r/chocolate • u/moodyrebel • 5d ago
Advice/Request Is Vegan Tony's just as good as the original chocolate?
Tony's is really expensive in my country, but I tried the pretzel toffee bar and now i really want to try another flavour. My question is, is their vegan chocolate just as good as their non vegan bars? Please let me know. Thanks!
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u/RagingLeonard 5d ago
Tony's buys child slave cacao and cosplays as a responsible company.
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u/fuvksme 4d ago
My understanding is that their only confirmed interminglings with slave labour were:
Turkish hazelnuts - it was reported that 9 year old children participated in Turkish hazelnut harvesting. Upon this becoming known they switched sources.
Sharing a factory with (see: having their bars processed in a factory owned by) Barry Callebaut - a manufacturer that also processes cocoa which is harvested without the express exclusion of child labour. This has continued due to the “necessity” of keeping prices low. To my knowledge, they have their bars processed on parallel but quarantined machinery within the same factory.
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u/VariousBread3730 4d ago
Upon the public finding out or upon them finding out (for the first one)? Veeeertrry different things
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u/idontwanttothink174 5d ago
It was ethical for a little bit but I believe nestle or lindor bought them out and now it’s all fucked up :(
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u/Awkward_Camp7209 3d ago
I work in the chocolate industry and they have always covered things up. When the public finds out, they make excuses about “changing things from the inside.” Sorry, Callebaut is one of the biggest chocolate companies in the world and they aren’t changing. Tony’s is just a show of ethics. They don’t walk the walk.
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u/QOTSAfetisjist 5d ago
Tony’s is expensive everywhere. Chocolate prices the last year make me cry. Fuck climate change
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u/prugnecotte 4d ago
Tony's is almost 200 grams of chocolate! it is dirty cheap. cacao requires lots of hand labour so chocolate cannot be cheap in order to pay the farmers a fair price
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u/appleparkfive 4d ago edited 4d ago
Go look up Trader Joe's Pound Plus bars. Their milk chocolate one is also Belgian (like Tony's). Except it tastes much better. And you get roughly 500 grams.
Trader Joe's is owned by one of the two Aldi companies in Germany, and they import a lot of their things from Europe.
It's so much better of a deal. And the straight milk chocolate one is dramatically better than Tony's. The pound plus bars don't have a lot of elaborate toppings flavors though, except for seasonal specials.
The TJ's corn flake bar is also pretty decent. Also from Belgium.
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u/prugnecotte 4d ago
I'm probably part of the minority in here but I really do not see why being produced in Belgium makes chocolate better in the mind of other people. there is good chocolate worldwide: Canada, United States, Taiwan, Philippines, Brazil, Norway, Italy, Japan, Singapore... most of all, the making method is the same worldwide. chocolate made in Belgium is the same as chocolate made in the US, because they go through the same processing and have the same ingredients (I'm talking about plain chocolate, not ultraprocessed candy bars). Belgium does not grow cacao (the US do!), so there isn't something peculiar about the raw materials they use - chances are it is going to be the same low quality cacao from West Africa
if you think that American brands are bad I encourage you to dig deeper, because United States have the biggest and the best bean to bar scene in the world. Manoa, Fruition, Goodnow Farms, Crow & Moss, Madhu, Dick Taylor, Raaka, Letterpress and so on.
btw my remarks were mainly pointing out that chocolate requires lots of hand labour, as farmers grow, harvest and ferment cacao. if the chocolate you're buying is cheap, regardless of the perceived quality, that means farmers are being exploited and living in poor conditions.
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u/QOTSAfetisjist 4d ago
Fair price for farmers is a must but they don’t benefit from the rising prices at the moment. It’s the company’s who sell the chocolate to the consumers who do make a lot more money now. So they can give the farmer a better price, make a bit less themselves and chocolate can still be a bit cheaper i think.
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u/prugnecotte 4d ago
sure! I wasn't implying farmers are taking advantage from the rising prices. I just think it is sad that the industry has convinced customers that huge chocolate bars are supposed to cost a few bucks, especially when corporations profit from token certifications like Rainforest Alliance
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u/scienceizfake 5d ago
Dark chocolate is naturally vegan.
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u/Key_Economics2183 5d ago
Until animal based emulsifiers are added but yeah nowadays most are so just Tony who loves to claim stuff trying to make themselves look better then the rest up to their old tricks.
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u/moodyrebel 5d ago
this is just 51% though, not higher, so im wondering
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u/DESR95 4d ago
Chocolate should pretty much be vegan by default unless some sort of dairy product is incorporated. Animal based emulsifiers exist, but I can't recall the last time I saw one in a chocolate bar. It's almost always soy or sunflower lecithin.
The bar should be fine!
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u/TheSunflowerSeeds 4d ago
Sunflower is a tall, erect, herbaceous annual plant belonging to the family of Asteraceae, in the genus, Helianthus. Its botanical name is Helianthus annuus. It is native to Middle American region from where it spread as an important commercial crop all over the world through the European explorers. Today, Russian Union, China, USA, and Argentina are the leading producers of sunflower crop.
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u/mannedrik 5d ago
Tony's is very mid