Elite strawberry flavored chocolate is considered one of the favorite and best-selling sweets in Israel • However, it does not contain strawberries at all • We set out to solve the complex issue
Elite strawberry flavored chocolate
Photo:
Press
We are not bad people, but we feel obligated to warn you that what you are about to read will probably break the hearts of many of you.
Do you remember how old you were when you discovered that sanity is actually your mother?
So take it, add to it a copy of the book "The Lion Who Loved a Strawberry" by Tirza Atar and here is a discovery from a year of life.
Remember, in a website book, the lion insists he wants to eat only strawberries and nothing else.
After he drives the whole world crazy and eventually manages to get a strawberry, he realizes that he is actually just building for himself a world of sweet fantasy and reality is much more bitter.
This is what happened, roughly, to surfer Shani Ben Ami, an active and gourmet member of the successful Facebook group "Hungry for Your Hunger" (eight more than 291,000 members) when she discovered one day that her favorite chocolate, Elite Cow Chocolate with Strawberry Flavor, is actually unfaithful to its name and is not Contains strawberries, or at least not the strawberries that consumers assume it contains.
"How old were you when you found out that there is no strawberry in strawberry chocolate at all and there is apple puree? No trace of strawberry. In any case, I am addicted," Ben-Ami wrote in a post she posted to the group early last week.
Although the author of the post was shocked by the discovery that the strawberry is actually a type of apple puree and the sublime strawberry in chocolate is actually only "in taste", she did not believe how much her discovery would succeed in making waves in the group.
Within hours, the status garnered more than 4,000 likes, thousands of comments and hundreds of shares.
The discussion that developed around the status eventually heated up so much that the group managers at one point had to block the post for comments.
Opinions differ
Even before the discovery made waves in the group, it was no secret that the taste of strawberries has been a controversial taste among sweetheart lovers for many years (and not just in the country).
The division is clear: avid fans who swear it's the most delicious thing in the world, a real paradise for candy lovers, and on the other hand, outright opponents who do not understand how such a thing can be made for chocolate.
"You ruined my life", "I lost my childhood" and "I would rather never know it", dozens of surfers responded to the post, with some also uploading a photo of the chocolate wrapper proving that the word strawberry does not appear anywhere in the list of ingredients.
"Once upon a time it seemed to me one of the weirdest things like chocolate with alcohol inside it unrelated," a surfer wrote.
"Today I'm flying for it."
The chocolate addicts hurriedly defended his honor and declared: "This is the most delicious chocolate there is !," the most delicious thing in the country. "" For my part, if it contains cyanide, I will continue to eat it!
This is the most wonderful chocolate there is, "said an avid fan.
"Unequivocally the best there is. Whoever does not think so is his loss and my net profit."
"It's just for the elite connoisseurs. The common people do not like, and that's fine, that's how we have more," others added, with some cynically pointing out that this is a storm for nothing, since even baby oil for example does not really contain babies.
Others reinforced Ben Ami's remarks and protested the fact that the strawberry they believed they were consuming in love was in fact apple sauce.
"Too bad there is nothing inside that belongs or reminds me of strawberries."
"Strawberry chocolate in a filling that the only thing that connects it to a strawberry is the color."
"It's chocolate filled with Novimol," "I was sick of this chocolate until I found out that the filling is apple puree with food coloring. I have since dropped it," they wrote in a long thread of comments.
Another surfer added a really heartbreaking response to the discovery and wrote: "Apple puree! I told this to my daughter who is addicted to strawberry chocolate. She preferred me to tell her she was adopted. It hurt her that way."
On taste and smell
We could not, of course, remain indifferent to the cry of the strawberry chocolate addicts, and hurried to contact the Strauss Group officials for answers and try to understand how much of a real consumer storm this was.
"It is not possible to fill the chocolate with real strawberries for kosher reasons, so the word" flavored "appears on the product, confirmed to us there and even revealed a little" behind the scenes "." Strawberry puree like several other fruits, is not approved for use by the relevant kosher body. "But because the strawberry flavor is very popular, we invested in developing a flavor and texture that will be most similar to the original."
"The strawberry-flavored cream is developed using natural flavor and aroma extracts: black carrot concentrate and apple pulp (also used for jams and jams), which is why you will not find the strawberry as an ingredient in the product. Either way, it is indicated on the strawberry-flavored packaging and not strawberry chocolate." .
Strauss told us that despite the storm caused by the post, this is not new information for them.
"This is something that pops up from time to time and we are aware of it. Despite the storm it has caused in the group, in the field the number of complaints our customer service center is dealing with is not something out of the ordinary. Even after this specific post, we did not feel an unusual increase in referrals."
If you were wondering about the side that has the upper hand as to the eternal question of whether this is the most delicious chocolate in the world or something that needs to be taken off the production line, Strauss provided us with data that leaves no room for doubt.
"According to Sterncast (marketing information company A.H.), in 2020 3.1 million tables were sold from Moleda (which are the chocolate tables without the snack), worth about NIS 15.5 million. The item is in third place in the chocolate table ranking, which means that it is the third chocolate table. The best-selling in Israel after cow's milk chocolate (second place) and bitter cow chocolate (first place). "
So how do you sum up this storm in a sweet way?
Let's say we are pretty sure that the cow (between us is the real and undisputed star in the whole story) of Elite will agree with us and also with Hanan Ben Ari, who despite everything, should remain optimistic and try to believe in the mantra that "everything is tapped hamsa and God bless our lives strawberries".
And as for the camps of opponents and lovers of chocolate?
Listen to the Ethnics who once said, "Let's buy strawberries instead of more war machines."