So gross
So it’s Switzerland in the 1930’s and the Nestle chocolate company is like, “We have a bunch of left over oil from our cocoa beans from when we make delicious dark and milk chocolate. Isn’t there a way to make this gross excess lump of oil into something that we can insist is a type of chocolate and insist that it’s delicious and then sell it to people for a 1000% percent profit since we’ve just been throwing away this extra oil this whole time?” Then I imagine some marketing genius was like, “Ya, we can literally take garbage, add milk solids, sugar and vanilla to it and rename it so people will think they are consuming an extra special and rare treat.”
And so they renamed the oil Cocoa Butter, insisted that because it was from cocoa beans that it was some form of albino chocolate base and they branded it White Chocolate. They created the first white chocolate bars called the Alpine White bar (with almonds) and the Milkybar (almond free).
I’m proud to say that I’ve never fallen for the gross white chocolate scam but I don’t judge you if you have. You’ve been an innocent victim of corporate rebranding and brainwashing that’s been going on for seventy years. If they had just named it sweetened cocoa bean oil with milk solids I’m sure you would be like, nah, hard pass.
The modern day equivalent to this nonsense is Dasani and Aquafina and, of course, Nestle’s Pure Life brand bottled waters. The first time I tasted these waters I knew there was nothing “spring” or “natural” about them. They tasted like sewage tap water that had been filtered in a giant evil processing plant of some sort, leaving behind the flavor of greed and processing pipes. And I was right. In the early 2000’s it was revealed that these brands were nothing more than glorified tap water!
So basically, just like with the left over cocoa bean oil, these companies are like, you know how we use tons of water to make food, beverages and clean the floors? Let’s collect all that water, clean it up because who cares? rebrand it and sell it for a 10,000% profit. It would basically be like printing money. And they have a point and the corporate profits to prove it.
So this holiday season I implore you to think twice when offered white chocolate dipped brownies or white chocolate candy cane chunks, not just because it’s so gross but because real chocolate is so good and real chocolate is not a lie.
