"It doesn’t make sense for chocolate bars to be divided into equal-sized chunks when there is so much inequality in the chocolate industry! The unequally-sized chunks of our 6.35 oz bars are a palatable way of reminding Choco Fans and Serious Friends that the profits in the chocolate industry are unequally divided.
And in case you haven’t noticed, the bottom of our bars depicts the West African coastline. The chunks just above it represent the Gulf of Guinea. From left to right, you have Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo and Benin (terribly politically incorrect, we know, but we had to combine them to create enough space for a hazelnut), Nigeria and part of Cameroon."
I love it, but I feel obligated to say
"It doesn’t make sense for chocolate bars to be divided into equal-sized chunks when there is so much inequality in the chocolate industry!
No, it makes sense. I understand, but it makes a lot more sense
It doesn’t make sense for cars to have 4 equal sized wheels when there is so much inequality in the auto industry.
Staggered setup vehicles are the true champions of justice, urging us all to get a grip on inequality within the industry.
My center differential disagrees
Ok but this is a good way to raise awareness about the issue. Many people will pick these bars in the store without knowing much about the brand. Then when they eat it, they will probably wonder why it’s divided like that and the explanation is right there on the inside of the wrapper.
And then never buy them again because they are difficult to break evenly. Great idea but poor execution imo.
Do you buy chocolate based on convenience over taste?
Price usually
My internal chocolate bar cost has gone way up. I find the stuff at the bottom (like the stuff at the checkout) doesn’t even taste like chocolate anymore. I usually get something from the specialty section now.
I agree. The budget snack items like chocolate, chips and so on have, in my opinion, lost a lot of quality; they taste a lot greasier, have worse “mouth-feel”, or are just sugar with less aroma depending on the product. I also buy less, but higher quality stuff now in comparison to 20 years ago. (Central Europe here)
Fair, I do remember eating a lot of Tesco Value chocolate back in the day
lol imagine sharing your chocolate bars with other people, tssk (/hj)
fr tho if that bothers you, the inequality that comes with other chocolate brands should bother you too
not saying Tony’s is 100% fair, but at least they put in a lot of effort to make it as fair as possible
When did I ever say anything against that or that I am ok with slavery?? I even mentioned it as a good idea but with that execution, you will be cutting your own sales. At the end of the day, it’s a product for consumers and if your idea, no matter how great and noble it is, compromises on the experience then you will lose customers.
It well be cool to see for the first time but I certainly wouldn’t pick it up again if there are similar products with similar ideology on the shelf which is much easier to consumer. If this worked then good for them but I doubt it well work for long.
Also who the hell mows down an entire bar in single sitting, is that an American thing? I usually buy a bar of dark chocolate and eat 1 piece after every meal or when I am bored/hungry. I would never pick something like this other than maybe the first time and fiddle with it every time making a mess trying to break a piece.
if there are similar products with similar ideology on the shelf
that’s the thing: there aren’t
There are literally hundreds of them. Maybe the availability is different in your area but I can guarantee you that they are not the only one. But regardless you are missing the point.
It’s good for a company to be ethical but if you can’t sustain a business enough to make a difference then it’s pointless. At the end of the day, a business is there to make a profit. If you ignore majority of the customers and focus on the small fraction who cares about ethical products enough to make compromise then you can’t stay float for long.
It’s a good novel approach to raise awareness but the cost for it is too big, that was my point.
Bro it’s just uneven pieces of chocolate it’s not that of a big deal. Clearly they can sustain a business because I’m encountering their products more and more often. Apparently they don’t need the support of people like you who nitpick about every little thing so go ahead and buy other brands if that’s what makes you happy.
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Yeah this copy needed a couple more drafts/notes.
I do like these bars but breaking it into pieces without a mess is difficult. I’ve had to resort to putting the entire thing in my mouth and waiting for it to melt down my throat.
I guess we’ll just have to deal with slavery then
If only there was some middle ground between hard to eat chocolate and modern day slavery.
But the slavery is where the flavour comes from!
That and the lead that is in it.
You break it while the packaging is intact
The geopolitical meta is strong here
Giggity
Especially the dark ones require a lot of force to break. I see it as a challenge.
