I might not be the best person to talk about chocolate. Growing up, my favorite candies were generally the tart, fake-fruit flavored ones, like Smarties, Sweet Tarts, Lemonheads, Runts, and certain Jolly Rancher flavors. However, even in the midst of my deepest obsession with the sour side of the candy chain, I still had a special place in my heart for a few chocolate treats. Reese's cups, Caramello, and Chunky bars have always held a strange power over me and I've never been able to walk past a bowl full of M&Ms without grabbing a handful. After I got married, my wife dragged me over to the dark side, and I discovered the wonders of dark chocolate, particularly when paired with red wine. Even now, though, I will sometimes indulge my deep appreciation of plebian chocolate treats, especially when my wife isn't looking.

Recently, though, I came across an article that makes me a little worried about the future of my favorite mass-market chocolate goodies. Some candy companies, including Hershey's and Nestle, are substituting cheap vegetable oils for cocoa butter in their chocolate bars. While this saves a lot of money, it also reduces the creaminess and flavor of the chocolate; some consumers have described the new products as tasting "waxy and artificial."

On the bright side, the FDA has ruled that products which do not contain cocoa butter cannot refer to themselves as chocolate. Consequently, many former "chocolate bars" now boast that they are "made with chocolate," are "chocolate candy," or have "chocolate coating." Most of the major candy companies have unsuccessfully fought this, while smaller manufacturers are desperately supporting the labeling restrictions.

While Nestle and Hershey's try to decide if they're willing to spend a few more pennies to ensure a top-quality chocolate experience, you might want to take a long, hard look at your candy bar. After all, if you're willing to splurge on calories and cash, shouldn't you get the best possible chocolate experience?

Last week results from a soil test came back to NASA from the Phoenix Lander, which is currently on Mars. Turns out that the soil is "slightly alkaline" with several different minerals (magnesium, sodium, potassium and chloride) already mixed in. Further test results will tell NASA whether the soil also has nitrogen or sulfates.

Do you know what that means? According to Scientific American, it means that Mars' soil could possibly grow vegetables that we have here on earth. Apparently, veggies like turnips, asparagus, and green beans make the best candidates. They'd have to be grown under the surface or in green houses due to the harsh ultra violet rays that penetrate to the surface of the planet, though.

Who knows, maybe in the next few decades you'll see vegetables indicating they're a product of Mars, right next to those from earthly locations.

Just last week we had Arby's buying up Wendy's and this week, we learn that Mars (maker of M&M's and Snickers) has purchased Wrigley's (maker of Juicy Fruit and Lifesavers). Money-making expert Warren Buffet has his hand in the deal that has brought two of the nation's most storied (and, until now, family-owned) confectionary companies together.

I wonder how the residents of Chicago are feeling, having their long-time gum and candy company purchased and potentially moved. Any comment from the windy city locals?

We've all been there. It's 2 or 3 in the afternoon and you're starting to drag, unable to focus on the computer screen a minute longer. You start to ponder a snack and settle on a trip to the corner store to the local vending machine for a little something sweet. Only when you settle back down at your desk with that bag of M&Ms and crunch into the first one, you discover that it is stale. The next one is just as bad. You sigh heavily and offer the rest of the bag to your cubemate (who is known for his ability to eat anything).

However, thanks to a tip posted on Consumerist, you can now avoid the scourge of stale candy, you just have to know how to read the codes. For Mars and M&M candy, just check out the first three digits of the ten digit code. The first number is the year and the next two represent the week of the year. Candy that expires this week would have the code 815. For Hershey's, they use a letter/number code. This month would be represented by 8D (2008, April).
Just check the codes and never eat stale candy again!

"Oh my god! They want how much for that piece of chocolate?!?!"

I'm not sure how many of us have actually stood indignantly in a grocery store aisle screaming the above statement since a Hershey bar is usually under a dollar, but if you have, you might be justified.

According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, the US Justice Department is looking into possible price fixing in the chocolate industry. The Justice Department's anti-trust division has contacted Mars (makers of M&Ms and, duh, Mars Bars), Nestle, and Cadbury. Representatives from both Mars and Nestle said they will cooperate with the investigation, though a Cadbury spokeswoman had no comment.

Damn! And I love those Cadbury Creme Eggs at Easter, too!

Remember all the hoopla about several chocolate companies who were planning on changing the way they made their chocolate? Well, don't include Mars in all that talk.

The company (which makes Milky Way, M&Ms, Snickers, Dove Chocolate, and other chocolate candies and bars) has announced that they are going to keep making their chocolate with 100% cocoa butter. Some have been pushing for the industry to change to cheaper, healthier vegetable oils and fats. One thing I didn't realize is that the FDA says that if a company changes to those oils, they can't call it "chocolate."

The company says that even though they could have saved money by switching, that would hurt the taste of the chocolate. Thank you Mars!

I think that Cybele, who writes Candy Blog, gets a lot of her candy samples from convenience stores, which are more likely to stock the limited edition varieties of bars than the average grocery store. It just so happened that, while on a little bit of a road trip, I spotted this Limited Edition Triple Chocolate Twix in such a store.

