[ebiester]

Parmesan cheese is savory, not sweet.

For people who did not grow up with hershey's, the butyric acid is what makes it taste off.

This is not a question of safety - it is a question of results. They stayed with old technologies and have optimized for cost, not flavor. (And yes, that processing was necessary in the days before a reliable milk source.)

[rayiner]

You’re confusing two different things. The “sour taste” objection to Hershey’s chocolate has nothing to do with “cost optimization.” You’re thinking about the 2006 recipe changes, which never applied to Hershey’s solid chocolate bars (and flagship products like peanut butter cups). That sour taste is in Hershey’s original recipe. If you got rid of it, it wouldn’t be Hershey’s chocolate anymore.

If you grew up with European chocolate the unfamiliarity maybe makes it taste off. But characterizing it as tasting like “vomit” and the result of over “processing” is spin. Butyric acid arises from processing milk products, which is why the compound is in Hershey’s chocolate and also in parmesan cheese. The opposite marketing spin: “Hershey’s chocolate bars use traditional techniques that result in a hint of parmesan with the sweet” would be equally correct.

[seanhunter]

> But characterizing it as tasting like “vomit” … is spin.

It really isn’t spin- It’s a common perception for people who aren’t accustomed to it. Search for “Hersheys chocolate tastes like vomit” and as a control, search for some other brand of chocolate tastes like vomit (I did lindt but you could use anything I’m sure). All the hits I got on the lindt search were references to hersheys tasting like vomit. On the hersheys search I got (for example)

https://cookingsmoke.com/why-does-hersheys-chocolate-smell-l...

https://enersection.io/why-does-hersheys-taste-like-vomit

https://decorwithstyle.com/does-hersheys-chocolate-have-vomi... (“Debunking the Myths: Does Hershey’s Chocolate Contain Vomit?”)

https://www.chefsresource.com/why-does-hershey-taste-like-vo...

A reddit thread “Does Hershey's taste like vomit, or are all Europeans snobs?” (Which, why not both?)

…etc etc lots of similar hits all for the same sort of thing.

Now for calibration I didn’t grow up with fancy European chocolate. I grew up in Africa with bloody horrible chocolate but even so I was genuinely shocked and disgusted the first time I tasted Hersheys. I had expected something, well… something that didn’t taste like vomit.

Versus the first time I had, say Lindt or Godiva or Leonidas or Guylian chocolate I was surprised and delighted by how much better it tasted than the chocolate that I had grown up with.

I get this is 100% a question of cultural norms and acquired taste, but to say it’s spin is definitely not true.