"It doesn’t make sense for chocolate bars to be divided into equal-sized chunks when there is so much inequality in the chocolate industry! The unequally-sized chunks of our 6.35 oz bars are a palatable way of reminding Choco Fans and Serious Friends that the profits in the chocolate industry are unequally divided.
And in case you haven’t noticed, the bottom of our bars depicts the West African coastline. The chunks just above it represent the Gulf of Guinea. From left to right, you have Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo and Benin (terribly politically incorrect, we know, but we had to combine them to create enough space for a hazelnut), Nigeria and part of Cameroon."
I want to like this chocolate, but it’s just so bland.
Some info, that’s interesting and helps balance this blatant advertisement. Tony’s was started by Dutch television maker Teun van der Keuken. He worked on a program that exposes products for their production methods and false marketing and so on. They stumbled onto the slavery that’s part of the cacao industry. He asked to be arrested for eating chocolate, and in doing so enabling slave labor, but he wasn’t. He started out Tony’s Chocolonely to attempt to change the chocolate industry. He’s not part of the company anymore. He has concluded the mission has failed, and is very critical of his former company, saying they’ve lost sight of the aim: slave-free chocolate.
I’m gonna be real here when I saw one of these bars for the first time I just assumed they were assholes and didn’t look any further into why the bar wasn’t cut in a usable way.
Damn that’s just an ad. There is no escape
Neato advertisement!
Products looks like shit.
It doesn’t make any sense to do this as a metaphor. Chocolate is typically divided into evenly sized chunks for measurement purposes, regardless of the evil practices of the chocolate industry.
The metaphor is asinine the explanation is confusing and it’s lost on almost everybody who buys this.
I have had this brand of chocolate before and it is quite good however.
I don’t know, man. Sounds like the guy at least TRIED to do something more than most people. Granted, it doesn’t compare to a life spent delivering clever piss-take commentary to Lemmy, but not everyone can be so blessed.
Also, speaking of asinine, measurement purposes? If they were selling unsweetened cocao bars for baking, you would have had a point.
I’d say most people get frustrated and think WTF did they make this chocolate bar a pain in my ass? Then maybe they notice the story on the inside of the wrapper and read it?
I have never been in or adjacent to a situation where I had to measure chocolate packaged and sold to be eaten as-is in a recipe by squares broken off of a bar, at the demarcations pre-scored into the bar. If I needed that much control I’d grate it or use a chocolate that came pre-granulated, like baking kisses.
For chocolate bars meant to be eaten, the score lines are very much for sharability first. Any use of them for culinary measurement is at best a peripheral feature.
This probably doesn’t hold true for baking chocolate. But Tony’s isn’t baking chocolate.
It’s also why I no longer buy it. It’s a PITA to eat.
I see Saddam Hussein in the bottom left there. The meme know no bounds!
Maybe they should spend less money on a fancy mold for their chocolate and more on better sourced cocoa beans with less lead in them: https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/lead-and-cadmium-in-dark-chocolate-a8480295550/
There is absolutely no difference in price between the two - i.e. a “fancy” one like this and a regular one. Both will most likely be made by machining a block of graphite and using EDM to make the actual mold. The difference in machining time wouldn’t cost more than $200 or so
Wow, techno music is so versatile.
Do you also find it hilarious to use the word techno whenever somebody mentions EDM?
One time this dude who is maybe a little autistic, possibly very autistic, made this super detailed post about all the different genres of electronic dance music. If you know anything about it, you know there’s some hyper-specific sub genres out there, and this dude took the time to not only list them all out, but verbally describe what made a piece of music fit into one genre versus all the others.
Obviously I replied with something like “Man, I love techno.”
To be honest, this is the first time I’ve had the opportunity to do so.
Sure, gram for gram, Tony’s has 34% more lead than California would like, but their chocolate is still sold in the state.
To add to what @[email protected] pointed out, the Mast bar is 70g for $8, while Tony’s bar is 180g for $6.