The bar had the same milky, sweet chocolate covering that most Twix bars do, but also had a layer of chocolate caramel on top of a chocolate cookie. The cookie went wonderfully in the bar. It had a good chocolate flavor and was very light and tender, especially when compared to the much firmer cookie that is usually included in the candy bar. The caramel did not seem all that chocolaty when eaten alone, but it really tied the chocolate coating in to the chocolate cookie. When taken as a whole, the bar was excellent. It was lighter and more addictive than the standard Twix, with a good balance of chocolate and sweetness. It's hard to say how long a limited edition bar will stick around once it has been released, but this flavor is clearly a winner, so let's hope it is available for more than a couple of weeks.

In Times Square one of the most noticeable landmarks is the Hershey's company store, where you can pick up chocolates, chocolate-themed toys and more chocolates. But Hershey's is about to have some competition because Mars, Inc. has opened its own store just across the street. The rival chocolate company's store, M&M's World, is 25,000 sq. ft., larger than the existing Hershey's store, and has a huge selection of M&Ms-themed stuff. In addition to the world's largest display of M&Ms candies, the store features a 21-foot Miss Green M&M dressed up as Lady Liberty and a M&M's(R) color mood analyzer, which should clear up any of those middles school rumors about the differences between red, yellow and green M&Ms.

This is actually the third M&M's World store, as one opened in Las Vegas in 1997 and another in Orlando just about one year ago. A spokesman said that they didn't intend to be across from the Hershey's store, although it's pretty clear that they weren't worried about the competition. He said, "We wanted to be in New York, we wanted to be in Times Square, and then we wanted to be in the best location we could find. Coincidentally, that happened to be across the street from another chocolate brand."

I don't know how many of you folks out there have noticed that it isn't just the perfume makers who are using those scented ads in magazines. Pepsi did the same when it released its Black Cherry / Vanilla flavored Diet Pepsi Jazz. Scratch and sniff ads have been around for awhile but for dog food? Pedigree tried them at supermarkets and pet stores. Have you walked into a bakery and smelled that warm and comforting aroma of just baked bread? My local bakery has an electronic dispenser that sprays an artificial baking scent into the store every few minutes. Mars has been scenting its M&M World retail stores with a chocolate smell to make the experience more enveloping. Verizon recently did the same in its stores with the release of LG Chocolate phones. Do you remember smellavision from old TV cartoons? Well it's here. ScentAndrea has an 8,000 scent dispensing, flat panel screen monitor available in stores like Kroger's and Wal-mart to help make sales.

Scent is the most powerful of the human senses, and the most primitive. This is something I first learned when I was studying psychology in college. The right scent can trigger deep and long forgotten emotions and bring up feelings of every type. Marketers have known about this for a long time, which is why scent is starting to play a bigger role in many products advertising budgets. The best part about it from the sales perspective is that smell can help nudge you in a certain emotional direction without the person even noticing it. Sort of like a nasal version of Vulcan mind control. To boldly go, where no one has smelled before. Keep your eye's out... Uh, nose, for a lot more scent marketed advertising to come.

Alain Ducasse, one of the most successful restaurateurs in the world and holder of 9 Michelin stars, has begun to prepare meals that will go where no haute cuisine - or even anything worthy of being called a cuisine - has gone before: outer space. The chef is working with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the French National Center for Space Studies to create gourmet foods that can be packaged for consumption on space flights, giving astronauts a taste of something better than the garden variety rations then get now.

Currently, astronauts have an extremely limited array of food to choose from when on a flight, the vast majority of it being freeze-dried or vacuum-sealed. They have very limited cooking supplies and no fresh vegetables, leading them to crave foods like salads and hot coffee when they land back on Earth. Ducasse's line, which is called Space Food, will still have to be packaged specially, but will include favorites like rice pudding (in soy milk) and chicken with Thai veggies.

History buffs with a sweet tooth can now get an idea of what chocolate tasted like to American colonists. American Heritage Chocolate, made by Mars, aims to recreate the chocolate of yore by using centuries-old methods and recipes. Stone ground cocoa beans result in a grittier chocolate infused with spices such as cinnamon, anise, nutmeg, red pepper, orange and vanilla. The chocolate comes in bars, sticks and a drink mix. As is fitting for a historical chocolate, American Heritage is available only at Fort Ticonderoga, Colonial Williamsburg, Monticello, Mount Vernon and The Smithsonian. An AP story has more.

[Via USA TODAY]

A 23-year old British hairdresser, Michelle Harley, decided to share a Mars bar with her 19-month old son last week as a snack. When she bit into the bar, Harley noticed a crunchy sensation - unusual for the caramel and nougat filled chocolate bars. She realized, after a moment, that the crunch was not coming from a nut or other tasty addition, but from a piece of metal she had bitten into. Specifically, it was the metal end of a glass light bulb. The bulb was of the small size typically seen on Christmas lights. A spokesman from Mars UK assured the Mirror that a full investigation would be carried out to determine how a light bulb could have gotten into a Mars bar.

The Guardian reports that Cadbury Trebor Bassett and Mars, rivals in the world of chocolate confectionery sales, are joining together to support a campaign that places warning labels on chocolates in the UK. The "Be treatwise" campaign was conceived by the Biscuit, Cake, Chocolate and Confectionery Association. It takes a cue from the warning labels on cigarette packaging and encourages placing labels on products that will echo the government’s messages about maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Labels will feature a variety of different messages, such as "Be active for 30 minutes" and "Being Active doesn't have to mean sweating at the gym". The labels will also include standard nutritional information, including fat and calorie content.

According to the Heath Status Calorie Calculator, a 150lb person would have to jog for 30 minutes to burn off the number of calories in a Mars bar.