Everyone else managed to post without inventing a title (3+6+3+2 points, 8-3 days ago, 2+2+1 comment)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50155626

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50167302

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50215340

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50223264

There is a global cocoa shortage coupled with ever increasing demand and consumption, it's not surprising.

At the same time I live near Austin and can find any number of chocolatiers that refine and finish chocolate that is just absolutely wonderful. It's probably like this around any metropolitan area. Even in backwoods grocery stores you can still buy good chocolate too if you stay away from the name brands.

I know fake chocolate is getting dragged through the coals but lately I've been eating this new candy called Harken, and while it's made with dates and sunchokes, it is so extremely delicious. It's not the old candy, but it's a new delicious candy.

All the named brands are the cheapest ones out there: the ones you expect to have the lowest quality because cheapness is what they optimize for. There's plenty of good quality chocolate out there, but like everything else, you have to pay more for it.

Everything is getting worse.

Yeah, less milk, awful stuff.

All of the people quoted in at least the first part of the article were older folks. Your sense of taste gets more and more impaired as you get older, which is why for example your granny over-salts the meals she makes, she can't taste the too-much-salt problem any more. So things always tasted better when you were a kid because your sense of taste was still fully functional back then.

Not saying that changed formulations aren't contributing, but most of it will be because the people complaining have had their sense of taste impaired by age.

Paywalled.