Nestle says it will cut sugar in chocolate by 40%(bbc.co.uk)

455 pointsby throwaway-hn12310 tahun yang lalu359 comments

bbc.co.uk

Nestle says it will cut sugar in chocolate by 40%

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38167241

358 comments

GordonS10 tahun yang lalu

What will they replace the reduced mass with, to bulk up the product so it doesn't appear smaller?

My guess is it sure as hell won't be actual cocoa :/ [1]

[1] https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:9ihtAG...

dingaling10 tahun yang lalu

My wife's standard approach to any cake or confectionary recipe is to immediately half the listed quantity of sugar. Apparently this is common amongst pastry-chefs in catering and doesn't appear to affect the final result other than being a bit paler after cooking.

We even made half-sugar doughnuts recently which were still delicious ( no topping or filling needed ).

So I reckon Nestle will just produce a slightly less bulky confectionery, for the same price of course.

notalaser10 tahun yang lalu

Me and my girlfriend (we both really, really like cooking) do that with a lot of recipes that involve sugar. It does affect the texture, but I think it often improves the taste.

There are things that ought to be sugary (like thick syrups used for preserving), but most pastries, jams, jellies and deserts in general need surprisingly less sugar than recent cookbooks would imply. Adding just enough sugar to take the edge off of bitterness or sourness ends up being more rewarding than cramming everything full of sugar to the point where all you feel is something odd next to the sweetness.

gnopgnip10 tahun yang lalu

There are safety concerns when changing any recipe that will be preserved. The sugar in jams and jellies also acts as a preservative after they are opened.

matt-attack10 tahun yang lalu

Curious how sugar is a preservative? I would have thought it was food for bacteria.

rdoherty10 tahun yang lalu

I believe sugar is a preservative because it's hygroscopic. http://www.sciencefocus.com/qa/how-does-sugar-act-preservati...

AstralStorm10 tahun yang lalu

Osmotic effect on cell walls. Does not matter for chocolate or already dry pastries.

dghughes10 tahun yang lalu

Honey is an antibacterial and it actually promotes healing.

>"The manuka, jelly bush and pasture honeys are capable of stimulating the monocytes, the precursors of macrophages, to secrete TNF-α..."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3609166/

I'm not the roots and berries type but honey seems to be an amazing compound for medicinal purposes.

gambiting10 tahun yang lalu

Honey is pretty much nothing but sugar yet absolutely no bacteria can grow in it - there's basically a point where there's too much of it.

caf10 tahun yang lalu

Honey also contains a small amount of hydrogen peroxide.

[deleted]10 tahun yang lalu

uremog10 tahun yang lalu

Like salt, it takes up all the water, which bacteria needs.

tormeh10 tahun yang lalu

It's both. The dosage makes the poison.

joe515010 tahun yang lalu

This, among other factors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_activity

[deleted]10 tahun yang lalu

TheSpiceIsLife10 tahun yang lalu

After opening ought not be an issue because presumably refrigeration is used and the product is consumed before spoilage occurs.

If I understand correctly high sugar contect uncreases the shelf life. Though with in-container pasteurisation and modern preservatives I'm not sure high sugar content is necessary.

johnny9910 tahun yang lalu

We too almost always reduce the sugar in recipes, and also find it usually improves flavor. Though the article says Nestle has made a "scientific breakthrough" so that you get the same level of sweetness with less sugar--so their products may remain overly-sweep goop.

Probably healthier at least, unless their re-engineered sugar has weird side effects like Olestra does. I'll take high sugar over "anal leakage" any day:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olestra#Side_effects

dqv10 tahun yang lalu

I really dislike that they stopped making products with olestra. Not everyone got anal leakage.

brokenmachine10 tahun yang lalu

I'm guessing that the people who did will have a different opinion to you.

nitrogen10 tahun yang lalu

Labeling is an option.

brokenmachine10 tahun yang lalu

True, but I don't think I'd eat a chocolate bar with that warning on the label.

Maybe it was decided that other consumers would probably make the same decision?

nitrogen10 tahun yang lalu

That's probably okay; the few who really want non-nutritive oils could still buy them. But the volume might be low enough to force them off supermarket shelves and into specialty stores.

geoka910 tahun yang lalu

You can preserve in a very light syrup. For example they sell imported cherries and sour cherries in ethnic stores which have very little sugar in the syrup and they taste great!

jackmodern10 tahun yang lalu

100% agree, a great example of this would be with chocolate chip cookies. If you halve the brown sugar, white sugar, and reduce the chocolate chips by 75%, you end up with a much better tasting cookie. I can't go back to eating full sugar cookies, they're just too sweet.

ThomPete10 tahun yang lalu

Also sugar, like salt and chili are all ingredients where you can adjust how much you need if you don't do it too often.

I.e. if you don't eat a lot of sugar it doesn't take a lot of sugar for you to feel satisfied by the sweetness, and vice versa if you eat a lot you need more and more (which is a huge problem with sugar in alot of food today)

Same thing goes with salt and chili.

malka10 tahun yang lalu

And drugs

wlievens10 tahun yang lalu

And Factorio for that matter

haneefmubarak10 tahun yang lalu

Nah, if you don't watch out in the early to middle stages, things can quickly get out of hand...

[deleted]10 tahun yang lalu

3pt1415910 tahun yang lalu

I remove 75% of the sugar from cookies. It's crazy how little you notice the reduced sugar.

webkike10 tahun yang lalu

I think it's also one of those things where the less sugar you eat the more pronounced it tasted. Anecdotally, everything in Champaign IL tastes way sweeter after vacationing back home in Palo Alto where we rarely consume corn syrup or excess sweeteners

thomnottom10 tahun yang lalu

After having drastically reduced my sugar intake, I can't even stomach most sodas. It's startling how big of a difference it can make.

brokenmachine10 tahun yang lalu

I'm the same, I can't even touch soda, it's way too sweet.

Orange juice tastes like sickly sweet syrup to me nowadays as well.

debacle10 tahun yang lalu

Sugar can change the texture greatly of cakes especially. I do the same thing that you do, but it does have an impact on the mouth feel.

mc3210 tahun yang lalu

When I bake at home I do the same thing. I'm still a bit hit or miss with regard to having things come out with the same texture/feel (how they rise or not, etc.) My basic question is how to compensate for the proportions new proportions.

But overall, the taste is much more palatable because there is much less sugar-shock.

rawfan10 tahun yang lalu

My wife used to work in the hottest pastrie place in our city. The stuff there was totally amazing. It tasted great but not too sweet and it even felt so "light" that you'd always thing "why not have a second, third or fourth piece?"

When she quit she stole the recipes so that we could make this awesome stuff at home. Besides some really cool secret ingredients the only difference between home recipes and "best cake in town" was that the used AT LEAST twice the amount of sugar, eggs and cream than I've ever seen in any recipe.

Edit: As others mentioned. There seems to be a huge difference between Europe and USA. So these are European recipes. ;)

sevensor10 tahun yang lalu

I do this for hot chocolate: double the cocoa powder and half the sugar from what it says on the box. Whisk with whole milk, and enjoy an incredibly rich chocolate flavor.

herbst10 tahun yang lalu

Putting extra sugar in hot chocolate. That one is actually new to me.

jamessb10 tahun yang lalu

There's a difference between 'instant hot chocolate' powder (which is sweetened), and 'cocoa powder' (typically unsweetened, and quite bitter unless sugar is added).

herbst10 tahun yang lalu

Ok i would not call that hot chocolate, therefore the confusion. (Freely translated that would be simply called cocoa drink)

Uhhrrr10 tahun yang lalu

I tend to do this with a lot of cocktail books. Dale Degroff, for example, is a great writer but man does he like 'em sweet.

mrfusion10 tahun yang lalu

Would this work for cheesecake? I love the texture but hate the excessive sweetness. Maybe this would be a solution.

radicalbyte10 tahun yang lalu

Yeah, just google for some of the high protein recipes.

deathanatos10 tahun yang lalu

I regularly do this with the amount of butter that Kraft thinks mac and cheese requires, often by at least 25%…

cstrahan10 tahun yang lalu

In general, I'd recommend against cutting the butter; not only is it delicious, but it also provides a nice dose of cholesterol - gotta keep those androgens high[1]. I'd argue that butter is the only healthy component of mac and cheese, so most people (excepting those with particular dietary needs) might as well keep it in and enjoy increased muscle mass[2] and a leaner body composition[3].

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testosterone#Biosynthesis

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Androgen#Muscle_mass

3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Androgen#Inhibition_of_fat_dep...

atomical10 tahun yang lalu

The body produces cholesterol. I've never heard of someone being diagnosed with low cholesterol. Usually it's a good thing.

ericd10 tahun yang lalu

You're conflating dietary and blood cholesterol, which are completely different things. Eating lots of cholesterol does not give you high blood cholesterol.

michaelmrose10 tahun yang lalu

I use 25% more butter plus cream instead of milk + fine shredded cheese, heat just enough to melt the butter and beat up with a whisk before mixing up with the noodles.

russellsprouts10 tahun yang lalu

I agree. I make 3 boxes at once. The box calls for 1.5 sticks of butter in that case, but I only use 1, and it comes out great.

OJFord10 tahun yang lalu

Had to Google 'sticks of butter', crazy Americans ;)

I also don't understand what Kraft is doing you telling you how to make macaroni cheese... What's in a 'Kraft mac and cheese' box that it still requires making, and yet is also some kind of recipe kit?

It's hardly a complex recipe from 'scratch' (eg http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/8834/bestever-macaroni-ch...).

jackvalentine10 tahun yang lalu

> Had to Google 'sticks of butter', crazy Americans ;)

Where are you from? sticks of butter are a commonly understood quantity in Australia. Usually that's a safe bet that in other commonwealth countries it's the same.

jeza10 tahun yang lalu

I'm in Australia and I don't think I've ever heard of it (except maybe glossing over American recipes online). I've always measured butter in grams. The packaging often has markers so you can roughly estimate to the nearest 50g but that is it as far as I know. If anything I might have assumed it was something approximating these 50g slices.

geoka910 tahun yang lalu

Not so common in Canada either, it's usually measured in grams.

chrisseaton10 tahun yang lalu

In the UK butter is sold in 0.25 or 0.5 kg blocks, not sticks. Recipes call for butter by weight rather than volume (unless its tablespoon sized).

OJFord10 tahun yang lalu

    > Where are you from?

UK. As sibling commenters say, never seen a recipe asking for a stick, though it often comes with 50g divisions printed on the wrapping.

jpindar10 tahun yang lalu

The box contains dry pasta and dry cheese flavoring. You have to add milk and butter.

OJFord10 tahun yang lalu

I just don't understand the value in that... Swap the "dry cheese flavouring" for a bit of cornflour (or plain) and real cheese, and you have better fresher macaroni cheese with no difficulty increase; probably cheaper too.

hurbledr10 tahun yang lalu

You're not wrong, but the idea is that it has a longer shelf life, and perhaps more consistency in flavor.

