America’s Worst Chocolate Brand Is Sold In Michigan

Chocolate has been one of the most sought-after sweets for as long as we can remember. The richness of the cocoa beans has always been considered a delicacy in the world. Nothing in our world is created equally and that includes chocolate as there is always something superior to others.

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If you ask the people across the pond, you know the foreigners over in Germany and Great Britain will tell you that their chocolate is so much better than everything we have over in the United States. To be honest, I would have to agree with them as the best chocolate I've eaten has come from overseas.

Just like many other sweets, chocolate isn't the healthiest thing for us but there are some that are far worse than others. 24/7 Wall St went on a hunt to find out which chocolate brands are the worst for our health. Any guesses on which chocolate brand is considered to be the unhealthiest?

Do You Eat The Worst Chocolate Brand In America?

According to 24/7 Wall St, the following 8 chocolate brands are the unhealthiest and Michigan residents should avoid eating them at all times:

8. R. M Palmer

R.M. Palmer produces “chocolaty” candy because they’re not allowed to call their products chocolate. Their most iconic romantic candy uses only one ingredient used in the production of chocolate: “cocoa (processed with Alkali)”. They also include other ingredients most people don’t want in their chocolate like vanillin (an artificial flavoring substance) and hydrogenated vegetable oil. Yum!

7. Lindt

Lindt is generally seen (due to its marketing) as a luxury and “premium” chocolate company. However, the ingredients in some of its top-shelf products do not match that branding. Checking the back of their premium chocolate bars, you will see that the first ingredient is sugar, making their bars more like candy than actually good chocolate. Among chocolate connoisseurs, Lindt is just overpriced sugar.

6. Ferrero

Speaking of Butterfinger, next time you’re at the store, look at the packaging. You’ll never see the word “chocolate” used on it or about it, because technically it isn’t chocolate. Their chocolate-tasting coating is made from corn syrup, milk, vegetable oil, and some cocoa, but not enough to qualify as actual chocolate.

5. Godiva

Godiva continues to source cocoa from illegal farms using child labor and slave labor. Their farms also destroy the environment in which they operate. They have no labor certifications for their products, not even those meaningless certifications produced by chocolate insiders. They have not made any efforts to certify the source of their cocoa, and have given no updates on their initial promise to be 100% slave-free by 2020. They are the only company to have received an F grade from Green America. Godiva’s chocolate has also been shown to be incredibly contaminated with nickel.

4. Mondelez

If you’ve never heard of Mondelez International, Inc., you’re not alone, but you have almost certainly eaten their products. It is the 108th largest U.S. company by revenue and operates in over 160 countries. Its brands include Chips Ahoy!, Oreo, Nabisco, Sour Patch Kids, Toblerone, Dentyne, Halls, Tang, Cadbury, and many more.

3. Hershey's

In 2006, ABC News discovered that many Hershey’s “chocolate” bars and products aren’t technically chocolate. The company had begun to replace the cocoa butter in their chocolate with vegetable oil, so they no longer qualified as chocolate according to the FDA. Hershey got around this by calling their products “chocolate candy” and “chocolatey”.

2. Nestle

Nestlé is the largest public food company in the world and is 33rd among the largest public companies overall. Nestlé produces baby food, bottled water, coffee, tea, desserts, frozen foods, and pet foods, and owns a large stake in L’Oreal. In all these industries it has faced criticism and lawsuits for its behavior and unethical practices.

1. Mars

Mars has faced criticism for decades about buying cocoa beans from farms in West Africa that use unpaid and underpaid child laborers. In 2019, Mars said that they could not, and would not, guarantee that any of their chocolate products were free from child slave labor, since they were able to trace barely 24% of the cocoa they used, and were not willing to source from places that they could trace reliably.

I never would've guessed that Mars, Nestle, or Hershey's would find themselves so high on the list but I can say I'm not surprised that many of the foreign brands are safe from this list.