I love chocolate. I love peanut butter. And hey, guess what? I love chocolate and peanut butter. By all accounts, I should adore anything Reese’s — but I just can’t bring myself to like their products!
It’s controversial, I know, especially since the entirety of America seems to be stuck in some kind of whirlwind romance with Reese’s. In fact, in 2016, a study showed that Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups were by far the most popular type of confectionery in the USA.
But I’m here to tell you why you’re all wrong.
Let’s start with the basics.
There should be two main ingredients in peanut butter cups: peanut butter and chocolate. Hershey’s lists six, including both sugar and dextrose (a kind of sugar). I’m a firm believer in the less ingredients, the better when it comes to my peanut butter (I could have cried with happiness when Morrisons released their new 100% peanuts peanut butter). So I was shocked to see so many ingredients listed.
A closer look at the nutritional values revealed that due to these extra ingredients, just one serving of peanut butter cups contains a whopping 22g of sugar. Bearing in mind that you should have no more than 30g of sugar a day, that means that nearly 75% of your daily sugar intake would be made up with only one serving of peanut butter cups.
And you can sure as hell taste it.
I began writing this article purely on the basis that I’d been determined to try Reese’s properly. After more recently discovering that peanut butter really is the answer to any problem, Reese’s sounded like a dream come true. So when exam season came around and a combination of snacks and treats became imperative, I splashed out. I was so excited to try my bag of Reese’s pieces, yet I was firmly disappointed.
I could hardly finish them, they were so sweet! I have an impressive sweet tooth, yet there I was on the edge of a sugar coma simply because of a few peanut butter cups.
In Hershey’s defense, they are not the only company who has made this mistake when it comes to peanut butter and chocolate; and similarly, I suffered a great let down from Cadbury’s over their Oreo peanut butter bars due to them simply being far too sweet. Get it right, guys!
What’s up with the chocolate?
It has to be said: Hershey’s just isn’t in the same league as UK chocolate (Cadbury’s, I’m looking at you) and it doesn’t have the same rich taste that would have complemented (or at least, salvaged) the sweet peanut butter. Assuming that Hershey’s use their own basic milk chocolate, like the peanut butter, it’s full of sugar, which is actually listed as the first (and therefore, main) ingredient on their website.
Furthermore, take it from a Brit, British chocolate generally tastes better than American chocolate, due to the amount of cocoa solids vs cocoa butter used. And I’m sorry, but in comparison, Hershey’s just tastes cheap.
The main villain lies lurking in the sheer amount of sugar used in Reese’s peanut butter cups. The peanut butter contains unnecessary added sugar, the chocolate contains unnecessary amounts of sugar… If you want to eat Reese’s, anything with added sugar is a no-go for you for the rest of the day. And all that extra sugar really isn’t worth it — not only does it have negative impacts on your health, but it completely ruins the taste of what should otherwise be a match made in Heaven.
So thanks for not living up to my expectations, Reese’s. I think I’m just going to stick to my homemade versions of dipping dark chocolate into peanut butter.