Gram for gram, Mast is more than triple the price.
If they paid the farmers more they could just make regular shaped chocolate
They literally do, and their chocolate is a little more expensive because of it
But they’re not Hershey or Cadbury (whoever owns them, forget the name rn), or even close to them in size, so they can’t just fix the industry all on their own
Fuck Nestle
Oh yeah they do chocolate too
Fuck Nestlé, I try to forget they exist and buy anyone else’s shit
I’m a simple man. I see “Nestle” and my rage knows no bounds.
Cadbury (whoever owns them, forget the name rn),
Kraft, now called Mondelez
Also Mars is the largest confectionery brand
Ok, I was actually pretty sure Mondelez was the name but was too lazy to google it
And I almost said mars instead of Hershey, then mistakenly thought Hershey’s owns Mars when I know Mondelez owns Hershey and so I basically listed them twice
Don’t Lemmy right after you wake up, kids, you’ll look silly
I think that is exactly why this company was founded.
The “lonely” part of the name comes from how they’re the only player in the industry trying to do what they do.
Fait point, but it’s a statement about the industry as a whole, not their own production. Even if they were to distribute profits evenly over the entire production chain of their products (which I agree they probably don’t), the industry as a whole would still have this problem.
And miss out on this marketing opportunity? Lol don’t be ridiculous.
They cut out the white chocolate south and milk chocolate north.
The story behind this brand is kind of wild. The company was founded when a Dutch TV program found out the horrors of the chocolate industry, specifically the child slavery at the core of the cacao bean production.
Even today, there are practically no slavery free brands. Attempts to make them, like Tony’s, end up with chocolate farm owners messing with the system to pocket the higher price intended for them to hire people. There are a few attempts to make chocolate without slavery, but qhwn you buy a bar of chocolate in a store somewhere, you can be reasonably sure the company that made them profited off child slavery, even if they try their best not to.
Too bad about all the lead in them. They’re not as bad as some brands, though.
I’m not sure if OP was intended as an ad or not, but I think we should have an informal rule that if a top post is about a product, we should all upvote the comment that has the worst fact about that product. It’s the only way to be sure.
Holy shit that article has, like, every decent chocolate bar.
I know right. I’m sticking to cigarettes.
An ounce of their Dark Chocolate has 134% of the California MADL dose of 0.5 micrograms of lead, for those wondering about details.
micrograms, which is 1/1000 of a milligram. No amount of lead is considered safe, but you would need to eat allllottttttt of this chocolate before it would get to a level that, for example, a doctor would be concerned about. Ars Technica has a good write up about the CR report
Not that I’m trying to shill for Big Chocolate. When I saw the report, I definitely made a conscious effort to cut back to once a month or less.
Ah yes, sorry, I’ve corrected my comment to micrograms.
An ounce is about 29 grams in non-freedom units, for those wondering
I’ve bought drugs before, I know how many grams in an ounce
Yeah, I’ve bought enough drugs to know it’s 28g.
Am I blind or can I not find the claim about 134% on the linked page?
Searched for “Tony” there.Well, I’m here now. What do you want?
It’s the first one in the high in lead section
Duh. The page looked on my phone like the article already ended and didnt bother to scroll further down >_>
Forget everything I asked :P
I saw it on there among 20+ other chocolate bars.
Nvmd me. Didnt scroll far enough on the phone to see. Looked like the article was done already
I have half a block of this in the pantry. Thank you. Fuck me.
You can eat it just fine, just don’t eat it regularly for a long time.
The lead and cadmium are in there on purpose, to enhance taste. Have you ever had chocolate without lead and cadmium? It tastes nasty
if I die by eating dark chocolate, at least I’ll die happy
Except it’s the kind of poison that takes decades to kill you. And it’s bad for braincells too.
