Got Vitamins?

I was in Target this week and spent a few minutes digging through their assortment of chocolate. Most of it is not so very special, but I spotted a new variety from Mars, more specifically, a Dove product.

At first they looked like the regular Dove chocolates, but then I noticed the packaging looked different. The “smooth” milk chocolate was now labeled “Beautiful” and the “rich” dark chocolate was now labeled “Vitalize”. Closer inspection revealed that these two chocolates were the same as before only now they were VITAMIN FORTIFIED!

I’m kind of on the fence about vitamins these days, especially since that Copenhagen study came out saying that people who took multivitamins were more likely to die early than the non-vitamin folks. I don’t know why we all feel we need more vitamins. Maybe if all we eat is french fries and doughnuts, then adding vitamins is warranted.

Apparently, the milk chocolate has extra vitamin C and E in it. I checked the old label and indeed it has more. Plus the ingredient list shows it has been added. So now you get 10% of the US RDA of each of calcium, vitamin E, biotin, vitamin C, niacin, and zinc in 5 pieces of the milk chocolate. Swallow down 50 and you are good for the day (just ignore the 2200 calories). So how does it taste? I don’t care for it. There’s anodd fruity smell to the chocolate, like its a filled chocolate candy. It almost smells like the chocolate candies you get in a box. Like the chem lab smelled in college when they were doing ester synthesis. It lacks that familiar taste of Dove milk chocolate. The flavor seems really bland. If the regular Dove milk tasted like this, I would think it was spoiled or very old.

The dark chocolate has “energy releasing B vitamins”. The label says you get 10% of calcium, thiamine, B6, pantanoic acid, riboflavin, and biotin. Same 5 pieces per serving. The dark is pretty bad. It has a strong medicine taste in the background which lingers in your mouth long after you are done eating it. Not pleasant, not at all.

Some time in the past 10 years, marketing departments decided we all need lots more vitamins. They vitamin fortify everything. There’s even water with vitamins and people buy it by the 6-pack and chug down bottle after bottle. Its become a completely frantic marketing frenzy. I think by adding vitamins to candy, it somehow feeds (pun!) our need to justify what we are eating, rather than eating better. We feel good when someone tells us we don’t have to change a thing to eat better. Chocolate has become health food, and now people feel like they are eating themselves healthy. It just doesn’t work like that.

I’m really disappointed to see Mars take the low road like this. Its a stupid gimmick and the chocolate came out pretty bad in the end anyway. They need to just stick with good chocolate and fire the doofuses in the marketing department. I’d be happy to go help them out. Mars? If you’re reading this? Call me. We’ll do lunch.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 16th, 2008 at 7:46 am and is filed under Chocolate Friday. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.