavor, so you consider it as the best one. As I am, I like American candy flavor, so I sometime consider it as the best one.

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I agree. Give me Hershey's any day.

Just about every grocery store these days has an international foods section...and within this section you can find choccies from the UK.

I remember hearing that when chocolate was first sent over to the states from europe that it took so long the milk in the chocolate went off and it tasted bad (like hershey's does to me - i live in the UK). Since they didn't know any different they started making chocolate to taste the same as when they first had it (with the gone off milk).

Can't find any info on this atm but i think i read it in the Times last year.

I was disappointed when American Milky Ways were basically Mars Bars

On the plus side, america still has Pretzel Flipz and Swedish Fish and the UK doesn't

It may have something to do with the receptures. Even regarding the same products. During my university studies in Germany, I ate Twix a lot. Then I tried it once at home and it was worser. Especially the biscuit tasted like class 2. Maybe the ingredients are different? I am not an expert.

Foreign stuff tends to taste better as you get it so rarely You are just too used to the same candy thus it tastes like cardboard so something new will reopen your gustatory nerves and taste delicious

Ingredients may also vary of course. We use a lot milk here in Finland and that's why the best and most famous chocolate of ours is made of pure milk. No crappy powders

-aggie- said:

I agree. Give me Hershey's any day.

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I'd agree as well. Though I'd also be the first to state, that it is what I am used to growing up in the US, so my taste buds are most certainly accustomed to "American" chocolate.

For the flip though, my relatives in Bermuda simply cannot get enough of See's Candy (which I think is possibly only a West Coast thing?). I haven't been back in awhile, but I know that whenever any of us Americans go to visit Bermudian relatives, boxes and boxes of See's are requested and delivered. That and Honeybaked Ham

Sorry for being ethnocentric but American candy is wayyyyy better,,,,,, other non-american candy is either too dark, too dry, too bitter, too natural-like, too expensive,

Sour Skittles FTW!

R94N said:

I think Cadbury's chocolate wipes the floor with almost every other brand

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As far as mainstream bars go, Galaxy is streets ahead of Cadburys. Then of course you have Green & Black.

ohaithar said:

My mom came back from London, and she brought me a whole bunch of candy, and horry sheet, they where like an orgasm in your mouth. Their kit kat bars taste so much better than ours. My mom also got me some aero and cadbury choco bars, and those blew Hershey out of the water. The taste was more "real", Hershey taste like junk to me now.

Why can't we produce candy like them?

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Engrish pronunciation?


As I have had it explained to me by my wife who in turn had it explained to her by her stepmother is very high in the food sciences, they have stricter standards in Europe usually. What passes here for "milk chocolate" is a lot of fudging about on contents (pun intended).

Perhaps it also has something to do with culture. To America, sweets are becoming an every day, cheap disposable indulgence whereas they should be rare treats than can be pricey.

weckart said:

Have you ever seen those clips of locusts descending upon crops? That's what it looked like.

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BWHAHAHAHA!!! I nominate you for best Macrumors anecdote of the day.

Higher cocoa solids in euro chocolate.
but anymore there are a lot of better quality candy available so it is not a big deal.

High Fructose Corn Syrup, or rather the lack their of.

The higher cocoa solids also play a part, at least on the continent, british "family" chocolate tends to be vile vegetable oil based crap.

Tighter food regulation, and a higher percentage (anything from 70%-90%+ which is wonderfully, mouth-puckeringly, bitter) of cocoa solids tend to be found in the better European chocolates, which means (to my mind anyway, - as I don't like sickly-sweet candies or chocolates - a far better product).

Agree re Green & Black, but Terry's of York also used to make very good quality dark chocolate. Belgium, of course, is in a league of its own; it is extremely difficult not to trip over outstanding chocolate (and outstanding beer) in that country.

I do agree that European chocolate generally is much better than American one. However, when I was in London back in 2002 I found out that British food (not candy) tastes horribly awful and apparently British are famous for it. It was so bad even compared to American food (which I'm not a huge fan of either) that the only places where I could eat were either foreign-themed restaurants such as Italian and American or pubs. The latter places had pretty decent food. Everything else was awful. Can somebody explain to me why that is the case?

mstrze said:

Just about every grocery store these days has an international foods section...and within this section you can find choccies from the UK.

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Yes, but half the time the bars are not imported, they're American made and taste inferior to the genuine article (I've done the taste test personally). If you want the real thing, a speciality store or a friend who's gone on vacation are your best hope.

Hellhammer said:

Foreign stuff tends to taste better as you get it so rarely You are just too used to the same candy thus it tastes like cardboard so something new will reopen your gustatory nerves and taste delicious

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This could be true for some people, but for me personally I know it's not. I have American chocolate (candy) far less often than foreign chocolate. For me I think it comes down to having taste buds that are diametrically opposed to the average American's.

Ingredients may also vary of course. We use a lot milk here in Finland and that's why the best and most famous chocolate of ours is made of pure milk. No crappy powders

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Ingredients definitely matter a lot. The bulk of American chocolate is produced for sale at very low prices. When prices are structured like that, quality is sure to suffer.

There are a handful of American chocolate brands that I think do a better job, and I bet that they can hold their own in taste tests. Trouble is, that's also typically the chocolate that costs 4X as much as the usual bargain basement candy bar.

Pixellated said:

Anyway, the chocolate in the UK is far less sweet and actually tastes of chocolate (I don't really like milk choc that much though) unlike the American one that is just sweet.

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On the contrary, i've always found British chocolate to be sweeter. It could also be an effect of a higher milk content. For rich texture and pure chocolate flavor, a good Belgian simply can't be beat.