Many American staples are throwbacks to the depression era, where buying a flat of Campbell's soup was a safer bet than buying a bunch of tomatoes and cream. Since then, marketers have capitalized on that sense of consistency, as well as feelings of nostalgia, to ingrain that sort of food into the American psyche.

Retra10 tahun yang lalu

'Better' is debatable. If you make it well, it can be quite good. Add extra milk, butter, (and salt if needed). Strain and add these before the noodles are soft, and keep it on the stove until it reduces and softens. It's a completely different experience.

Most people seem to mix that crap in cold and end up with dry, pasty mush.

magic_beans10 tahun yang lalu

I don't think the amount of butter matters at all here... You're still eating Kraft mac n' cheese, which is 100% processed... You'd be better off just eating the stick of butter on its own.

Xcelerate10 tahun yang lalu

What if the recipe doubled the required amount of sugar in anticipation of people cutting the amount they add?

bennyg10 tahun yang lalu

It's more likely that a greater amount of people use the recipe as-is, instead of halving. My guess is the recipes aren't playing reverse-psychology with cooks.

dghughes10 tahun yang lalu

Back in 2008 Hershey's had to stop using the term milk chocolate it had to use "chocolate candy" because they started using cheaper ingredients. I guess they'll change again to this weird sugar to save on the formerly cheap ingredients.

http://www.today.com/food/chocoholics-sour-new-hersheys-form...

I used to like Lindt and was disappointed to see they use palm oil in their chocolate instead of cocoa butter. Even worse is palm oil plantations are made by cutting down forests and displacing endangered animal species.

tropo10 tahun yang lalu

Cocoa butter gives a distinct mouthfeel because it has a sharply-defined melting point. If you want that mouthfeel, you need cocoa butter.

Lindt might not want that mouthfeel. That is a legit choice, not just to be cheap.

Other legit choices include suet, ghee, lard, and even corn oil. It all depends on the mouthfeel you want. Skipping the oil/fat entirely is also an option; wilder choices for holding candy together include: pectin, agar, egg white...

hurbledr10 tahun yang lalu

Heh, kinda like kraft singles being so named because they are no longer allowed to call themselves cheese.

My grandmother, who grew up during the depression, occasionally complained about the decline in the quality of sweets and chocolates. I used to think she was exaggerating a bit, but seeing the decline in quality in my time, going from bad to worse, it's easy to see what she was talking about.

I also recall seeing that someone had placed a large bet on cocoa futures a while back, and I turned up this article to that effect. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/business/global/25chocolat...

Anyways, I just wanted to say that it has been a shame to see large companies move away from making proper chocolate bars just to maintain their bottom line, and I can only expect that this latest maneuver is in the same spirit.

herbst10 tahun yang lalu

Lind is like the cheap, mass produced and not so tasty variant of swiss chocolate anyway. Still exactly what most tourists are buying ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

ido10 tahun yang lalu

So what's the good kind?

dghughes10 tahun yang lalu

There is a formula to calculate the quality of chocolate. I tried to find it but I wasn't able to find the one I saw a few month ago.

This isn't what I saw before but it's not bad http://expertenough.com/973/chocolate

herbst10 tahun yang lalu

Depending on where you are it is likely you cant get it or only in specialized shops :/ But a few wider spread brands to look for:

* Camille Bloch

* Munz

* Cailler

And if you ever are in Switzerland make sure to stop by a Läderach

ido10 tahun yang lalu

I live in Germany so there's a good selection of chocolate around* :) I'll keep an eye out for these!

* coincidentally, just a few minutes walk from the Rausch factory, where we usually buy our chocolates.

herbst10 tahun yang lalu

Yeah germany should work :) Really each one really worth it, i am from austria originally and i cant eat anything than swiss chocolate anymore after a few years there.

But given Rausch is absolutely awesome too!

dperfect10 tahun yang lalu

A 40% reduction of an ingredient doesn't mean that somehow there's a void in anyone's product (they could reduce the product size also, but that's a separate matter). It just means that the other ingredients together will represent a higher proportion of the final product in relation to the reduced ingredient.

Think of it this way: 1% milk has some of the milk fat removed/reduced, but that doesn't mean any other ingredient has to replace what is taken out (again, some may choose to add other things, but that's a separate choice), and your milk carton doesn't have to get any smaller. It just means your same milk carton has a higher percentage of the other components of milk.

To be clear, the article states: "this can be done without affecting the taste... Its scientists altered the structure of sugar so that it dissolves more quickly. This fools the taste buds, with the effect of raising the sweetness."

The way I read that, it seems to support the idea that nothing else has to replace the reduced sugar. But practically speaking, yes - if the other ingredients are costlier than the reduced sugar (as a higher percentage of the final product), then there's a good chance some other fillers could be added to maintain product weight and size.

dragonwriter10 tahun yang lalu

Sugar, in addition to being a sweetener, is also (like salt) a flavor enhancer, bringing out flavor of other ingredients. I suspect that boosting sweetness this way will not similar boost the flavor enhancing properties of sugar to the same extent (I'm not sure of the chemical basis of the effect, but my intuition would be that this would actually reduce it.) So it shold impact the taste of the final product, although maybe not in a way that would be noticeable in most mass-market confections where the only taste that really comes through is overwhelming sweetness, with the rest of the distinctions being more textural than taste.

OTOH, sugar (including the particular form as well as the amount) has a pretty significant effect on texture, too, so I'may skeptical about that being unaffected, as well.

DavidWanjiru10 tahun yang lalu

If I'm not mistaken, 1% in milk refers to the butter fat content, but if a chocolate is 60% sugar, isn't that by weight? Like if a bar is 100 grams, 60 grams is sugar? If that is how it works, you'll notice the missing sugar, I think.

dperfect10 tahun yang lalu

If they're claiming a 40% reduction in sugar (by weight or by volume - the same principle applies) without affecting taste, then no, apparently you wouldn't notice the missing sugar. They're saying that an altered structure of the sugar itself makes it taste sweeter, so less sugar ends up tasting the same[1].

I am skeptical that it wouldn't affect other desirable properties of the chocolate, but I guess only time will tell whether or not their claim is actually true.

[1] There have been other similar breakthroughs in altering the structure of ingredients to allow for reductions without significantly affecting taste/texture. One notable example is low-temperature extrusion ("slow churned") ice cream.

lelandbatey10 tahun yang lalu

You may not notice the taste difference, but what I think other posters are saying is that the change in mass will be noticeable?

Let's say that we've got a 100 gram candy bar, and 60 grams of that candy bar is sugar. Now, reduce the amount sugar in the candy bar by 40%, bringing it down to 36 grams of sugar. Wouldn't the 24 gram loss of sugar mean a 24 gram loss of mass in the candy bar? And wouldn't that decrease in mass of candy bar be noticeable?

dperfect10 tahun yang lalu

> Wouldn't the 24 gram loss of sugar mean a 24 gram loss of mass in the candy bar?

No. That's what I'm trying to explain. Let's assume they're going to make the candy bar the same size regardless of ingredients. If sugar represents a smaller portion of those ingredients, it just means there will be more of the other ingredients relative to the sugar. You're really just adjusting a ratio of sugar to other ingredients.

Don't think of it in terms of a candy bar; instead, think of a giant vat filled with the melted chocolate that will eventually be turned into candy bars. By not adding as much of one ingredient, you're just raising the proportion of other ingredients to the total weight. Those other ingredients may be heavier or lighter than the absent ingredient, but it most likely won't just be air replacing it (they could add more air, but that's probably not necessary).

Even if the final product does end up being a bit lighter, I bet most people wouldn't care (and more people would appreciate the lower sugar content).

pbhjpbhj10 tahun yang lalu

... and you're not thinking of it like a global conglomerate board member "we've cut weights as much as we can; but we think that we can pack in some filler material or cut weight further if we sell it as 'sugar reduction' - personally I'm going to use the money to buy a second floating palace, my other one doesn't match my third wife's new tiara".

Or, they could sell the product and let people choose how much to eat for themselves? If they want to do something moralistic they could quit promoting baby formula to nursing mothers, or stop buying chocolate from places that use child slaves, or go Fairtrade on cocoa and sugar.

xorxornop10 tahun yang lalu

Except that most people have repeatedly shown they're not capable of making sensible choices. Although that's possibly a secondary/tertiary effect, seeing as how it's so hugely variable over different regions of the world

wlievens10 tahun yang lalu

Of course, as it would be a lot smaller. Or have air bubbles inside.

Chocolate is made of fat and sugar. If you put in less sugar, you put in more fat for the same amount of chocolate bar. It's not rocket science.

[deleted]10 tahun yang lalu

OJFord10 tahun yang lalu

    > I am skeptical that it wouldn't affect other desirable properties of the chocolate,

Nestlé has a shortage of desirable properties in its chocolate anyway, so I wouldn't worry too much ;)

jdietrich10 tahun yang lalu

Air, the cheapest ingredient in food manufacturing.

Make the wafer biscuits in a Kit Kat less dense. Add more bubbles to the Aero. Change the shape of bars so that they appear bigger. Add puffed rice or pieces of biscuit to pad out solid chocolate. It's part of the standard marketing repertoire.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2421568/Revolt-Cadbu... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-37904703 https://www.marketingweek.com/2015/02/12/mondelez-to-continu...

problems10 tahun yang lalu

Of course, cocoa would affect the taste, a lot of people don't like dark chocolate. They're talking about another sugar that would dissolve faster in the mouth. Should be interesting at least.

cptskippy10 tahun yang lalu

Most chocolate isn't anywhere near what you would consider to be dark chocolate. Hershey's Special Dark chocolate bars are something like 45% cocoa solids where as real dark chocolate is usually north of 70%.

To say that a lot of people don't like dark chocolate is very open to interpretation and I wouldn't at all be surprised if candy makers relied on that fact to support their dilution of products.

Manufactures have been altering their chocolate formulas for decades to reduce costs. Hershey once removed cocoa butter from a number of products, replacing it with oils, which under governing laws required that they re-brand the products from "milk chocolate" to "chocolate candy".

Companies even have different formulations base on the country and their general preferences. Nutella sold in the USA is very different in taste and texture from Nutella sold in Italy. Candy sold in the UK cannot have artificial anything so all products there are very different from the USA as well.

A lot of the oils used to replace cocoa butter and milk fats have a putrid bile like flavor and so manufacturers bump up the sugar content to compensate which radically changes the flavor profile. These changes have been introduced to markets gradually over time so the market grows accustom to the changes. That's why you hear about people from Europe describing US chocolate as rancid.

*typo

nickik10 tahun yang lalu

Dark chocolate is pretty in fashion, at least in Europe and in Switzerland generally. There are hole series of products that range from 70% to 99%. Its insane.

http://nd.ukwebdev.com/images/foodreviews/chocolate-lindt-ex...

