A Glass and a Half of What?

2-minute read

“It’s no longer Dairy Milk. It is similar, but not exactly Dairy Milk.”

This is what we were told by a Cadbury spokesperson in 2015, explaining why the chocolate shell of its Creme Egg no longer had any Dairy Milk chocolate in it.

Growing up as a kid, my favourite chocolate was Dairy Milk, by Cadbury. It had that rich, creamy taste, and it would melt in your mouth. I don't eat it anymore because it started tasting different, not for me thanks. 

I think that Dairy Milk has a Ship of Theseus problem. This is an old philosophical theory that asks whether an object remains the same exact thing after every single one of its parts has been replaced over time.

Think about it: What made Cadbury stand out was that they used lots of milk, cocoa butter, cocoa solids, and sugar. Remember that slogan, "A glass and a half of milk in every half pound". That’s what gave it that rich, creamy taste, and made it taste so wholesome.

Anyway, in 2010, Cadbury was taken over by Kraft Foods, an American company that later became Mondelēz. At the time, Kraft told the UK government that it had "no plans" to change Cadbury's identity and brands. We should have known better. Kraft paid about $19 billion for Cadbury, and companies that spend that much tend to want to make that money back.

After the takeover, people started noticing that the chocolate tasted way more oily and sugary, plus it felt like it had less milk. It didn’t taste as good. Mondelēz are sticking to their guns and insist that ‘the cocoa content has not changed for many years’. So I guess that’s that then.

Plus, the Somerdale factory near Bristol, where Cadbury products had been made, was closed and much of the production was transferred to a new factory in Skarbimierz, Poland. They also made some of their blocks of chocolate smaller.

Which brings me back to the Ship of Theseus problem. If you gradually change the recipe, swap ingredients, alter the manufacturing process and reformulate the product over time, at what point does Dairy Milk stop being Dairy Milk, and become something else?

I don't know when that happened. I just know that, at some point, I stopped recognising the chocolate I grew up eating.