The kind of brain damage that makes conservatism look good even if you are making below the average salary.
oh so it’s just like alcohol then, that hasn’t stopped many people before unfortunately
But alcohol is paychoactive and addictive. Lead is non of those things.
Dark chocolate is
Paychoactive and addictive?
Have you been buying your chocolate from the dispensary again?
ooops
no I meant just the addictive part
Otoh, it makes them sweeter
If it’s good enough to collapse the Roman Empire, it’s good enough to collapse the American Empire!
Well shit
I know, right? It really sucks. They’re honestly one of the tastier bars I’d had. I’ve taken a bit of a step back from chocolate in general, these days. I probably got enough lead exposure as a kid… no need to add any more than is absolutely unavoidable.
Lol, that’s per ounce too.
Wow I had no idea, thanks for sharing the source.
It’s a good thing I don’t like dark chocolate then
Thanks for the advertisement?
I love it, but I feel obligated to say
"It doesn’t make sense for chocolate bars to be divided into equal-sized chunks when there is so much inequality in the chocolate industry!
No, it makes sense. I understand, but it makes a lot more sense
It doesn’t make sense for cars to have 4 equal sized wheels when there is so much inequality in the auto industry.
Staggered setup vehicles are the true champions of justice, urging us all to get a grip on inequality within the industry.
My center differential disagrees
Ok but this is a good way to raise awareness about the issue. Many people will pick these bars in the store without knowing much about the brand. Then when they eat it, they will probably wonder why it’s divided like that and the explanation is right there on the inside of the wrapper.
And then never buy them again because they are difficult to break evenly. Great idea but poor execution imo.
Do you buy chocolate based on convenience over taste?
Price usually
My internal chocolate bar cost has gone way up. I find the stuff at the bottom (like the stuff at the checkout) doesn’t even taste like chocolate anymore. I usually get something from the specialty section now.
I agree. The budget snack items like chocolate, chips and so on have, in my opinion, lost a lot of quality; they taste a lot greasier, have worse “mouth-feel”, or are just sugar with less aroma depending on the product. I also buy less, but higher quality stuff now in comparison to 20 years ago. (Central Europe here)
Fair, I do remember eating a lot of Tesco Value chocolate back in the day
lol imagine sharing your chocolate bars with other people, tssk (/hj)
fr tho if that bothers you, the inequality that comes with other chocolate brands should bother you too
not saying Tony’s is 100% fair, but at least they put in a lot of effort to make it as fair as possible
When did I ever say anything against that or that I am ok with slavery?? I even mentioned it as a good idea but with that execution, you will be cutting your own sales. At the end of the day, it’s a product for consumers and if your idea, no matter how great and noble it is, compromises on the experience then you will lose customers.
It well be cool to see for the first time but I certainly wouldn’t pick it up again if there are similar products with similar ideology on the shelf which is much easier to consumer. If this worked then good for them but I doubt it well work for long.
Also who the hell mows down an entire bar in single sitting, is that an American thing? I usually buy a bar of dark chocolate and eat 1 piece after every meal or when I am bored/hungry. I would never pick something like this other than maybe the first time and fiddle with it every time making a mess trying to break a piece.
if there are similar products with similar ideology on the shelf
that’s the thing: there aren’t
There are literally hundreds of them. Maybe the availability is different in your area but I can guarantee you that they are not the only one. But regardless you are missing the point.
It’s good for a company to be ethical but if you can’t sustain a business enough to make a difference then it’s pointless. At the end of the day, a business is there to make a profit. If you ignore majority of the customers and focus on the small fraction who cares about ethical products enough to make compromise then you can’t stay float for long.
It’s a good novel approach to raise awareness but the cost for it is too big, that was my point.
Bro it’s just uneven pieces of chocolate it’s not that of a big deal. Clearly they can sustain a business because I’m encountering their products more and more often. Apparently they don’t need the support of people like you who nitpick about every little thing so go ahead and buy other brands if that’s what makes you happy.
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Yeah this copy needed a couple more drafts/notes.