HelloNurse10 tahun yang lalu

What is "insane" about quality chocolate? Below 60% cocoa chocolate has either too much sugar for normal tastes or funny ingredients, 60 or 70% cocoa dark chocolate is sweet, 85% cocoa dark chocolate is mainstream, 99 or 100% is really bitter, covering a range of different tastes.

The important chocolate quality axes are choice of cocoa varieties and quality of processing; the industrial-tasting 99% Lindt tablets in the photo have nothing in common with their Amedei or Bonnat counterparts.

mhink10 tahun yang lalu

I think they were using the word "insane" as an intensifier.

I agree with you, though- really good dark chocolate is the way to go. I work near Theo Chocolate in Seattle and the smell is just... unbelievably wonderful, especially in the mornings.

cptskippy10 tahun yang lalu

It's been in vogue in the USA for a while too but I think the market is still pretty small compared to candies like M&Ms.

GordonS10 tahun yang lalu

True enough, but most milk chocolate products would have to add a lot of cocoa before they were considered dark chocolate. Just 20% is fairly typical here in the UK, which results in something far too sweet and barely recognisable as chocolate.

But I'm one of those freaks that actually likes dark chocolate up to 85%.

masklinn10 tahun yang lalu

> But I'm one of those freaks that actually likes dark chocolate up to 85%.

85% seems fairly commonly OK, I've rarely found other people who like 95+, let alone my best friend the 99% (http://www.chocolate.lindt.com/shop/excellence-cocoa-99-1).

Declanomous10 tahun yang lalu

I'll eat pretty much any dark chocolate. The best place to find inexpensive, yet good, dark chocolate in the United States is ALDI. Another great thing about their dark chocolate is that it doesn't contain any dairy. One of my friends was on an extremely limited diet for a while doctors tried to figure out what was causing a mysterious allergic reaction. That meant no dairy. She missed chocolate so much she nearly cried when I gave her the first chocolate she could eat in several months.

happycube10 tahun yang lalu

Trader Joes (run by the other half of ALDI) also has the good chocolate. :)

dao-10 tahun yang lalu

> The best place to find inexpensive, yet good, dark chocolate in the United States is ALDI. Another great thing about their dark chocolate is that it doesn't contain any dairy.

Yep, they're selling the same thing in Germany, it's great. Super cheap and vegan, contains lots of cocoa butter instead of milk.

kyriakos10 tahun yang lalu

The 99% lindt is one of my favourite chocolates. The whole process of enjoying dark chocolate is different than regular milk chocolate. I noticed that people who like milk chocolate usually consume large quantities. On the other hand dark chocolate lovers eat chocolate slowly allowing it to melt in the mouth.

codebeaker10 tahun yang lalu

Funnily enough this so-called "Choccolate Meditation" is the first meditation in the book on mindfulness for meditation, it's a fun place to start. Anecdotally I've never met a hectic stressed person who liked nearly-black bitter dark choccolate :)

(ISBN-13: 978-0749953089) http://amzn.eu/8JHl1tw

wlievens10 tahun yang lalu

Meet me then. I switched over from brown to as dark as possible during me keto era four years ago and it stuck.

But I'm not good with stress. Could be the hyperactive twin toddlers driving me crazy of course!

TylerE10 tahun yang lalu

The nice thing is good dark chocolate basically doesn't spoil. You don't even need to refrigerate it or anything.

masklinn10 tahun yang lalu

> On the other hand dark chocolate lovers eat chocolate slowly allowing it to melt in the mouth.

In fairness there's no other way to enjoy really dark chocolate, masticating a piece (let alone multiple) yields no taste and a completely dry and powdery mouth, it's not enjoyable.

wiredfool10 tahun yang lalu

I've run across 'Dark' chocolate in Ireland that's 40% cocoa solids, and more than that sugar. Highly disappointed.

(I'm more of a 72% dark chocolate person. )

miguelrochefort10 tahun yang lalu

I used to hate dark chocolate.

I've been on keto (less than 20g of sugar a day) for a few months, and can now appreciate chocolate with 95%+ cocoa. It's crazy how much frequent sugar consumption affects your taste buds.

tudorw10 tahun yang lalu

take a walk into pure darkness sometime, good luck...bitter is not the word! https://www.montezumas.co.uk/bars-c1/100-cocoa-chocolate-bar...

ashmud10 tahun yang lalu

Also, (unsweetened) cacao nibs: http://navitasnaturals.com/product/439/Cacao-Nibs.html

binarymax10 tahun yang lalu

My bet: Soy Lecithin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lecithin

Xophmeister10 tahun yang lalu

Chocolate already contains soy lecithin as an emulsifying agent. It's usually a very small amount of the total, so I'm not sure swapping out 40% of the sugar content (i.e., a much more significant amount of the total) with it would really work.

voidlogic10 tahun yang lalu

Sounds better than sugar! I wonder if they consider using isomalt.

AstralStorm10 tahun yang lalu

Switching to isomalt will drop ~50% in the caloric content, but change mouth feel and water retention a lot. A different confection will be the result.

xorxornop10 tahun yang lalu

Yep. Adding another lower/zero-calorific sugar but with a positive heat of dissolution (to counter the negative one of isomalt) can really help here.

Similarly, you can choose sugar pairs to promote or suppress crystallisation, as the recipe style requires. This is done by selecting sugars with similar or dissimilar molecular geometry and charge distribution.

nitrogen10 tahun yang lalu

What books/websites/blogs/courses/degrees would one pursue to learn more about food chemistry on a molecular level like this?

voidlogic10 tahun yang lalu

Like isomalt + erythritol ?

xorxornop10 tahun yang lalu

Why not erythritol? Isomalt can cause some pretty severe gut issues (to which I can personally attest, unfortunately!). It's also still quite calorific (that is, it is metabolised) - erythritol isn't. I can eat it in high quantities to seemingly zero consequence. It's also got an entertaining mouthfeel, where it cools the mouth; so does isomalt, incidentally, but it's not nearly as noticeable.

I have done quite a bit of cooking with erythritol, simply swapping sugar out for it, and it usually works great. Erythritol is only about 70% as sweet, so it can sometimes be necessary to adjust for that, but really, most things are already overly sugary, so it's usually unnecessary.

johnward10 tahun yang lalu

They've gotten away with shrinking products for years. When cost increase they make the product cheaper, aka smaller, instead of increasing prices. That's why the giant sized candy bar at the checkout line seems like a normal size from 10 years ago. I don't see how this will be much different.

ThrustVectoring10 tahun yang lalu

Uhm, nothing? Sugar dissolved in solution takes hardly any additional volume. It depends on the exact chemistry involved, but probably what you end up with is the same volume product with "healthier"-looking nutrition facts and significantly less mass.

lazyjones10 tahun yang lalu

Who cares, you can get proper 100% chocolate (organic, fair trade, blah...) easily from Zotter, if you want it. It doesn't really matter what Nestle comes up with next, people who eat that stuff don't care about such details.

lpa2210 tahun yang lalu

In the US, I would argue that it is significantly easier to get Nestle chocolate than Zotter chocolate at grocery stores. The amount that the average person cares about the sugar content does not outweigh the extra effort required to acquire Zotter chocolate... Nestle is ubiquitous.

dagw10 tahun yang lalu

My wife occasionally buys 100% chocolate. Personally I think it tastes pretty terrible. 90% can be OK, but personally I don't like much over 80-85%

azatris10 tahun yang lalu

So that is pressed together cocoa?

dagw10 tahun yang lalu

Basically. Take the pure cocoa mass and just press it into bars.

neves10 tahun yang lalu

I care. There isn't a Zotter in my country.

Shivetya10 tahun yang lalu

there are many great places to buy the world's chocolates from (my favorite is chocosphere) however for many it is what they will see in the check out lane or quickie mart that matters.

if they can still get their fix without all the excess calories; sugar isn't the worst thing; then please, encourage it more.

now just slip some fiber in there to make people feel full

racl10110 tahun yang lalu

Totally agree. I don't see the point in cutting sugar from this stuff or soft drinks like Coke and Pepsi. People drinking this stuff have already made up their mind that they don't care about healthy eating.

Also, people who consume the more "healthier" versions of soft drinks like Diet Coke or Coke Zero, they tend to over do it because they think they're it's affecting them less.

I've always thought as long as you're gonna be bad then do it right.

No point in consuming a neutered version of something bad when you've made up your mind to be bad.

icebraining10 tahun yang lalu

I disagree, you're painting people with too broad a brush. Many of my colleagues drink a Coke once or twice a week when we go out to lunch as a team, and they aren't drinking two just because they now order a Zero instead. This is a real reduction in sugar consumption.

Similarly, people also drive more recklessly when using seatbelts, but they still save lives.

hodder10 tahun yang lalu

Please provide ANY proof that Coke Zero or Diet Coke is bad in any way. Post a study.

Why is healthier in quotes? Why do you believe artificial sweeteners such as aspartame and splenda have negative health impacts? Gut feeling? Please post a peer reviewed study done on humans.

I'm curious. What is your position on climate change, vaccines or GMOs? Do you follow scientific consensus by looking for peer reviewed studies, or wing it either way based on your gut feel and facebook memes?

mholmes68010 tahun yang lalu

geez, you really like soda. I have no skin in the game here, and I dont know the correct answer but there's some studies...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19151203

http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2013/Q3/prof-diet-dr...

or, this wraps up some other links and discussion... http://therenegadepharmacist.com/diet-coke-exposed-happens-o...

mfarris10 tahun yang lalu

Here's one:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v514/n7521/abs/nature13...

There's lots more, but your ability to google is every bit as good as mine.

Folks skeptical of artificial sweeteners are not anti-science morons. Man-made climate change is real, vaccines are one of the great accomplishments of civilization, and the science is promising but not fully settled on GMOs.

Consuming artificial sweeteners is almost certainly healthier than consuming the sugar they replace, but that doesn't actually make them _healthy_.

nommm-nommm10 tahun yang lalu

Woah no need to attack.

http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/32/4/688.short

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031938412...

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/739321

desbest10 tahun yang lalu

That google cache will expire. Here's a version of that link that'll last forever. http://archive.is/CyGmc

aaron69510 tahun yang lalu

Yes, this is a major issue that people seem to be missing.

Sugar is used to bulk products. It's cheaper than almost all other ingredients.

Often you add salt to stop it getting to sweet.

If people wanted smaller products they could just eat 40% less so there will have to be something to replace it.

danudey10 tahun yang lalu

If milk chocolate is 50% sugar, and they cut sugar by 50% and replace it with cocoa, then wouldn't that make it 25% sugar and 75% cocoa? That sounds like not even remotely what people want.

