I was just in Tesco and saw this group of American girls standing in the chocolate section. They were all lined up in front of this one girl (their chocolate expert I presume) who (like a teacher standing in front of a backboard) was very patiently (and you could tell she was really enjoying this) pointing at each group of chocolates on display and saying a variation of the sentence, ‘This is nice.’ (This is nice. This is really nice. Oh this is very nice. This one also is very nice.) After a while the rest of the group could no longer control themselves and so they too started getting involved in all the pointing and touching.
Oh they looked so happy. ‘Like kids in a sweetshop’ they were, literally. And rightly too. Anyone who has ever tasted American chocolate knows what I’m talking about. Or maybe not, I don’t know; that’s actually what I was going to talk about.
Unfortunately I’m not really an expert on this subject and so unlike for example the padded-bra case (which I had actually done a lot of research on) or the bum wiping issue for Iranians abroad (which I myself had extensive firsthand experience on) in this case I can’t exactly say, yes this is the problem and here’s the solution. Because to be honest I haven’t tasted that many different American chocolates to feel like I can give an opinion on them.
I guess now you could ask, why not go and do your research first and then come and blog about it instead of wasting our time and your own with writing about something you don’t know much about? And I must say your point would be very valid too. However there is a small problem here; this is one subject that I am not actually willing to do any more research on than I already have because 1- I’m not exactly a big chocolate fan and 2- From what I’ve tasted, American chocolate, to put it mildly, (I already said to my taste, right?) tastes kind of pooie. And it’s not like oh yeah I’ve become a bit la-di-dah since I’ve moved to Europe sweetie darling and I only ever eat Lindt or Thorntons chocolates now, no, I remember even as a child growing up in Iran during the revolution and eight years of war where often the only sweet thing you could buy from a shop was a mixture of sugar and rosewater which you had the choice of purchasing either in boiled sweet or ice-lolly form, I was still disappointed when people brought me back chocolates from America or Canada! Oh henry for example! What on earth?
The thing is Americans have become an easy target now and I don’t really want to be another person that picks fault with them or makes fun of them but to be honest I’m just intrigued by this. Because really you can say anything you like about Americans but you really can’t pick fault with the way their food tastes. It might not always be nutritious but it ALWAYS tastes great. Their burgers are lovely. Those half a cow steaks they have are great. Those extremely tall deli sandwiches they have with five hundred slices of pastrami, turkey, ham and any other animal you can think of, shoved in the middle of two slices of bread, are fantastic. Their sweets are great too; their ice creams, their donuts, their cheesecakes, their milkshakes. To make a long story short, every kind of food they have is good apart from their chocolate which is…well disappointing really.
I guess you could say well this indeed is not something to get one’s knickers in a twist about, perhaps with this terrible obesity problem in the US, the fact that their chocolate isn’t exactly morish, is actually a good thing.
But when you think about it chocolates are a lot more important than that. They are kind of like the food ambassadors of a country aren’t they? Think about it this way; when a nation goes to war or tries to “free” another nation, usually during the fighting or freeing process, two things fall down from the sky: 1-Bombs 2-Food parcels. While the first one does a lot of damage and annoys a lot of people, the second one I guess is designed to make people happy and build up trust. And here’s where everything goes a bit pear-shaped for the poor Americans because they’re not dropping down In-N-Out burgers or New York Cheesecakes or pastrami sandwiches on people, they’re dropping bloody Hershey bars on them that even an Afghani goat would turn its back on! No wonder the people of every country that Americans go to free, rise against them. They think if this is how your chocolate tastes which is a luxury and should taste heavenly, then I don’t really want to know what anything else is like in your country ‘Get out’.
Think about it, does anyone ever want to fight the Belgians or the Swiss for example? The answer is, ‘No’. We love the Swiss so much in fact that we’ve said, ‘Our darlings, you don’t need to do anything at all; you just sit here and make your chocolates and just so you won’t feel left out, we’re going to give you all our money to hold as well!’
As I said before though, due to a delicate stomach, I haven’t done enough research on this so it’s possible that I’m completely wrong about all this and for example, I haven’t understood American chocolate properly and the people of the nations freed by
Americans are actually pissed off about something other than the chocolate bars that are dropped on them from the sky. So I would really appreciate it if some of you more experienced chocolate fans could help me out a little on this one.