Who doesn’t love chocolate? Obviously that’s a rhetorical question, as for me anyone who doesn’t seems a little bit weird. In the past my favourite has always been Cadbury Dairy Milk (CDM) but since the Americans got their hands on it, I think it’s changed.

Now the Americans do many things very well but chocolate is not one of them. Their chocolate tends to be rather waxy and that’s the way I believe CDM has gone.

Anyway, the reason I am mentioning this is that I recently got my teeth into the new CDM 30% Less Sugar. I could easily now write that I wish I hadn’t, but that wouldn’t really be fair.

I tried it and it wasn’t as bad as I had anticipated. The ’mouth-feel’ wasn’t bad and the after taste was not as great as I had been led to believe by tasters in the media. Mr West tried it and said it wasn’t bad either, and I think that’s because although it has reduced sugar, that sugar hasn’t been replaced by artificial sweeteners. Apparently the boffins at Mondelez worked their magic to replace one-third of the sugar with fibre.

If you cast your minds back a few years, you’ll remember Cadbury chocolate was advertised as being full of joy. It then dropped joy to focus on ’genuine acts of kindness and generousity’. Now my theory is that it knew the 30% Less Sugar CDM was coming because where’s the joy in chocolate that has less sugar and more fibre. It hardly makes you smile, does it?

Apparently 30% Less Sugar is just one of a number of lower sugar alternatives that Mondelez has planned over the next two years. The company says it’s part of its commitment to giving chocolate lovers the opportunity to enjoy their favourite treats in moderation and as part of a balanced lifestyle.

Surely if you wanted to cut down on sugar, you just eat less of your favourite chocolate rather than a poor substitute. Or why not try something with a higher cocoa content, which typically means less sugar?

It’s great that the product doesn’t have any artificial sweeteners but added fibre doesn’t sound particularly palatable in chocolate, which is meant to be a treat. And if you wanted fibre surely you’d eat bran flakes?

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