CoryG8910 tahun yang lalu

Interesting. I wonder how much smaller a KitKat would be with 40% less sugar and nothing else added to make up the difference.

mholmes68010 tahun yang lalu

Other attempts at changing products "without any affect to the taste" have very much ruined their taste for me. If they do that to KitKat, I might have to take a day/week off work for mourning. I'm hoping since this is just a different sugar structure, I'll be ok.

Maybe around October next year I'll buy a spare freezer and start stocking up.

nommm-nommm10 tahun yang lalu

Kraft actually succeed in (stealthily) removing artificial colors from Mac and cheese and keeping the bright orange hue that we all love. Didn't change the taste. I say stealthily because they didn't announce the change until a year later and nobody seemed to notice for a year.

JadeNB10 tahun yang lalu

According to http://www.kitkat.co.uk/content/kitkatcollection , about 54% of the mass is sugar, so reducing that by 40% would cut the mass by roughly 22%.

tomascot10 tahun yang lalu

Suppose it has 5% sugar, if you reduce that amount 40% it won't be much. Maybe they add some soy byproduct

devb10 tahun yang lalu

I don't know where you're getting the 5% figure. It's more like 50% sugar content for most commercial chocolate products.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/262978.php

(One teaspoon weighs approximately 4 grams)

hinkley10 tahun yang lalu

Just found a nutritional chart that says a 41g piece of Nestlé milk chocolate (probably worst case scenario) contains 27g of carbs.

Now, a volume of liquids and solids when mixed together do not necessarily add up to the same volume of the originals. For instance mixing a fluid ounce of alcohol and water won't result in 2 ounces of combined fluid.

So while they're talking about taking ~13g of sugar out of each serving (32% of the weight), that does not mean they need exactly 32% filler to make up the difference. Could be a lot less than that.

pbhjpbhj10 tahun yang lalu

Several chocolate products in the UK seem already to have done the foam trick (add air), particular ones like Thorntons (individual chocolate box chocolates). You can only do that so much though. They used to be one of my favourites but now they're more like mousse than anything, the mouth feel is very poor and the flavour is greatly reduced - adding air with individual wrapped chocolates works commercially because they don't have a weight marked on them.

Cadbury, trimmed bars using carefully designed shapes (rounding off corners, adding curled edges) that seem as big; also adding cheap filler like popcorn or puffed rice.

joelthelion10 tahun yang lalu

Something like flour, maybe?

smegel10 tahun yang lalu

Polydextrose.

sdegutis10 tahun yang lalu

My guess is artificial sweetener, which by technicalities gets to say it's safer than it really is because of number-rounding laws. Or something?

grok210 tahun yang lalu

FTA: "The company, which makes Kitkat and Aero, says its researchers have found a way to structure sugar differently, so that it uses 40% less."

Seems like they re-invented something like Splenda?

GordonS10 tahun yang lalu

The difference here (if true) is that they say it doesn't affect taste - I've never had an artificial sugar than tastes anything like sugar.

birdman313110 tahun yang lalu

And it has gotten worse lately. Many manufactures are doing half sugar and half artificial sweetener. And they never label it as such leading me to take a sip and promptly throw the rest away.

cowpewter10 tahun yang lalu

The sugar alcohols (like xylitol/erythritol/sorbitol/whatever-tol) are pretty darn close. Their problem is not so much taste as gastrointestinal upset though.

ravenstine10 tahun yang lalu

It should be noted that erythritol is not known for causing gastrointestinal issues. I don't really understand why we even use xylitol or sorbitol.

xorxornop10 tahun yang lalu

Yup, it's so superior that it seems ludicrous that others are considered comparable. The taste of it isn't quite like sugar, but it's close, and it's WAY better than any of the non-polyalcohol-sugar artificial sweeteners... and, IMO, is better tasting than isomalt, which comes second in tastiness to me, sorbitol 3rd place... I don't much like xylitol.

riffraff10 tahun yang lalu

I've found xylitol tastes close enough to sugar, compared to all other sweeteners I've tried.

It does appear to get "dissolved" faster though, I can't really explain.

cptskippy10 tahun yang lalu

Xylitol is a sugar alcohol and not an artificial sweetener.

logfromblammo10 tahun yang lalu

While it is technically a natural sugar alcohol, and can be refined from birch trees, most of the xylitol used in food products now is full synthetic or fermented with yeasts.

It is sweet. It is artificial (sometimes).

It may also draw additional water into your colon and have a "cool" mouth-feel, and it does add calories. Erythritol may be preferable for those reasons, even though it is less sweet. A common non-sugar sweetener mix is erythritol and stevia, which can, when proportioned correctly, add the same sweetness as an equal mass of refined sucrose.

jquast10 tahun yang lalu

xylitol is actually beneficial for your teeth. I really welcome a future of kit-kat bars made with xylitol, if its at all reasonable.

cestith10 tahun yang lalu

It's also a laxative, so be careful how much you consume.

adevine10 tahun yang lalu

Splenda is a totally different chemical compound, though, with a chlorine atom. The article makes it sound like it's still sugar but with a different physical arrangement of molecules.

utexaspunk10 tahun yang lalu

Could it be air? Like, they physically structured the sugar granules to have tiny air pockets inside them? It doesn't necessarily have to be restructured at the molecular level...

inimino10 tahun yang lalu

The sugar in chocolate is dissolved, right? So there aren't any granules in the final product. They already mix air into most cheap chocolate-like candy products.

mncharity10 tahun yang lalu

No, not fully dissolved. The sugar grain size is what determines smooth vs gritty mouth feel. There are micrographs on the harvard wiki, and in my video, linked from another comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13087023

There are porous aggregate sugar grains already in use. It's not that they're full of air, just smaller than usual particles (so they dissolve faster) roughly clumped into normal sized agglomerations.

inimino10 tahun yang lalu

Thanks! Should have known there was more to it than I realized, interesting.

buzzybee10 tahun yang lalu

This is the most plausible hypothesis I've heard since it's already been done with ice cream, and people actually enjoy and prefer the experience of it(despite the obvious downside of getting less Stuff).

mncharity10 tahun yang lalu

One possibility is "instant sugar... now in chocolate!" discussed below. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13087023

Sharlin10 tahun yang lalu

They can't really use artificial sweeteners to add bulk because those are much much sweeter than sugar per unit mass.

sdegutis10 tahun yang lalu

Balance the artificial sweeter with some sawdust to achieve the same mass and sweetness. Pretty sure that's legal...

CoryG8910 tahun yang lalu

I think the idea is that they can now remove 40% of the sugar and still achieve the same sweetness with no other sweeteners needed.

sdegutis10 tahun yang lalu

I guess I'm more cynical and skeptical of businesses which only have financial incentives in mind to do "good" things like this, but no ethical incentives.

themckman10 tahun yang lalu

What is an ethical incentive?

ionised10 tahun yang lalu

Nothing that Nestle is familar with.

fritzw10 tahun yang lalu

If they remove 40% of the sugar they have to replace it with 40% of something else. Candy is sold by weight.

Removing the sugar only solves part of the problem

CoryG8910 tahun yang lalu

They don't have to replace it with anything if they don't want to. They could just make it smaller, sell it at a higher price (per weight).

sp33210 tahun yang lalu

Hershey has already done this quite a few times with their chocolate bars. They just get thinner and the texture gets waxier, I assume for structural integrity.

scopecreep10 tahun yang lalu

I'm shocked that this is the only mention of wax in the entire thread.

Last Hershey bar I tasted reminded me of those old novelty wax lips they used to give kids around Halloween. It's already to the point where you can actually taste the wax if you know the flavor.

dbg3141510 tahun yang lalu

I'm sure it'll be something along the lines of, "Hey, we're using 40% less sugar... we will be adding in some things like cane-juice crystals, corn syrup solids, and refiner's syrup to compensate." Don't you feel better already?

GordonS10 tahun yang lalu

In the UK, concentrated grape juice is often added to products marketed for small kids and babies. Presumably a lot of parent read that and think 'oh, fruit, that's good for you!', not realising that this is essentially pure sugar.

Declanomous10 tahun yang lalu

They do that with apple juice in the United States. Apples and apple juice are incredibly cheap here.

tracker110 tahun yang lalu

In the U.S. can say the same of Apple Juice.

pbhjpbhj10 tahun yang lalu

Bet they could rename sugar as "root vegetable extract" if it's derived from sugar-beet.

momeara10 tahun yang lalu

Here is patent [1].

The key idea is to add a glucosyltransferase from Lactobacillus, which consumes simple sugars and produces complex sugars.

It is not clear to me that this will be beneficial for human health.

[1] https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf;jsessionid...

pinot10 tahun yang lalu

This patent is actually really interesting. Up until now, most exogenous enzyme treatments in food production have been catabolic. This anabolic idea is something I haven't thought would be possible. Table 7 is really the tell-all. Starting with 270g sucrose, the sucrose is converted into Fructose and higher sugars. Only 180g of the sucrose is accounted fo rin that table, meaning the other 90g of sucrose is made into something even higher than they show in the table.

JadeNB10 tahun yang lalu

Thanks for digging that up! Incidentally, most of that link is worthless except to follow your path to it; only the docId is needed:

https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO20...

Drdrdrq10 tahun yang lalu

This! Sugar at least has known side effects. :-/

greenshackle210 tahun yang lalu

> Lactobacillus

Chances are, you're already eating them in dairy.

It's not like we understand the 'side effects' of most things we eat. Any plant or fruit or fermented product you eat is made up of thousands of compounds, almost none of which have been tested for their effects in isolation.

(But, you know, I'm pretty confident candy bars are bad for you. This change will not make them any better.)

inDigiNeous10 tahun yang lalu

You should definitely boycott Nestle. They are for example aggressively pushing baby milk replacements for newborns in developing countries: more info here:http://www.babymilkaction.org/nestlefree#evidence

"Nestlé promotes its baby milk around the world with the claim such as it is the ‘natural start’, ‘gentle start’ and ‘protects’ babies. In truth, babies fed on formula are more likely to become sick than breastfed babies and, in conditions of poverty, more likely to die. Nestlé has promised to drop the ‘natural start’ claim by mid-2015 following pressure from the campaign, but not the others."

Also, they have been calling for privatization and taking away water as a basic human right, instead wanting to sell people water in bottles.

Here's a list of Nestle products to boycott: http://www.babymilkaction.org/nestle-boycott-list

It contains some surprising ones, like San Pellegrino which is considered to be a high quality water.

billmalarky10 tahun yang lalu

The best part about a Nestle boycott is it is great for you healthwise. I guess it shouldn't be surprising that most of the food products made by such an evil company are basically poison.

I mean look at their list of ~crap~ brands: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nestl%C3%A9_brands

It's all junk food designed to take advantage of human cravings in order to maximize profits.

You would be hard pressed to find a _single_ healthy product outside of their water brands, which are of course insanely marked up versions of literally the most abundant natural resource on the planet.

