I’m not talking about the risk to investor’s money.
I’m not talking about the probable future closure of factories (given Kraft’s past track record).
I’m not even talking about the inevitable jobs losses despite Kraft’s “you’re all safe, you are, honest” protestations.
No. I’m talking about the important thing. The chocolate. ‘Cos for all Kraft merely want to grab Cadbury’s bubble gum marketing network they will inevitably mess with the chocolate recipe. They’ll cut corners. Go for cheaper nastier ingredients. Like greedy street corner pushers they’ll start cutting it with baking powder and sawdust and horse tranquilizers. They’ll bring out an American version that’ll taste slick and plasticky like a Hershey’s bar. They will eventually commit the ultimate sin and call it candy.
Can you imagine that?
Cadbury’s Candy?
I’m dry heaving even as I type.
To mess with our chocolate would be sacrilege of the highest (lowest?) order. But the desecration is inevitable. Like Vikings raiding a Saxon village Kraft will tear down our temples, smear faeces on our altar cloths and make us worship the goat headed god of candy pseudo-chocolate.
I’m stockpiling now. Dairy Milk, Caramel, Fruit & Nut, Wispa, Boost. My loft is becoming a chocolate warehouse. Bursting at the seams with all that is good and wholesome about Cadbury’s before it’s too late. Before (to paraphrase Merry from Lord Of The Rings) all that is good and brown about our chocolate is gone from the world. And then there won’t be a Shire, Pippin.
And there won’t be no Curly-wurly neither.
You see, my biggest fear is that my personal chocolate stash will become a shrine. A DNA database for chocolate to remind us of what good chocolate once tasted like. A few dusty bars held in suspended animation that nobody dare consume or brought out of cryogenic storage solely to be minutely sampled by rogue scientists to try and rediscover and replicate the old magical recipe.
And then we’ll be into the realm of genetically modified chocolate. A world where interplanetary companies like the Tyrell Corporation control and tailor our chocolate eating experience in line with intergalactic legislation. I tell you now the motto “more chocolate than chocolate” will be our undoing!
Oh good people of earth clasp your Fruit & Nut to your bosoms! Defend your Cream Eggs to your last breath! The heathens are even now on our doorstep and pissing into our hot chocolate!
Or am I just over-reacting?
35 comments:
Yes, this post reminds me that you are the luckiest mortal that I know. Why? Because I do recall that you eat copious amounts of that delicious sticky brown stuff that gets into the teeth and gums like nectar - and yet you never put on an (pre-metric) ounce.
People over here rave about French chocolate and yes, it is very sophisticated and dark and everything, but I still prefer a good old Crunchie.
Even if they don't mess with the recipe they are will start manufacturing the stuff somewhere like China where the milk doesn't taste the same and sourcing cocoa etc from the cheapest sources so it will be inevitable that it will not taste the same even if the recipe is the same. I am stockpiling too.
FF: don't worry, if Kraft get their crafty way I won't be eating so much of the brown stuff for much longer. Not unless I switch my allegiance to Galaxy and Yorkie, of course.
Crunchie is an apt call - thank Cadbury's it's Friday!
Emma: you are, I'm sure, depressingly astute in your suppositions. We may have to pool resources when the Boost mountain starts to run low... Can I just say now that the exchange rate is thus: 1 Dairy Milk = 2 Fruit & Nut...?
I'm having the curly wurlys!
Funny how the head honcho jumped ship with his £34m haul the moment he had done the dirty deed and sold Cadbury's down the river.
To be honest I'm not a great fan of Cadbury's chocolate finding most of it overly sweet and more cocoa solids than chocolate. Mind you I dislike Thorntons even more for much the same reasons.
So while I am a traitor to prefer swiss chocolate, I am not adverse the odd creme egg or aforementioned Curly Wurly
It is the principle of the thing and selling off yet another fine British company with an illustrious history, probably down the river and for a quick buck which bugs me most.
What next? Fox's biscuits? Is nothing sacred?
Laura: I find Thornton's are OK in small doses otherwise there's something far too cloying about the chocolate. Nestle's Galaxy is too claggy. Mars do great chocolate but don't to my knowledge offer it in a pure and unadulterated bar. Cadbury's is way superior but I doub't they shall retain that mantle for long now our big friends overseas have stuck their oars in. Is nothing sacred you ask? Nope, nothing at all. Everything can be tainted by filthy lucre - including, alas, our tastebuds.
Well, as you know, I am not a chocolate person. So I can't vouch for whether Cadbury's is particularly nice chocolate but my boys do like Creme Eggs.
It is a pity that such an old British Company has been sold off. I do feel sad about that. And I dislike the way that Craft is spelled with a K. Nasty. They might keep the Cadbury's moniker but change it to Kadbury's.
As for additives - the boys' father used to work for Mars in Slough and he has many tales of things that are added to products - talcum powder used to be added to Maltesers for instance.