It is a mess, which is why I thought it’s intentional to make it difficult to apportion your dose of chocolate, in effect making you eat more. And all this stuff about inequality sounds like the worst BS possible.
Too bad about all the lead in them. They’re not as bad as some brands, though.
An ounce of their Dark Chocolate has 134% of the California MADL dose of 0.5 micrograms of lead, for those wondering about details.
An ounce is about 29 grams in non-freedom units, for those wondering
I’ve bought drugs before, I know how many grams in an ounce
Yeah, I’ve bought enough drugs to know it’s 28g.
micrograms, which is 1/1000 of a milligram. No amount of lead is considered safe, but you would need to eat allllottttttt of this chocolate before it would get to a level that, for example, a doctor would be concerned about. Ars Technica has a good write up about the CR report
Not that I’m trying to shill for Big Chocolate. When I saw the report, I definitely made a conscious effort to cut back to once a month or less.
Ah yes, sorry, I’ve corrected my comment to micrograms.
Am I blind or can I not find the claim about 134% on the linked page?
Searched for “Tony” there.It’s the first one in the high in lead section
Duh. The page looked on my phone like the article already ended and didnt bother to scroll further down >_>
Forget everything I asked :P
Well, I’m here now. What do you want?
I saw it on there among 20+ other chocolate bars.
Nvmd me. Didnt scroll far enough on the phone to see. Looked like the article was done already
I have half a block of this in the pantry. Thank you. Fuck me.
You can eat it just fine, just don’t eat it regularly for a long time.
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I know right. I’m sticking to cigarettes.
Apparently lead is delicious?
if I die by eating dark chocolate, at least I’ll die happy
Except it’s the kind of poison that takes decades to kill you. And it’s bad for braincells too.
oh so it’s just like alcohol then, that hasn’t stopped many people before unfortunately
But alcohol is paychoactive and addictive. Lead is non of those things.
Dark chocolate is
Paychoactive and addictive?
Have you been buying your chocolate from the dispensary again?
ooops
no I meant just the addictive part
The kind of brain damage that makes conservatism look good even if you are making below the average salary.
Otoh, it makes them sweeter
If it’s good enough to collapse the Roman Empire, it’s good enough to collapse the American Empire!
Well shit
I know, right? It really sucks. They’re honestly one of the tastier bars I’d had. I’ve taken a bit of a step back from chocolate in general, these days. I probably got enough lead exposure as a kid… no need to add any more than is absolutely unavoidable.
Lol, that’s per ounce too.
The lead and cadmium are in there on purpose, to enhance taste. Have you ever had chocolate without lead and cadmium? It tastes nasty
I’m not sure if OP was intended as an ad or not, but I think we should have an informal rule that if a top post is about a product, we should all upvote the comment that has the worst fact about that product. It’s the only way to be sure.
It’s a good thing I don’t like dark chocolate then
Wow I had no idea, thanks for sharing the source.
Maybe they should spend less money on a fancy mold for their chocolate and more on better sourced cocoa beans with less lead in them: https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/lead-and-cadmium-in-dark-chocolate-a8480295550/
There is absolutely no difference in price between the two - i.e. a “fancy” one like this and a regular one. Both will most likely be made by machining a block of graphite and using EDM to make the actual mold. The difference in machining time wouldn’t cost more than $200 or so
Wow, techno music is so versatile.
Do you also find it hilarious to use the word techno whenever somebody mentions EDM?
One time this dude who is maybe a little autistic, possibly very autistic, made this super detailed post about all the different genres of electronic dance music. If you know anything about it, you know there’s some hyper-specific sub genres out there, and this dude took the time to not only list them all out, but verbally describe what made a piece of music fit into one genre versus all the others.
Obviously I replied with something like “Man, I love techno.”
To be honest, this is the first time I’ve had the opportunity to do so.
What does techno music have to do with cutting metal with wire?
Sure, gram for gram, Tony’s has 34% more lead than California would like, but their chocolate is still sold in the state.
To add to what @Maalus@lemmy.world pointed out, the Mast bar is 70g for $8, while Tony’s bar is 180g for $6.
Gram for gram, Mast is more than triple the price.
Quite succesful in the Netherlands.