AceJohnny210 tahun yang lalu

> literally the most abundant natural resource on the planet.

_Second_ most abundant natural resource. I like my free oxygen.

;p

...wait, silicium's a natural resource too, right? Oh darn I've over-pedanticized myself.

billmalarky10 tahun yang lalu

>Oh darn I've over-pedanticized myself.

Eh don't feel so bad, in my other anti-nestle comment in this thread I actually contradicted my own statement above entirely...

That is, water as a global resource is incredibly abundant, _clean available water_ not so much... Which of course Nestle profits off of in horrific ways.

eropple10 tahun yang lalu

Nerd self-sniping is the most ignominious of fates.

77pt7710 tahun yang lalu

Nitrogen?

AceJohnny210 tahun yang lalu

I thought of it at first, but I think silicium beats it as it's most of Earth's crust.

B-Con10 tahun yang lalu

The best part is not having to taste their chocolate. Their US chocolate is easily the worst excuse for chocolate I've ever eaten. (I'm not exaggerating.)

billmalarky10 tahun yang lalu

I always thought Europeans were just being pretentious about big-brand American chocolate until I tried some big-brand european brands.

joering210 tahun yang lalu

Sometimes you can tell the company spirit by simply being interviewed there. I once was there and the process and people doing my review were awful and look at everything in terms of measurement. "So Joe, from 1-10, how good of a husband are you?". Then a friend of mine told me that people who answer high score to that question were ignore right off the bat, since they looking for someone 8am-8pm. As she said, "so many times I was told by my manager if you have life and family, don't work here".

Edit: interesting read from a few days ago, shows you their true colors: http://www.alternet.org/activism/nestle-trying-break-us-penn...

Edit #2: Should have said this was interview done in Europe. So different rules apply.

hawkice10 tahun yang lalu

You are describing a hiring process that very possibly breaks federal law, given the EEOC describes it as "evidence of intent to discriminate". If you experienced this, talk to a lawyer instead of / in addition to HN.

see: https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/practices/inquiries_marital_status...

binarymax10 tahun yang lalu

That is in the USA. Hiring practices differ in other countries, and asking about marital status is not always illegal.

Spare_account10 tahun yang lalu

FWIW the question in the GP to yours would be illegal in a job interview the UK as well.

abandonliberty10 tahun yang lalu

Our organizations and commercial environment select for bad behavior. There's nothing uniquely evil about Nestle.

The real evil are the organizations and structures that nurture this type of behavior. This type of behavior is nurtured, otherwise it wouldn't exist. These issues affect all organizations, including countries.

We are losing at fighting the symptoms: bad behaviors. We need to figure out how to fix the root cause.

TazeTSchnitzel10 tahun yang lalu

Corporations are of course amoral (not immoral) entities. They are a product of their incentives, in good part.

wmeredith10 tahun yang lalu

Nestle is a truly evil company. Like james Bond villain evil. I avoid their products like the plague.

roflchoppa10 tahun yang lalu

dude my 5th grade teacher told me this back in 2001/2002? I still remember it today, still avoid nestle products.

makomk10 tahun yang lalu

Yeah, and very little has changed since then. If I remember correctly, Nestle's response to the baby milk controversy is held up as a example of how companies can tackle PR issues by involving themselves heavily in setting rules for their own industry, simultaneously making sure that the new rules don't actually obstruct them whilst looking like they're doing something about the problem. This is often seen as a positive example to imitate by utter scumbags.

mongol10 tahun yang lalu

It goes even further back, early 80s at least.

roflchoppa10 tahun yang lalu

free app idea, called dirt, which bring up controversy about companies, so when you buy something, at least you can see where your dollar/peso/yen/euro is going.

Various plug in options would be cool too, if you are browsing online, it finds dirt for you based on all the ads you get.

*edit - wow since the 80's? Still they dont change their business tactics, what a shame, they had 30 years to stop this crap.

Practicality10 tahun yang lalu

Hmm, I am might make that actually. That sounds like a fun project.

maerF0x010 tahun yang lalu

kind of already exists: https://www.buycott.com/

PhasmaFelis10 tahun yang lalu

That's actually a kinder description of the baby formula thing than I'd heard. At some point in the '80s, at least, they were giving out a couple months' worth of formula to new third-world mothers, knowing that their natural lactation would stop in that time and they'd be forced to buy more at full price or let the baby starve.

herbst10 tahun yang lalu

In switzerland we dont even have a good bunch of these products, chocolate and candies from them are way to boring for the average consumption and well some of the other products are used by some. I think its funny that nestle is basically one of the biggest income sources even thought most people in the country where it comes from avoid it anyway because of the usually low quality.

nashashmi10 tahun yang lalu

Poland Spring and Deer Park water are not on there. And obviously Nestle purelife water is not on there.

77pt7710 tahun yang lalu

>Also, they have been calling for privatization and taking away water as a basic human right

In many places hoarding the water that falls in your property is prohibited. Nestle is far from original in going down that road.

inDigiNeous10 tahun yang lalu

Sure, but is that a right thing to outlaw ? I don't think so. We should have access to basic needs like water, food and healthcare. We can do that, it's only the greed of corporations, nations and ultimately greedy people that limits that.

77pt7710 tahun yang lalu

Totally agree.

When I found that I storing the water that falls on your property might be illegal I was flabbergasted.

Also all the subsoil mineral rights. A company might just demand to extract oil from your property.

These things change according to jurisdiction but they are not uncommon.

Retra10 tahun yang lalu

That's so Joe Schmo doesn't sue the company across the street from drilling into an oil reserve that happens to extend under his property. You can't really extract underground resources while respecting above-ground property lines, especially when you're talking about liquids or gasses.

It's not like they can demolish your house and build a pump there just because you don't own what's under it.

77pt7710 tahun yang lalu

>It's not like they can demolish your house and build a pump there just because you don't own what's under it.

Actually in some places in the US it is like that. They will offer compensation thought.

dexterdog10 tahun yang lalu

I can follow that list no problem except for nespresso. The quality bang for the buck you get with those is so much better than the garbage that passes for coffee in a k-cup.

semi-extrinsic10 tahun yang lalu

No, it's not. If you actually do the math, the Nespresso coffee pods are so expensive per cup as compared to buying ground or whole espresso beans in tins, that a Nespresso machine with pods vs a proper Rancilio Silvia with Illy espresso breaks even in a little more than 12 months. Even though the Rancilio is $650+.

Also, the Nespresso pods are pretty bad on the environment, since they're made from aluminium (energy intensive process) but can't be recycled since they're full of spent coffee.

dexterdog10 tahun yang lalu

Most of what I'm paying for is the convenience. I have a machine in my office that I can hit a button on and get a shot out very quickly. I have a similar Jura machine at home that starts with beans and pulls a shot. The Nespresso shots are almost always better.

semi-extrinsic10 tahun yang lalu

Yeah, you don't want an "automatic" machine that does grinding, tamping and pulling the shot. It just doesn't work well, they don't make good espresso IMO. Even the ones I've used at various work locations, that cost thousands of dollars, are pretty bad.

What you need is a manual (aka semi-automatic) machine, and a proper grinder (I have the Ascaso I2 and like it a lot) or even just pre-ground Illy, it's not that bad. Learning how to grind, tamp etc. takes about a month. From then it's pure espresso magic.

For extra hipster points, buy a really manual machine, aka lever machine:

https://www.seattlecoffeegear.com/brands/la-pavoni

dexterdog10 tahun yang lalu

I have wanted to get one of those for the house, but as I said, in the office it's hard to beat a nespresso when the automatic alternative is keurig.

[deleted]10 tahun yang lalu

CuriousCosmic10 tahun yang lalu

the hipster points are irrelevant for the la pavoni, they are just straight up beautiful machines.

13of4010 tahun yang lalu

Or you could buy this, plus a weekend in Hawaii:

http://yourcoffee.arcada.vilkas.fi/WebRoot/Arcada/Shops/your...

CuriousCosmic10 tahun yang lalu

OK, I love turkish coffee so i may be picking up one of those at some point.

bleachedsleet10 tahun yang lalu

As someone that works in the coffee industry I've been excited to see some of the startups coming out now that could compete against companies like Nespresso using real coffee while still preserving convenience, automation and ease of use. You should check out Spinn. I haven't tried it but it looks promising and might potentially perform better than other so called automated espresso machines.

dexterdog10 tahun yang lalu

Interesting machine. I may give one a try. Unfortunately the pre-order function on the site is broken if you are blocking google analytics, but that is workable.

herbst10 tahun yang lalu

Then you are using the wrong coffe, your machine is badly configured (most are), was never really cleaned internally (most arent) or are just way to used to the artificial taste.

dvcc10 tahun yang lalu

I don't think anyone thinks its economical long-term over beans/maker, just that it is cheaper than going to a store to get coffee. The convenience of having a serviceable cup of espresso in less than 30 seconds (no warm up time!) all for under a dollar makes it worth it.

As for the environment, they do have a recycling program for Nespresso pods with drop-off stations in a bunch of places. It is Nestle though so they might just be taking the recycled pods and putting them in the trash.

rawfan10 tahun yang lalu

You COULD of course just get real coffee. You could buy the highest quality of coffee beans from a local roaster who imports the stuff himself from a farmer in Ethiopia and it would still be cheaper than Nespresso. It would be way tastier but you'd need to grind the coffee and use something like an AeroPress to make it.

madeofpalk10 tahun yang lalu

AeroPress does not produce Espresso coffee, which the Nespresso machine does.

You COULD grind your beans, brew the coffee yourself, clean up the mess you made and then clean the machine up. Or just pop a pod in and drink your coffee.

I couldn't live without my Nespresso machine because it's an amazing compromise between ease of use, reliability and quality. It's 'good enough' compared to 'proper' coffee while being a million times easier and consistent.

llukas10 tahun yang lalu

Most of local roasters can grind coffee as well ;)

I second AeroPress but also Hario V60 or other pour over methods are excellent.

herbst10 tahun yang lalu

You still would want to grind it at home. After grinding it starts loosing taste, not relevant how you package it except you make single use packages.

goseeastarwar10 tahun yang lalu

The coffee snobs (I say that with a lot of love) are out in full effect in your replies, but I'm with you. I did the whole Chemex, Aeropress, weight scale, burr grinder, Japanese tea kettle, etc etc and my Nespresso machine is by far and away the easiest way to get delicious coffee. My wife also adores their Aeroccino for perfect lattes every time.

As far as recycling, Nespresso provides free, self-addressed bags that you drop in the mail with your spent pods and they handle it for you.

zizee10 tahun yang lalu

Correct me if I am wrong, but none of those other devices sound like an espresso machine, so to comparing the product produced by them with the product of a pod device produces is apples to oranges.

