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0 pointsjldugger6y ago0 comments

I'm not sure we can trust US resident's opinions on taste as long as Hershey's chocolate still exists.

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>I'm not sure we can trust US resident's opinions on taste as long as Hershey's chocolate still exists.

As an American, I agree with you 100%. Our opinions on taste are utterly worthless.

It's not just Hershey's chocolate either (which is already bad enough), it's so many other foods that are commonplace here. Food quality in this country is abysmal. You can get great food here, but it's harder to find and you'll pay dearly for it, but the stuff that regular Americans eat is generally awful.

rayiner6y ago

Hershey’s chocolate is fine, so is American cheese. (You’d be insane to make S’mores or a grilled cheese with anything else, and if you don’t like those things you’re unamerican and should just move to Europe.)

joecool10296y ago

I once heard a Belgian say: "There are two kinds of foods: Those that go with chocolate and those that go with cheese"

Hershey's chocolate breaks that rule and contains butryic acid. Here's a link explaining why and how that affects the taste: https://www.chemistryworld.com/podcasts/butyric-acid/1017662...

EDIT: To be fair I think the butryric acid thing can be overlooked as an acquired taste. Same way that IRN BRU tastes like bubblegum to Americans, even though UK'ers claim it isn't. I still think Hershey's regular milk chocolate works better with peanut butter than any other chocolate I've had. The bigger issues I have with Hershey are the cloying amounts of sugar they keep adding as they knock down the cocoa butter and cacao solids in each of their products to save money. I used to run boxes of UK KitKats down from Canada's duty free stores so that other Americans could see what they were missing out on.

tptacek6y ago

Hershey's chocolate is pretty bad, and American cheese is barely cheese. But both have functional properties that make them desirable for some applications: it's difficult to make a truly good cheeseburger without American cheese because of its melting properties, for instance. That's also why people use it in grilled cheeses, although it's less essential there (swiss melts just fine on a sandwich, for instance), and you should at the very least probably add some shredded cheddar or something to your American in a grilled cheese.

You can add American's functional properties to almost any cheese with sodium citrate powder (we make and slice up baking sheets worth of "Americanized" aged cheddars, gruyere, and even blue).

I would not confuse these useful properties with goodness. Grapeseed oil is also extremely useful. But California olive oil is a better oil. American cheese is like the grapeseed of cheese.

2 more replies

triceratops6y ago

If you've only had good grilled cheeses with American cheese in them, I feel bad for you - truly. A good grilled cheese is one of life's greatest pleasures. There are many different kinds of cheeses that can go into a good grilled cheese.

OldFatCactus6y ago

Supposedly our pasteurization standards are absurdly high as well, so very likely we don't know what real cheese tastes like either

gadders6y ago

I'm actually British, and live in Kent. And I agree, Hersheys chocolate tastes like sick. And FWIW I keep chickens and geese for eggs.

On the face of it "chlorinated chicken" sounds unappealing, but I've been to America multiple times over the years, eaten all sorts of food (including chicken) and never noticed any difference or ill effects.

Like most people here, I get to choose what food I eat. I could eat organic, ethically sourced meat every day if I chose to. However, if chlorinated chicken let's people on a lower income eat better than before, I'm all for it.

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