I'm British and can't stand American chocolate - and it's Hershey's fault

Shutterstock/icosha

The main ingredient in the UK's version of Cadbury Dairy Milk is milk. In the US, it's sugar.

• The Hershey Company own the rights to manufacture Cadbury's chocolate in the US.
• It banned imports of British-made Cadbury chocolate in 2015.
• Americans are therefore deprived of good chocolate.

There's nothing that makes you feel more homesick as a Brit living in the US than when you're shopping for chocolate.

And it turns out that Hershey is to blame for this - because it's not only making bad chocolate, but also depriving us of access to better chocolate in the US.

In 1988, Hershey paid $300 million for the US operations of the British candymaker Cadbury, which included Mounds, Almond Joy, and York Peppermint Patties, as well as Cadbury products such as Dairy Milk and Carmello. At the time, Cadbury used this as a way to enter the US market, which was dominated by Mars and Hershey.

In 2015, Hershey took legal action to ban US imports of Cadbury products that had been manufactured in the UK. This also included non-Cadbury products such as British Kit Kat bars, Toffee Crisps, and Yorkie chocolate bars, which resembled other Hershey products.

The Cadbury Dairy Milk bar that you'll find in the US today tastes almost nothing like its British counterpart, and this comes down to the difference in ingredients.

According to The New York Times, the British version has a higher fat content as its main ingredient is milk. In an American-made Cadbury bar, the first ingredient is sugar.

Without the heavy milk content, you lose the creamy texture, which leaves you with the chalky, seemingly stale bar that you buy in the US. These bars are not only an insult to their British creator, but are misleading to Cadbury chocolate fans in the US, who see the familiar packaging and are full of hope, only to realize they've fallen into a massive trap.

Hershey did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

EXCLUSIVE FREE SLIDE DECK:
The Future of Retail 2018 by the BI Intelligence Research Team.
Get the Slide Deck Now »