Gina: Kadbury's? What a horrible thought. And as for talcum powder in Maltesers... I'm not sure I could ever eat them again. Well. Not unless someone bought me a really big packet and insisted that I eat them. I mean, then I would have to, wouldn't I? ;-)
Over-reacting? Hell, NO!
If it weren't snowing right now I would be making a run to the grocery store for as much of that wonderful, silky, melt-my-heart, near-orgasmic-experience-inducing, Great-Godalmighty-gimme-some, diabetes-is-gonna-kill-me-but-I'll-die-happy Cadbury Chocolate from Mother England.
May I come worship at your shrine? I'll bring soup as offering.
The Crow: make it leek and potato and you got a deal!
Chocking news, Steve
Hopefully this'll cheer you up
A Short History of Why We Eat Oil, Can't Smoke Pot and Assault Weapons Are So Expensive in Our Hour of Need ...
The Bastards Never Die
http://counterpunch.org/bageant07312009.html
Overreacting? No way. I find it alarming that our food companines are shrinking in numbers because they continue to merge and consume one another. This is just another sad example. I do like you idea of stockpiling chocolate and preserving chocolate DNA... that made me smile just picturing this.
And PS, you are right, American chocolate does taste like plastic!
Joe Bloggs: the big multinationals are now the secret chiefs that rule the world from behind the scenes. Bush was the Pinoccio that should have been eaten by a Whale.
Shattered: one day everybody will do all of their shopping from one huge superstore that sells absolutely everything. When that day comes individual choice will have ceased to exist and herd instinct will have taken over with the directors of the food companies controlling the cattle prods.
Yuck! Crappy Kraft and their GMO and their Monsanto arse kissing, it all makes me sick to my stomach.
Stockpiling is your only defense, maybe you need to rent a shipping crate.
As with most fine things, chocolate has its season . . . Any month whose name contains the letter A, E, or U is the proper time for chocolate. –Sandra Boynton, b. 1953
No need to respond. Found this in the Old Farmer's Almanac and thought you might enjoy reading it.
Can I have an 'Amen,' brothers and sisters?
MissBehaving: a shipping crate? I was thinking more of a small island somewhere. Maybe Australia?
The Crow: Amen to that!
You're so right - they WILL start messing about with our chocolate and it will soon start tasting like Philadelphia! Ugh!
Selina: urgh indeed. The only time I want to taste chocolate and cheese together is in a chocolate cheesecake!
LOL! I never thought about that.... but it's interesting to think that you could have a chocolate shrine (and sad, if cadbury really IS your favourite :-) You wouldn't be able to eat it cos if you did, it'd be like eating antiques). Me, I prefer liquor chocolates, and dark chocolate (especially Marks & Spencer's dark chocolate ginger biscuits).
Eve: dark M&S chocolate and ginger? You are a true chocolate connoisseur and a girl after my own heart!
absorootly agree with you, we visited our own Candbury factory here in Dunedin (you might recall the blog post) and the same nasty feeling crept over me. I wish I was as good as you at stockpiling the stuff!! I have a stash in my drawer at work which I'm hoping the ankle-biters in my house won't find...
Amanda: I'd secure it with a state of the art laser system if I were you... kids can smell out chocolate from miles away...!
If they mess with my cream eggs there'll be trouble!
Suburbia: the chocolate guerilla resistance movement starts here (and I'm not talking about the gorilla from the Dairy Milk advert - though he's welcome to join)!
OMG no more Curly Whirly's arghhh. Hang on I am in Australia and we might be safe for awhile but then Kraft will mess with the Australian side of things too.
Now Creame Eggs who cares {{shudder}}
Vicky: I have taken the precaution of hiding your contact details from the Cream Egg Liberation Front... but they're looking for you right now!
I almost cried when I heard the news. I am devastated, because you're right, they wont be able to resist 'improving' it and us poor expats who only get to taste it once every few years may never taste real cadburys again! Sob.
Heather: unsurprisingly Kraft have already gone back on their word and are planning to close a factory in the UK - 400 workers all set to lose their jobs. And we're trusting these people with our sacred chocolate?!? It's madness!
As EmmaK said, they perhaps wont mess with the recipe per se but will no doubt relocate manufacturing to somewhere with totally different tasting raw materials. I'm not a huge Cadbury's fan in so far as I like ALL chocolate. I am sad however that Cadbury's will no longer be British owned. At least we still have Rowntrees!
Oh, migosh. I remember the time I bought a Cadbury chocolate bar with hazelnuts (filberts, here in the Northwest where they grow). I was in a darkened theater and had bought the Cadbury bar (OK to call it that?) - never had one before - and my god, when my teeth sank into it and it began melting in my mouth I was over the moon. Hope all goes well, but I'm afraid I do like Hersheys. (heretic, I know)
Femminismo: I'll settle for a Hershey's but my drug of choice is always Cadburys... sadly I think the chemist just went downhill...
Oh no! Those creme eggs are absolutely divine!
Angie: let's hope they stay that way and don't end up infernally awful.
Great minds and all that:)
English Rider: similar taste in chocolate too, it seems! ;-)
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