In 2003, after discovering that the majority of chocolate produced at the time had links to human exploitation, Dutch television producer and journalist Teun van de Keuken began producing programs about the horrors of the commercial cocoa industry on his show Keuringsdienst van Waarde. Furthermore, he submitted a request to be prosecuted for knowingly purchasing an illegally manufactured product, which prosecutors declined to do.
After three years of unsuccessful attempts to change the industry through investigative efforts, Van de Keuken decided to start producing chocolate bars himself. The brand was called “Tony’s Chocolonely” with “Tony” (= Teun) and “Chocolonely” in reference to Teun van de Keuken feeling as if he was the only person in the industry who was interested in eradicating slavery. Van de Keuken sold 20,000 bars in two days.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony's_Chocolonely https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teun_van_de_Keuken
It’s making its way into Belgium too!
Oh yeah they have been here in DelHaize and Albert Hein (both owned by the dutch company) for a while and are now popping up in Colruyt and spar I think.
Thanks for the advertisement?
Funny that they made their brand the biggest piece of all in the representation.
I’m reading it like they colonize Africa directly
“It’s UNFAIR that all of these countries exist! All must bow before Tony’s West African Company.”
Tony’s West African Minimum-Security Chocolate Manufactorium - formerly several countries.
Some info, that’s interesting and helps balance this blatant advertisement. Tony’s was started by Dutch television maker Teun van der Keuken. He worked on a program that exposes products for their production methods and false marketing and so on. They stumbled onto the slavery that’s part of the cacao industry. He asked to be arrested for eating chocolate, and in doing so enabling slave labor, but he wasn’t. He started out Tony’s Chocolonely to attempt to change the chocolate industry. He’s not part of the company anymore. He has concluded the mission has failed, and is very critical of his former company, saying they’ve lost sight of the aim: slave-free chocolate.
Wait, failed how? I didn’t know about this part.
This article is from 2015. By then it’s been 10 years since the company started, and he already left it. In the article he explains that still only 25% of the cacao used in Tony’s Chocolonely is guaranteed slave-free, let alone that they’ve had any significant impact on the industry at large. He says the situation of slave labor in cacao industry has only worsened. Tony’s has changed the message on their product “100% slave free” (which was false advertising) to something like “working together towards slave-free chocolate”, which he concludes to be meaningless marketing. It’s rather bizarre that such a message is allowed on a product that contains cacao from slave-labor…
Wow, that sucks. Thanks for sharing it. I’m going to try to look up what the current status is.
Around $5 and good chocolate
Bought some for 2.5 Euros 2 werkstatt ago.
If they paid the farmers more they could just make regular shaped chocolate
They literally do, and their chocolate is a little more expensive because of it
But they’re not Hershey or Cadbury (whoever owns them, forget the name rn), or even close to them in size, so they can’t just fix the industry all on their own
Fuck Nestle
Oh yeah they do chocolate too
Fuck Nestlé, I try to forget they exist and buy anyone else’s shit
I’m a simple man. I see “Nestle” and my rage knows no bounds.
Cadbury (whoever owns them, forget the name rn),
Kraft, now called Mondelez
Also Mars is the largest confectionery brand
Ok, I was actually pretty sure Mondelez was the name but was too lazy to google it
And I almost said mars instead of Hershey, then mistakenly thought Hershey’s owns Mars when I know Mondelez owns Hershey and so I basically listed them twice
Don’t Lemmy right after you wake up, kids, you’ll look silly
Don’t worry, Hershey is independent (majority owned by Hershey Trust)
In 2010, Kraft bought Cadbury. Kraft then split up into Kraft (roughly: cheese for the US) and Mondelez (roughly: sweets for RoW), with Mondelez taking along with it Cadbury.
I’m not sure the last time any of these people have eaten Cadbury but it’s absilute dog shit tier chocolate now in the USA. It’s like buying Hersheys
Literally
I think that is exactly why this company was founded.
The “lonely” part of the name comes from how they’re the only player in the industry trying to do what they do.
Fait point, but it’s a statement about the industry as a whole, not their own production. Even if they were to distribute profits evenly over the entire production chain of their products (which I agree they probably don’t), the industry as a whole would still have this problem.
