Hot Take: White Chocolate is Acceptable, Maybe Even Pretty Good…

During these past 6 months at home, the world has left us with strong, divided opinions on many issues. In the United States, we as a country have faced environmental crises, racial injustices, and an interesting approach to handling the global pandemic. Around the world, nations faced protests and economic loss. The pandemic has given us time to consider what really matters and embrace our honest opinions. That is why I have the strength to stand up for a belief I have kept quiet: white chocolate does not deserve the hate it gets.

Which is the best Hershey bar? You simply cannot answer the original milk chocolate. Who can eat that in a single serving? Certainly not me. Maybe this is due to my culture and family, but I genuinely believe I will get nosebleeds and that eating a whole bar is unhealthy -though I’m not saying other types of chocolate are any better. It just tastes… the same. Generic. You can’t answer dark chocolate- yeah, everyone tolerates it because it’s “healthy” but you know if you have the option to go sweet you’d take it any day. You know the feeling of taking a bite of chocolate expecting it to be milk, but it’s dark, so you leave the bar with one bite to the side and forget about it until 3 months later- when you find the chocolate with its one bite and ripped packaging in a plastic bag you used to “save it for later”. The superior Hershey bar is cookies and cream. Yes, out of all the chocolate bars, it is the white-chocolate-based bar that dominates. There have been days where I have eaten one, two, maybe three bars at a time. Something about the chocolate cookie crunch and neutral white chocolate base just hits the sweet spot. Unlike milk and dark chocolate, you never save the cookies and cream bar for later. Instead, you try to savor every single molecule and stop yourself from eating too much and getting sick.

Not only does white chocolate shine in Hershey’s cookies and cream bars, but chocolate consumers are also able to enjoy the wonderful white chocolate Lindt truffles. You know those spherical shaped chocolate truffles, wrapped individually, with soft cream filling? The Costco chocolates that everyone seems to have? Those are the Lindt truffles. Here’s my rundown: milk chocolate is good in moderation, peanut butter is nasty, dark is just O.K., and extra dark is simply unnecessary. The best Lindt truffle by far is the white chocolate. Back in prehistoric, pre-COVID times, when friends could come over to my house, they would dig through the iconic gold paper bag and find the flavor with the gold wrapping. It was always a disappointment when you grabbed the almost-there-but-slightly-darker wrapped caramel or peanut butter chocolates, mistaken for the light gold of the white chocolate truffle. The Lindt white chocolate truffle is truly the best of the bunch, the Beyoncé of Destiny’s Child, the Kendall of Big Time Rush.

Now, in no way is white chocolate the best type of chocolate. It just deserves more respect for bringing beauties like Hershey’s chocolate bars and Lindt truffles to the aisle. We need to stop the hate and biting insults like calling it “fake” or “flavorless” or, as an article headline from food blog So Yummy calls it, “so disgusting that I can’t even say its name out loud”. In essence, white chocolate by itself is not supposed to be the star of the show. It just comes through and brings a certain pizazz to the other ingredients and stands out as an unconventional taste of the chocolate life. Without it, how could we get birthday cake or rose or matcha chocolate flavors?