Perhaps I am a bit particular, but I've never produced a coffee that I was happy with using non-espresso devices. Perhaps you are the same? Maybe you could give a proper espresso machine a go?

That said, I have to say that I am surprised about the quality of the espresso shot produced by these pod devices, but I still think that you get a better result by grinding yourself with a half decent espresso machine, all without being so wasteful and being able to support local roasters. Once you take those positives, and your new found smugness/feeling of superiority the choice is easy! :-)

goseeastarwar10 tahun yang lalu

You're correct it's not a straight comparison, I was looking at it more from the generic "black liquid with caffeine" point of view.

I've been lucky enough to use La Marzocco espresso machines at work for many years and they absolutely make better espresso than my Nespresso machine. The problem is that machine was $15k and my Nespresso was $100. I understand there are more consumer-grade espresso machines, but those still cost $1000+ and don't necessarily make espresso better than the Nespresso.

dexterdog10 tahun yang lalu

I now they do that, but I figure the environmental footprint of that is probably much worse that peeling off the foil, dumping the coffee and recycling the aluminum is pretty high.

pseud0r10 tahun yang lalu

Buy a grinder and an aeropress. It's a quick way to make coffee and it's way better than nespresso.

dexterdog10 tahun yang lalu

I've done grind and aero. It's not espresso. It makes a good cup of regular coffee if that's what you're after, but if I'm going manual like that I prefer my french press.

branchless10 tahun yang lalu

Agreed. Had the same aeropress for 4 years. Very easy to clean. The filters are very cheap, you'd normally expect to be gouged on these by some bean counter scumbag.

matwood10 tahun yang lalu

Buy a small grinder and 2-5 cup drip coffee maker. You'll get better tasting coffee, and it's much much cheaper.

It literally takes 20 seconds to grind coffee beans, and it is the easiest/cheapest way to go from meh coffee to good coffee.

dexterdog10 tahun yang lalu

That's not espresso

kolbe10 tahun yang lalu

the horror. the horror.

dexterdog10 tahun yang lalu

It's not a snob issue. It's just that if you prefer an espresso-based drink, that is what you prefer. If I preferred a drip-based drink I would have many cheaper options.

kolbe10 tahun yang lalu

Then don't pretend you stand on any moral high ground if you cannot be bothered to endure the difference between espresso and drip to support a larger cause. Your original claim that you in some way support a boycott on Nestle is bullshit. You just coincidentally don't like their other products.

dexterdog10 tahun yang lalu

No, I just coincidentally have an option on their other products. Nobody else makes a decent instant espresso option. Even the alternative pods that you can get for the nespresso machine are garbage as I have tried many of them.

kolbe10 tahun yang lalu

You have and option: drip. You choose to believe that option is not a sufficient substitute. And by all accounts, the difference between the two offers such a small change in personal utility that your participation in this boycott amounts to nothing. Your original claim to support the boycott is a straight up lie, and not even close to being true.

And that's fine. You can support Nestle. No one is making you act one way or the other. Just don't lie to yourself about where you stand on moral issues like this one.

dexterdog10 tahun yang lalu

Jesus, get off your high horse and then realize that if you think drip and espresso are interchangeable you just have no clue what you're talking about.

zizee10 tahun yang lalu

Here here. I really don't get the fascination with aeropress on HN. Perhaps I am not yet at the ultimate level of coffee snobbery, but whenever I have had aeropress coffee i am always disappointed with it. Espresso all the way.

I secretly suspect that it is because the aeropress users have never owned/used an decent espresso machine, but I could be easily missing the nuances of alternative coffee extraction techniques.

matwood10 tahun yang lalu

I love espresso, but simply will not spend the money to make it properly at home. When at home, grinding my own beans and a small drip coffee maker works well and is cheap.

So I'm with you. If I'm going to spend any real effort or money I'll finally break down and buy an actual espresso machine.

matwood10 tahun yang lalu

I prefer good coffee to bad espresso.

kolbe10 tahun yang lalu

It is pretty hard to be moral when soooo much is at stake.

inDigiNeous10 tahun yang lalu

:D Yeah companies like these strive on the fact that they have the power to purchase many, many companies and conquer markets from many directions.

Sadly for example the popular Finnish Penguin icecream was bought by Nestle, but they didn't of course change the name, so many people maybe still believe that it's still being owned by Finnish companies. The product didn't change, so that's good, but now the money is going to a multinational company instead of a local one.

So yeah, it's kinda difficult to avoid all of these.

herbst10 tahun yang lalu

I am 100% sure you never did the math. I worked for a small roaster in switzerland importing only organic coffee. Price per cup was about the half.

dexterdog10 tahun yang lalu

What math? The math of nespresso vs k-cup? I know it's more expensive, but you can't do espresso with keurig. If you're talking about the math of DIY you are not taking into consideration the math of labor and time.

herbst10 tahun yang lalu

Most full automatic machines are faster than a espresso machine. You you just fill it like twice a week and not every single time. IMO the time point does not count.

Disclaimer: I dont know what a keurig is. I only drink espresso and i like them as good as possible

dexterdog10 tahun yang lalu

I have a full automatic at home. Another one for the office would cost me about $1000. I got the one I have used. It takes up a lot of space. The nespresso was about $70 and is tiny. I recycle the pods.

herbst10 tahun yang lalu

Sorry for beeing picky on this. Ive worked a while with coffee machines while getting my IT edu.

A 70$ nespresso machine is a mess. Realistically you would replace that yearly because it gets to a health hazard soon. (Mold and crisp plastic) a good one with basic standards will cost you more like $250.

A ok fullautomate can be bought from like $500.

About the recylcling ether you make art out of them or that really does not mean that much. Painted plastic coated aluminium does not really recycle very well.

When people brought in nespresso machines (of all price ranges except the >$500 ones from proper brands) we would show them the internals and scratch a little mold from here and there. It was seriously the most easy way to sell them a proper machine.

dexterdog10 tahun yang lalu

They're not hard to clean at all and it is recommended that you do so just like it is on all of the full autos I've used. I don't have to worry about the people that think that you never have to run a maintenance cycle on the machine to clean it. Also, the mold problem is because most people leave the machine loaded after use. If you merely open the loader and leave it open it releases the just-used pod and dries out on its own.

Alex391710 tahun yang lalu

Does this faster-dissolving sugar have a higher glycemic index, and if so, how does that affect glycemic load?

GordonS10 tahun yang lalu

This is a great point. If the glycemic index has drastically increased, then this could actually be worse for your blood sugar levels than the original quantity of 'actual' sugar.

weego10 tahun yang lalu

Unless you have diabetes markers, glycemic index is almost entirely irrelevant, it's like people that avoid gluten/lactose who aren't intolerant. Studies that made links to glycemic load to overall health have largely since been found invalid.

example of newer studies: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4370345/

yourapostasy10 tahun yang lalu

Thank you for that link. That study period of 5 weeks is not nearly enough to evaluate high versus low glycemic index diets upon metabolic syndrome. All the study showed was no acute impacts (good to know, but not conclusive enough for prescriptive direction). After finding that out from the study linked to, I tried to find a study that tracked glycemic index in meals of participants over 1-5 years, but couldn't come up with any, so if you know of any to link to, I would really appreciate it.

cowpewter10 tahun yang lalu

It's still valuable to know. I am a diabetic, and so are a lot of other people. I would choose lower-sugar chocolate if it were available (I don't eat anything but plain dark chocolate now but I do miss Kit-Kats), but if it were actually worse for my glycemic control than the regular Kit-Kat bar, I'm not doing myself any favors.

[deleted]10 tahun yang lalu

acchow10 tahun yang lalu

Is this also like avoiding high sodium foods when you have no heart problems?

refurb10 tahun yang lalu

The glycemic index of chocolate is not that high. The fat content of the chocolate delays stomach emptying and absorption of the sugar.

agentgt10 tahun yang lalu

The only way would be to test as glycemic index (but especially glycemic response) varies wildly based on what is packed along with the ride (in some ironic cases fats and proteins raise glycemic response and in others lowers it).

Also in practice individuals glycemic response is more complicated than most might think and often times the index number has little correlation (you have to remember the index number is done for a fasted individual... most people eat multiple things during a meal).

Finally dissolving fast does not mean it necessarily will absorb or produce a great response. After all sugar alcohols and glycerin readily dissolve quickly in water but have little impact on insulin (albeit perhaps on sensitivity but that is another complicated story).

My bigger concern isn't the insulin but the fact that sugar actually has an affect on the brain similar to drugs. New sugars could have a greater addictive impact.

logfromblammo10 tahun yang lalu

Glycerine is a sugar alcohol.

agentgt10 tahun yang lalu

Touche. Yes I perhaps should have said sugar alcohols such as glycerine. I'm not sure why I said "and" probably because I think of glycerine is not as sweet I was thinking of maltitol. For example calling glycerine a sugar alcohol is sort of akin to calling cholesterol a steroid or certain vegetables a fruits. It might actually be the pedantic case but I just don't think of glycerine like that.

logfromblammo10 tahun yang lalu

Always remember that technically correct is the best kind of correct. And repeat it frequently, so that others don't forget. And to imply that you are very frequently technically correct. And to backhandedly excuse yourself for injecting barely-relevant-but-indisputably-true facts into other people's conversations.~

You can also call it glycerol, if that helps. It helps me to not hear the alt-rock song by Bush every time I'm thinking of the chemical.

Glycerol may not taste as sweet as maltitol or sorbitol, but it won't make your bowels explode as violently, either. And it makes your low-sugar baking feel less dry.

heisenbit10 tahun yang lalu

Good question. This is what they say:

> The new faster dissolving sugar will enable Nestlé to significantly reduce the total sugar in its confectionery products, while maintaining great taste.

I suspect GI not much. Sugar is dissolving fast - in any case - that by the time it hits the gut it is ready to be absorbed (once it has been split into glucose-fructose).

I wonder if the glucose-fructose split is happening already earlier in the mouth possibly the sweets could taste sweeter (fructose tastes sweeter than sugar). That would be equivalent to turning sugar into HFCS with 50% fructose in the mouth - may taste slightly sweeter.

In the end what could matter if this is an indication that Nestle has set course on lowering sugar content in food. Iff

cestith10 tahun yang lalu

As far as I'm concerned most large-scale commercial chocolates like KitKat could do with 40% less sugar, period. Making it just as sweet with less sugar still makes it just as sweet.

overcast10 tahun yang lalu

Pretty clever way of reducing the amount, by increasing the rate by which it dissolves. Sounds like a win for both the business side(cheaper costs), and consumer(less sugar consumption).

petra10 tahun yang lalu

DouxMatok uses a different principle for the same result, of covering a particle with sugar molecules in a way that increases the sugar surface and thus increase sweetness by 30%-100%.

http://www.foodnavigator.com/Market-Trends/Flavour-delivery-...