And miss out on this marketing opportunity? Lol don’t be ridiculous.
They cut out the white chocolate south and milk chocolate north.
Damn that’s just an ad. There is no escape
This is my favorite brand of chocolate rn
It was my favorite too up until recently. It has been dethroned by Choceur brand from Aldi.
Choceur is meh at best.
What’s your location?
It’s European baseline quality. Still I’m low-key addicted to their cream/coffee combo. Moser-Roth (also Aldi, produced by Storck just like Choceur) is approximately Lindt quality, that is, still meh but at least it’s not overpriced AF.
Actually good chocolate costs actual money. Stuff like Domori where you’re looking at 20 Euros for 100g, or stuff you don’t even get in retail, any retail, you have to drive to Belgium and visit a small chocolatier hidden in some back alley. People who buy top-grade beans at auctions, instead of whole harvests from trusted producers, much less random shit off the commodity market.
Decent Criollo cocoa powder (also nibs) can be had for the price of supermarket “brand-name” cocoa powder, though, definitely worth it. If you compare it to the likes of Nesquick you’re getting at a like 1000x price difference (Nesquick is mostly sugar and starch, not cocoa).
The chocolate I buy is probably boutique level in comparison usually costing around 6-8€ and usually 50-100g per bar.
I am mostly getting those from local coffee or spice specialty shops.
But I am rarely buying those and usually only eating one segment per day.My brands/product if I crave for chocolate:
Zotter: “Amalfi Zitrone + Salbeimarzipan” (tl. Amalfi Lemon + sage marzipan), Yuzu Citrus
-> I can really recommend the lemon + sage marzipan one. Very tasty. If you can afford (to import it or buy it locally), do it. Looks like this: https://www.zotter.at/online-shop/marken/handgeschoepft/amalfizitrone-salbeimarzipan
Lindt: 100% + Cacao fruit
Ritter: Sport Cacao y nada (I think only limited :/) or El Cacao 40% -> Optionally: Something like Die Kräftige 74% but I am not very fond others. Same with Lindt.
Some stuff I got on vacation but could probably find somewhere: Cluizel Paris: La Laguna 47% or Guatamala 70%
Miscellaneous: Fenkart Venezuela 75%, Cachet Raspberry 57%, Dolfin Ginger & Lemon
It’s pretty average I find? Like it’s just cheap shit they sell at the supermarket.
The plain milk chocolate ones are meh but the other ones with nuts or salted caramel are quite nice.
It’s better than Hershey’s. Hershey’s is what I consider average and that shit is hot garbage.
I don’t think we sell Hershey’s in my country, but yeah most American chocolate isn’t really thought of as real chocolate here. So I could see Tony’s being good in comparison.
Isnt it almost blasphemy to call Hershey actual chocolate?
First not sure why everyone is so sure this is an ad and not just OP likes this and the message.
I’ve contemplated posting about this chocolate, I guess we can’t call out companies we like and we just all shit on everything all the time.
Second, my friend called me out for paying £3.50 for a bar of this whenever we have a chocolate and film night when Cadbury is like £1.50. When I said it’s more ethically sourced he said I don’t care about that. 😞
Cadbury in the USA is also literal shit next to tonys
I think all US chocolate is just shit tasting. I was referring to the UK (£), where it’s less shit.
Yeah but there is a very distinct difference. Cadbury tastes like fake chocolate that’s 90% sugar, Tony’s still tastes like real chocolate even if you think it’s shitty. Eat them back to back there’s a noticeable difference in chocolate. I eat European chocolate all the time and Tony’s is about as good just has a different flavor profile to it.
I’m confused as I’m pro Tony’s but your comment reads like you think I’m against it.
I’m saying it’s better than Cadburys in the UK and the USA.
I like Cadburys and I like Tony’s but like a £1.50 Cadbury bar is about the same footprint as a Tony’s bar and about half as thick.
My price was a little off.
At Sainsbury’s and Tesco right now Cadburys and Tony’s are £2.50 and £3.50 respectively; both weighing 180g.
The irregular pieces make it much easier to eat. You make a conscious decision how much you break off, instead of just getting another 4 squares.
Yes… haha… conscious eating… haha…
