The Chocolate Trap

Like the majority of the world, I think chocolate is delicious. It's the classic candy type, a great treat to unwind with. Chocolate bars were what I always wanted the most when trick-or-treating as a kid, and putting a bar of solid milk chocolate in my Christmas stocking is the easiest gift my mom can give. With Valentine's Day right around the corner and Easter next up on the list of major holidays, it's a good time to warn you about the presence of fake chocolate.

Yes, fake chocolate. It looks like chocolate, is packaged like chocolate, and is marketed alongside chocolate, but it is not chocolate. Whereas chocolate tastes delicious, fake chocolate tastes sort of like what chocolate would taste like if you replaced the deliciousness with revulsion. Perhaps you've fallen prey to fake chocolate. In fact I'd say it's extremely likely. Fake chocolate is cheaper than real chocolate, so bargain shoppers like me have fallen prey to it, thinking they were getting a deal.

So how can you tell if you're looking at real chocolate or fake chocolate? It's simple. Truth-in-advertising laws mean that a marketer of fake chocolate cannot call their product "chocolate" without a caveat. Look very carefully at the package. There are two ways these companies try to sneak around the rule.

The most common way is to call the candy "chocolate flavored". Most often, you'll see "CHOCOLATE" in massive letters and "flavored" shrunk down and sort of hidden. If you see this, immediately put the package back and walk away. It is unclean to you.

The second method, which is even sneakier, is using the adjective "chocolatey". Real chocolate doesn't call itself "chocolatey". It's a term used exclusively by non-chocolate wishing it was chocolate and hoping that you would kindly ignore that little letter y at the end. Do not fall for it! It's not tasty!

Here are a few examples of candy I see in various stores, and whether they pass the test.

* You have to be careful with Palmer. Despite being a fairly reputable company, Palmer deals heavily in the seedy black market of "chocolate flavored", and a lot of their cheaper stuff is fake chocolate. Stay away from the Christmas-themed North Pole Pals, which are labeled as "milky chocolatey candy". Generally, the hollow stuff is fine. If you're like me and also dislike Double Crisp, check carefully for that, too, because Palmer keeps making accursed Double Crisp rabbits despite there always being a bunch of them left over for the clearance bin when Easter ends.

* Hershey, Nestle, Reeses, and most of the other big names in the world of chocolate are safe. You'll always find real chocolate in the familiar brown-wrapper Hershey bar. Same goes for the Symphony bar, Kisses, Reeses' Cups, 3 Musketeers, and so on.

* Around Easter, you're likely to see those giant rabbit-shaped bars proudly advertised as being half a pound. They are fake chocolate and taste terrible. They have also invaded the holiday season as half-pound Santas. Do not buy them!

* At the Dollar Tree I've found a company called Landmark Confections that makes budget-priced chocolate bars bigger than the standard sizes at a buck each. While the chocolate is certainly not the highest quality, it is real chocolate and can fulfill a chocolate fix on the cheap.

* Other non-candy stuff labeled as "chocolate flavored" is generally perfectly tasty, even if it doesn't taste exactly like chocolate. Chocolate milk, chocolate cereals, and chocolate ice cream are all fine and are not the target of my hatred.