I'm curious if both methods could be combined.

hash-set10 tahun yang lalu

Nestle and Hershey have already turned their products into nothing but shit, so to keep trying to push the envelope sounds exactly like how cable thought they could jam more commercials into the programming and nobody would notice. These stupid MBAs all get their educations from the same few idiots, I guess. Pretty sad that business circa 2016 is just "another pickle from the jar" tricks instead of adding real value into products.

imjustsaying10 tahun yang lalu

I disagree that there is no value added here. Sugar consumption has a public health impact comparable to smoking, alcohol, and air pollution. Even as an individual I seek out things with the least amount of sugar possible.

Just ask anyone who switched from regular soda to diet how much value they found by fooling their taste buds.

verelo10 tahun yang lalu

My initial reaction was "Great!", then i shared this with my partner and her response was

"Fuck nestle. They are just saying what people want to hear"

Thinking more critically, I share her concern. The way they've been buying water away from local towns makes me think they just need a positive PR spin to distract us from the real issues.

* http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2016/09/23/boycott-nestle-water...

huherto10 tahun yang lalu

I don't get this outrage over Nestle bottle water. The amount of water that is bottled for human consumption must be minuscule compared with many other usages like household, agricultural and industrial.

Furthermore, it is not like the water is wasted. It is actual consumed by humans who live not too far from the place where the water was bottled.

mhalle10 tahun yang lalu

At the risk of continuing off-topic, the "outrage" over Nestle bottled water in this case was due to Nestle starting to draw large amounts of water at about 1/100th the residential water cost from an region under mandatory water restrictions due to drought. Blame Nestle and/or the local government, but it does seem short-sighted and suboptimal.

In general, though, bottled water isn't consumed close to its generation point: it's packaged in plastic bottles and trucked away. There's an environmental cost. And many of the bottles that are consumed locally contain the same water people could have gotten straight from the tap, so the environmental cost is lower but more pointless.

joelwilliamson10 tahun yang lalu

There is no drought in Southern Ontario. They are drawing well water, not residential water. A farmer could draw that much water and pay absolutely nothing.

ant6n10 tahun yang lalu

Doesn't a farmer feed the water back into the well, in a manner of speaking?

verelo10 tahun yang lalu

Doesn't a farmer feed us all? That water goes into making products that are likely much better for us than Kit Kats.

ant6n10 tahun yang lalu

I guess that depends on the farmer...

greenshackle210 tahun yang lalu

I agree they should pay the full price, and that bottled water is wasteful, but 4 million litres per day is not a large amount. It's equivalent to the daily consumption of around 8000 people.

Or equivalent to the water needed to irrigate a laughably small farm.

russum10 tahun yang lalu

4,000,000 / 8,000 == 500 liters per day per person?

huherto10 tahun yang lalu

http://www.csgnetwork.com/waterusagecalc.html

600 Gallons per day * 3.7 = 2,271 liters per day. That is just water without counting the water used to grow the food we use.

Meanwhile 4,000,000 liters can be benefit 4,000,000 people that drink 1 liter of bottled water a day.

Drinking water is as efficient use of water as it is possible. I rather drink from the faucet if possible but lots of people prefer bottle water.

greenshackle210 tahun yang lalu

I'm not saying Nestle isn't evil, but yeah, in terms of water scarcity, they're inconsequential.

The real problem for water scarcity, is not overpriced-as-fuck water. It will always be a tiny slice of water use, because it is overpriced as fuck. The problem is water being given away for free or nearly-free for nonessential low-value uses.

The consensus solution among water management professionals is full water pricing.

> in southern Ontario, bottled water giant Nestlé continues to extract four million litres of groundwater every day

Wow! That's like, four billion millilitres! Let's use the smallest unit of measurement we can for maximum outrage.

That's like, almost two entire olympic swimming po.. oh.

billmalarky10 tahun yang lalu

Nestle has tapped into the water supply in developing markets like Pakistan. As a result the water table is lowered (and quality of water drops) so people in the area cannot get access to clean water from local wells, and are forced to purchase Nestle "pure life" water at an insane markup.

Scroll down to page 25 and look for:

"9. Human Rights Concerns about Nestlé’s ‘Pure Life’"

http://www.alliancesud.ch/en/policy/climate/downloads/nestle...

Nestle is not the sole water extractor that is causing this issue, but their business model (extract local water, bottle, mark-up, sell) is unconscionable in _this_ context. They aren't adding value, they are simply taking advantage of a developing country's weak regulatory framework.

Their business model (for this particular product) would not be immoral in an environment where access to local water was abundant.

davidgerard10 tahun yang lalu

Nestlé to mulch only organic, non-GMO babies from 2015

VEVEY, Suisse, Thursday (NTN) — Nestlé will be removing all artificial flavours and colours, like Red 40, Yellow 5 and Screaming Agony 666, from its chocolate candy products by the end of 2015, replacing them with the delicious tears of malnourished infants.

“Nestlé is the world’s leading nutrition, health and — hold on, is this right? — wellness company, or the first world’s at least,” said Doreen Ida, Nestlé USA Confections & Snacks president.

Consumers have long surveyed as wanting food not to contain artificial colours, flavours, genetic modifications, DNA, microwaves, wifi, chemicals or atoms, apparently preferring to eat alchemical workings using only the four humours.

“We have consulted with Food Babe on a new process, using only pure, wholesome, organic and sustainably-farmed pain and suffering, guaranteed to be from poor people in a country that isn’t yours. We know you are fully willing to make sacrifices to improve your lifestyle, as long as those sacrifices are of other people halfway around the world.”

The nourishing tears of children dying in pain are the vital ingredient in the new process, preferably those gathered from tainted formula induced dysentery. “Obviously too foolish and dissolute to use safe Nestlé privatised water!” All babies are certified to have grown up in an environment with minimal quantities of artificial chemicals, electromagnetic radiation or modern allopathic medicines.

“We never compromise on taste. Maintaining the great taste and appearance consumers expect from the chocolate brands they know and love is our number-one priority. It is technically true that a mountain of suffering goes into every bite, but we’d never let that compete with your convenience. Nestlé: Good Food, Good Life. Yours, Anyway.”

http://newstechnica.com/2015/02/17/nestle-to-mulch-only-orga...

rogual10 tahun yang lalu

Does anybody care what a company this size says anymore? What relation does PR spin like this even have to reality? They'll do whatever they need to do to make money and say whatever half-truths make them sound good. This is a non-story.

andr10 tahun yang lalu

Read the news with a grain of salt (ahem), as sugar prices have gone up 2x in the past year. http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=sugar&month...

copperx10 tahun yang lalu

Ah, the old "follow the money" advice still holds true.

politician10 tahun yang lalu

The USDA Foreign Agricultural Service recently released its biannual report on sugar, "Sugar: World Markets and Trade".

> Global production for 2016/17 is up 5 million metric tons (raw value) to 171 million as gains in Brazil and the European Union and most of the top 25 producers more than offset declines in India and Thailand. Global raw sugar monthly average prices, after falling for over a year and bottoming at less than 11 cents per pound in August 2015, have been trending higher to near 23 cents in October 2016. Despite high prices, consumption is forecast at a record 174 million tons, drawing stocks down to the lowest level since 2010/11. The global sugar deficit narrows from 6.7 million tons in 2015/16 to a forecast 2.6 million.

That the price of sugar has doubled over the past year amid shrinking stocks probably explains why Nestle is interested in cutting their use of the ingredient.

[1] https://apps.fas.usda.gov/psdonline/circulars/Sugar.pdf

binarymax10 tahun yang lalu

There isn't any technical information in the article, but what does "a way to structure sugar differently" mean? Do they mean change it from being sucrose to some other compound?

CoryG8910 tahun yang lalu

There is a link to the Nestle announcement in the article. Doesn't contain much more information but it does say:

> Using only natural ingredients, Nestlé researchers have found a way to structure sugar differently.

> Our scientists have discovered a completely new way to use a traditional, natural ingredient.

No link to the patent application that I can find though.

: /

http://www.nestle.com/media/news/nestle-research-discovery-s...

JadeNB10 tahun yang lalu

momeara (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13080704) dug up a link to the patent: https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO20... .

cowpewter10 tahun yang lalu

:( I mean, isn't technically sucralose (splenda) just a "different way to structure sugar" in that they tack a few chlorines on it?

uremog10 tahun yang lalu

And "natural" can mean a whole lot of things.

joemaller110 tahun yang lalu

> Its scientists altered the structure of sugar so that it dissolves more quickly.

So... powdered sugar?

Raphmedia10 tahun yang lalu

News articles are saying that the sugar will be "hollow", so there's as much sugar particles that will reach your tongue but they will dissolve very quickly and be less dense.

Anyone has more information on the science of it?

mncharity10 tahun yang lalu

I have not read those articles, nor the patent links in other threads, but your description is consistent with "instant sugar"[1].

How can a vending machine add rapidly dissolving sugar to a cool beverage? Smaller sugar grains dissolve faster, but handling suffers as they cake and stick to surfaces. So you create aggregate grains - fine grains (dissolves fast) stuck together into larger ones (handles well). Sintered agglomerates.

The final sugar particles in chocolate seem relatively undissolved (pointy)[2], and sugar particles are often stabilized by coating with stuff, so a hypothetical PR faux "breakthrough" matching your description might be "instant sugar... now in chocolate!". And didn't Intellectual Ventures move into food industry trolling a few years ago, so there's likely a market for such. And this is Nestle.

[1] http://www.nordicsugar.com/industry/instant-sugar/ - sales brochure, with a mediocre micrograph, under the center button. [2] http://soft-matter.seas.harvard.edu/index.php/Physicist_as_C...

Not my field, but last year I did a video to help teach scale: http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/RBigE - the "Sugar comes in different sizes" video.

miguelrochefort10 tahun yang lalu

That's actually a great idea.

It's crazy to think that we eat food that's densely packed with sugar, yet only a fraction of it gets in contact with the tongue.

I wonder if they could design a beverage where the sugar somehow stays on the outside.

Raphmedia10 tahun yang lalu

I guess that's why we drink fizzy and creamy drinks so much!

Personally I think that the future is in manipulating the taste buds themselves. Did you ever hear about the "magic fruits" Synsepalum dulcificum? It's a fruit that has molecules that binds to the tongue. The result is that anything sour will taste like sugar. Lemons will taste like candy.

Pop a pill before drinking a bitter non-sugary drink and there you go, you are drinking sugar taste without any sugar!

Groxx10 tahun yang lalu

> News articles are saying that the sugar will be "hollow" ...

So... jet-puffed sugar?

AstralStorm10 tahun yang lalu

Cotton candy. Highly patentable.

stronglikedan10 tahun yang lalu

I wouldn't think so. There's a noticeable difference between granulated sugar and powdered sugar to the palate. This new method claims to not affect the taste, so I would think it's something at the molecular level.

andy_ppp10 tahun yang lalu

>> Its scientists altered the structure of sugar so that it dissolves more quickly.

