How Big Companies RUINED chocolate!

EARLY!!! Ann's videos are honestly the best :))

It's so funny that Dave and the boys are up to taste just about any cooking "hack" monstrosity, and then the one time there's just genuinely good chocolate, they're like, "Meh." 🤣

I had a roommate in college that totally "ruined" me on cheaper chocolate after introducing me to these $5-6-7 bars from health food stores. Like everything, you get what you pay for. But instead of just inhaling those expensive bars like I was known to do with cheaper bars and still not feel satiated , the expensive ones satisfy me with just a few nibbles or a square. It's about quality over quantity!

I had a subscription box for chocolate a while back and it was only then I started to realise chocolate tastes so different from the supermarket bars I was used to - you can taste the fermentation, there’s so much character in it. Anyway, after the subscription ended chocolate was of course ruined for me 😂

I’d love to see a part 2 about the “pre-Lindt process” chocolates (done without conching), since some are still made that way and that’s closer to how chocolate was made in central and South America. The texture and flavour changes SO much since you can feel each ingredients so clearly and distinctly because they haven’t melted.

As a mexican form the state of Tabasco, we are very proud of our chocolate! it was common in the past to grind and make chocolate at home, my grandma used to do it, so i was very familiar with the real flavor of cocoa beans and chocolate. Sometimes when tasting cheap or very procesed chocolate feel weird and some of my friends tend to call me a snob because i'm very exigent with the flavor of chocolate, but when they taste what is a real and good chocolate, they find out why i'm like that hahaha thanks a lot for sharing this knowledge!!!

This is why I love Ann!! You aren’t just telling us about the different chocolate, but going in depth with similarities, differences, and using people to compare.

I now want to go out and try different types of chocolate because of you!!

There's a chocolate company in my country called Chocolate Makers. They were fed up with how chocolate was done by the big companies and started their own company. They also factored in the environment in their business plan where possible. We use it in our bakery and we've had a tour through their factory and their tasting and the flavors were AMAZING!!! So happy to have been able to go with that chocolate :D.

I think this is my favorite H2CT video yet. Excellent information density paired with really good visuals (I really adored the map, especially what you did at 6:36). The flavor interviews were really powerful- they did a superb job showing the variation between different regions' beans, and it was particularly telling that even though people didn't describe the beans in the exact same terms, everyone still tended to cluster around flavor profiles unique to each bean. That there were preferences rather than "this one is good and this one is bad" made me think about what kind of experience we could all be having as chocolate consumers. This video has certainly inspired me to investigate further on my own!

I learnt a lot of this while studying to become a pastry chef, but in the industry you really only use a few different brands that all pretty much taste the same. Which I guess makes sense because the chocolate is used for a lot of different things and has to be sort of neutral. But I kind of wish we had a taste test like this, it'd be so interesting.

One day I tasted the chocolate from an old little shop run by a family of chocolate makers since 1930 and I discovered REAL chocolate! It’s just like all another food: I usually don’t really like chocolate, but that one is different. Please support your local shops, sometimes you can find incredible thing thanks to them!

This video showed up whilst I was eating my Lindt 78% chocolate.😅 I tried to get flavours from it and I just couldn't really distinguish anything besides what I would think of as chocolate bitter and sugar. I am an absolute sucker for super in-depth detailed videos about super specific things such as the topic that you're discussing. All the information is really well presented and this video is absolutely fantastic, I am definitely going to try some new brands. thanks Ann!!!

As a chocolate lover this video speaks to me.

I have already found myself turning my back to Hershey’s in recent years. At a previous job at a discount store we had these imported European chocolate bars that I bought all the time because they were cheap and they tasted amazing! They made Hershey’s taste like trash in comparison and I haven’t really bothered with them since. (I wouldn’t be surprised if I managed to annoy some people with my rants of how shitty Hershey’s tasted compared to other better chocolate. Lol)

I had no idea so many varieties of chocolate existed, and seeing this makes me want to go out and search the specialty shops. I wouldn’t be surprised if I find a bar that’s even better then that European one.

Funnily enough, the Lindt that Anne uses as the "bland" version is considered some of the higher quality stuff you can get in Canadian supermarkets!

as a botanist i am so glad you mentioned how environment affects how plants grow and taste. so many people dont realize how even slight soil pH or nutrient changes, rainfall, or humidity affect how your food tastes and medicine works!

This is the best chocolate education video ever, and I have seen many. The best part is the in-depth explanation of the flavor process and variation through the many farms and the challenges that are involved.👍

So excited to see this! I work in a chocolate factory in Utah that specializes in single origin chocolate and other chocolate tastes so flat now!

This is one of your best videos! Learning that bacteria, yeast, and enzymes are so important for the flavor is fascinating. I can't wait to tell people about this!

Protect this lady at all costs... The amount of knowledge i get from her channel is just amazing and how she beautifully explains it.. Thankyou Ann

I run a small chocolate business for nearly a decade and have been saying this to people for years. It's nice to see someone with such a good reputation for fact finding taking it on. Thanks Ann. Have a great week.