Something tells me this is going to be like turning cocaine into crack. Apart from saving them money, I bet you find people selling their grandma's TV for a go on another KitKat.

And yes; boycott Nestle for many reasons, mostly because all of their products are terrible for you or other people.

transfire10 tahun yang lalu

They need to fix the taste, all their candy bars taste like nothing but sugar these days.

dbg3141510 tahun yang lalu

I wonder how much of that is due to "arms race" marketing and focus groups.

The current generations... our taste buds are shot, we're accustomed to so much sugar in things and HUGE portions. You can have sugar in smaller portions (like Coke, when it came out in 1886 was sold in a 6.5 oz size), and you could probably have larger healthier portions... but the mix is pretty unhealthy.

Current generations are kind of ruined... taught to look for bigger and bigger candy bars, trained to like sweeter and sweeter things... how do we keep these toxic preferences from harming future generations? And... what can we do for ourselves? Cutting subsidies on sugar producers... seems like Step 1.

edblarney10 tahun yang lalu

You know McDonald's 'kids mean' burger? With the 'small fries'?

That was McDonald's 'original burger' :)

Everything beyond that is 'super size'.

[deleted]10 tahun yang lalu

Happpy10 tahun yang lalu

Sugar is the cheapest ingredient. Why would they replace it by more expensive ones?

slaman10 tahun yang lalu

You might be able to sell more volume if it says '40% less sugar same great taste!'

Jean-Philipe10 tahun yang lalu

I always wondered why there's so much sugar in everything. All of my friends, relatives and people I know think that everything is too sweet - cookies, cake, soup, lemonade, ice cream, you name it. Am I weird? Do people actually like the sugar?

I just remember, one dad at a kids party once approached me and asked me "do you know why these cupcakes are so damn delicious? I've put TWICE the sugar that was on the recipe!" so yeah, I guess there are people who actually like it sweet... does anyone know of any data on this?

[deleted]10 tahun yang lalu

wkoszek10 tahun yang lalu

Eh, I remember the days when if I wanted less sugar, I'd just use less sugar, and the word "engineering" and "patenting" wouldn't be right for the food discussion.

danvoell10 tahun yang lalu

Is this just called dark chocolate? Kidding aside, I'm hoping they don't replace it with some sort of chemical sweetener, I'm always suspicious of sugar replacements.

Alex_Butters10 tahun yang lalu

you realize every sweetener is a chemical, right? What if they replace sugar with sugar? There are tons of types of sugars that can replace one another. Lots of sweeteners actually come from plants and microbes.

xeromal10 tahun yang lalu

It's not a replacement. The 60% remaining is just tastier to your mouth.

pacaro10 tahun yang lalu

Ruhlman's "Ratio" is a good approach to this

My peeve with the book is that he (IMHO correctly) tells the reader to use weights not volumes for dry ingredients, then in the entire rest of the book seems to promote/use volume measures.

https://www.amazon.com/Ratio-Simple-Behind-Everyday-Cooking/...

qq6610 tahun yang lalu

The strawberry is perhaps the best evidence that the physical layout of sugars matters tremendously. A fresh strawberry tastes incredibly sweet. But blend up a pound of those strawberries and it tastes wretched without added sugar. Since the strawberry has most of its sweetness on the outside, it tastes fine when you're biting into it directly but the blending exposes more of the tart inside.

rtuin10 tahun yang lalu

Is this to cover up their child labor palm oil situation? https://www.google.nl/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/law/2016/nov...

zwieback10 tahun yang lalu

Sugar in food has functions other than sweetening, I wonder how this will affect texture, mouthfeel, moisture and shelf life.

bluejekyll10 tahun yang lalu

Will it actually have an effect on weight gain and health? They've been showing for instance that things like Diet Coke actually don't help people lose weight, b/c of many other factors in the way the body responds to fake sugars.

Will this be similar?

bkmartin10 tahun yang lalu

Generally, people who switch from regular to diet soda only lose a pound or two when all things are considered. The research has shown that the big deal with switching is that you stop gaining weight. I'll refer you to Aaron Caroll's most recent explanation(rant) from YESTERDAY... https://youtu.be/znh58FZjXt0?t=663

em3rgent0rdr10 tahun yang lalu

I wouldn't be surprised if people just start eating more of this chocolate because it is perceived as less unhealthy, thus negating the health benefits.

CoryG8910 tahun yang lalu

Generally the reasons they think that these diet drinks don't help you lose weight is because they believe the artificial sweeteners used will effect you in some way that sugar doesn't cancelling out any other benefits it has.

Presumably, they won't be replacing this reduced sugar with an artificial sweetener.

antidaily10 tahun yang lalu

No.

e4010 tahun yang lalu

I think this is a great move. I recently went on a low-sugar diet and after a while I went back to my favorite chocolate bar from Trader Joe's. I was appalled how sweet it was and I really can't eat it anymore.

WalterBright10 tahun yang lalu

I'd buy beef jerky if it wasn't soaked in corn syrup. I examined every brand, and they all soak it.

Even bread has so much syrup it tastes like cake to me.

I'd buy more chocolate if it was less sweet.

alirov10 tahun yang lalu

I'm not sure about other brands but I just looked at the bag of Krave jerky I have in front of me and they don't use any corn syrup. Their website [1] confirms it.

[1] https://www.kravejerky.com/about

vonmoltke10 tahun yang lalu

Uh, what brands are you looking at? In addition to my sibling who addressed jerky, I generally buy Arnold's/Orowheat bread and it has no corn syrup whatsoever.

WalterBright10 tahun yang lalu

I checked all of the brands at the store today. Oberto, Krave, Matador, Golden Island, Jack Links, Tillamook, and World Kitchens all list sugar as the 2nd agreement.

I haven't looked at them in years, evidently they've switched from corn syrup to sugar.

WalterBright10 tahun yang lalu

The ones at several grocery stores.

ourmandave10 tahun yang lalu

Aw, I'd planned to buy Christmas presents, but now I have to divert all that money (and garage space) to hoarding full sugar Wonka Bars.

"Who can make the sunrise?..." Me, even 2 years on, that's who.

godmodus10 tahun yang lalu

Doesn't dilute the blood they've on their hands though

formula_ninguna10 tahun yang lalu

What's a problem not to consume chocolate at all? Instead of discussing what it really means to reduce sugar in it.

badminton110 tahun yang lalu

Well:

- chocolate production is not sustainable right now

- chocolate consumption is increasing

Eventually cocoa will become a very expensive commodity.

blakesterz10 tahun yang lalu

>> "A patent is a double-edged sword. Although it protects what you have done it also tells your rivals about it."

Maybe this isn't all the big of a deal for what it does to chocolate but if it is used to reduce sugar in other things that are consumed in large quantities (soda?) it could mean less sugar, fewer calories, less carbs and all those good things.

wildmusings10 tahun yang lalu

Given that they're making sugar that dissolves more quickly, how would this have any effect on soda? In which the sugar is already dissolved.

jasonkostempski10 tahun yang lalu

A patent is more like a nuke, everyone looses.

CoryG8910 tahun yang lalu

Here's hoping that their patent will only apply to chocolate or candy. I would be surprised though.

tn1310 tahun yang lalu

It might be actually a worse thing to do if they replace it with something else.

jzig10 tahun yang lalu

Of course they'll pass the savings on to the consumer, right?

pipio2110 tahun yang lalu

Well, given than cocoa is way more expensive than sugar is...

jzig10 tahun yang lalu

But they're not adding any more cocoa are they?

poelzi10 tahun yang lalu

I don't care, I only eat good chocolate

quadrangle10 tahun yang lalu

> It claims this can be done without affecting the taste.

Ugh, and I was about to be excited that I'd really actually be into these chocolate bars again if they were actually less sweet. Oh well. And patenting? Screw them.

Dowwie10 tahun yang lalu

In 2014, Nestle made $4.1 billion selling bottled water

lamby10 tahun yang lalu

It's almost as if value is subjective and not objective... g

afandian10 tahun yang lalu

It's cute of them to care about the health of consumers but I'm more concerned about the health of the people that harvest the ingredients.

If they really wanted to they could stop using child slave labour.

Veratyr10 tahun yang lalu

Do you have evidence that Nestlé purchases sugar that was produced through child labour? They claim to source the majority of their sugar from Brazil, Mexico and India [0] while the main instances I could find of child labour in sugar production were in the Phillipines, El Salvador and Nicaragua.

[0]: http://www.nestle.com/csv/rural-development-responsible-sour...

afandian10 tahun yang lalu

From Nestle themselves.

> No company sourcing cocoa from Côte d’Ivoire can guarantee they have completely removed the risk of children working on small farms in their supply chain. Nestlé is no different, but we are determined to tackle the problem.

http://www.nestle.com/ask-nestle/human-rights/answers/nestle...

They have been in business for years. If they wanted to stop in the past, they could, overnight. It would be expensive, but only because of their entrenched business model which they had a hand in establishing.

kretor10 tahun yang lalu

Even farm products from the US often times are produced with the help of children:

"US child labor laws allow child farm workers to work longer hours, at younger ages, and under more hazardous conditions than other working youths. While children in other sectors must be 12 to be employed and cannot work more than 3 hours on a school day, in agriculture, children can work at age 12 for unlimited hours before and after school."

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_labor_laws_in_the_United...

afandian10 tahun yang lalu

I'm not excusing the US law, but I very much doubt that people working forced, slave or child labour have the option to put in a couple of hours work before they go to school.

Veratyr10 tahun yang lalu

Ah, I see. Since the article was about sugar I assumed that was what you were referring to.

It does seem like they're trying to help though. They could choose to pull out completely but that wouldn't solve the problem.

desbest10 tahun yang lalu

It's the sugar that makes milk chocolate taste good, as cocoa powder has a sour taste. I expect Nestle to lose money due to this move.

sitkack10 tahun yang lalu

I trust Nestle about as far as I can throw them. Will swap sugar for uranium mine tailings, water rights contracts or dead babies.

l3m0ndr0p10 tahun yang lalu

tonycoco10 tahun yang lalu

Now I can eat 40% more Nestle chocolate! America!

rjain1510 tahun yang lalu

Or I can use the same concentrated chocolate paste for other medicinal purposes. http://www.webmd.com/vitamins-supplements/ingredientmono-812...

SomeStupidPoint10 tahun yang lalu

It's actually 67% more chocolate: 1.67 * 0.6 = 1.

dbg3141510 tahun yang lalu

Try the new Nestle chocolates, now 40% smaller!

malkia10 tahun yang lalu

NESTLE: I'm not chemist, biologist or nutritionist, but here is big chance to make something good for the world. If this patent is good for humans, and doesn't change taste much - SHARE IT! With today's social media, this would only bring more people to buy your products, than not.