The quantity of chocolate for sale in bulk certainly is surprising. Unfortunately I find American chocolate to be borderline inedible.

That's like saying you don't like American beer because you tried Bud Light, Coors Light, and Miller Lite and didn't like any of them.

There are a lot of great chocolate makers in the US.

And cheese too! but you will hardly find good cheesemaker at a piggy wiggly (or even in SF more reputable supermarkets). The best i had was one from Hungtinton's Farmer market (WV), easily a top4-top3 goat cheese.

As someone from Wisconsin, I can say with certainly that you can in fact get great cheese at Piggly Wiggly. I have no idea if they exist in other states though, and if they do the cheese is no doubt worse.

> There are a lot of great chocolate makers in the US.

Ghirardelli are decent, but I've been relatively hard-pressed to find decent American chocolatiers otherwise. In general, European chocolatiers are in a different league.

You won't generally find the best in the supermarket--probably either in the US or Europe. There are actually some pretty good more artisanal chocolate bars you can get in many supermarkets to my tastes. But they're still by definition mass market and (often) not as good as what some specialty maker with a small store has.

Best not to think of it as “chocolate” similar to how cheese whiz is only loosely related to cheese.

I promise we have good chocolate here, just stay away from anything labeled Hershey's or Cadbury because it's the malk equivalent of milk.

You're thinking of the cheap stuff like Hershey and other candy bar crap. It's all sugar.

I don't think it's just the sugar, Hershey uses butyric acid in its process and some other manufacturers copy them because that's the taste US consumers associate with chocolate. To people used to chocolate made without butyric acid, it tastes like vomit.

More accurately, Hershey is thought to use milk that is partially lipolyzed, and this process generates butyric acid -- which, according to the wikipedia page, is also found in Parmesan cheese. Does that taste like vomit?

I find European chocolate tastes sickeningly sweet, so to each his own.

> is also found in Parmesan cheese. Does that taste like vomit?

I don't think it does taste like vomit, but it does smell like it.

You only really see kids eating m&ms. There's good American chocolate too, american chefs can read and follow a recipe just fine.

There's tasteful advancement of civilization. And then there's mountains of trash food.

Those are the ones that scared you?!?

Walgreens/CSV literal buckets of medicine like Advil and whatnot were some of the scariest things I've seen, and worst of all, people DEFENDING them.

I'm curious why Advil is scary to you.

The downvotes are just silly and show a bit of a lack of medical education.

Hints: any medicine expires, any medicine has side effects. I understand that there are some contexts where selling literal kilos of medicine are valid but MASS selling is just stupid. Nobody, not even somewhat large families, should be popping even Advil such that they need to consume kilos of it within the 1-2 years until it expires. And Advil was just an example, I saw those buckets for stronger stuff with more side effects. Medicine should be used like a laser, only where it's needed and sparingly.

And if many people really need to be popping even Advil like candy, it's a symptom of healthcare system failures.

See, sometimes silly things hide much deeper problems, and just because you're immersed in the culture you can't see it.

How old are you?

Old enough to realize that mass selling buckets of medicine isn't sane (no matter what they are, hint, Advil expires too), especially since I have doctors in my family. Also it kind of confirmed what statistics say about America being over medicated. It's just a small whiff of the disease that ends up with mass fentanyl addictions.

And not old enough to have the constant, chronic pain of old age, when your bones are grinding against each other at your worn out joints, particularly if you've had a life of physical labor. I think without the privilege of being relatively pain-free you'd change your tune.

I'm sure that the solution to that is not 1 ton of likely self prescribed Advil, it's proper treatment.

Doctor recommended ibuprofen can be at considerably higher dose rates than what's listed on the bottle at your pharmacy.

This whole "too many painkillers are prescribed" thing really annoys me. It leads to cancer patients suffering because of the risk they could become addicted. So f-ing what?

I can't find the study anymore but the US already consumes more medicine per capita than other developed countries.

Anyway, it's a cultural thing, other countries seem to be able to manage this at comparable levels with a fraction of the spending and without chucking these into every store:

https://www.walgreens.com/store/c/walgreens-ibuprofen-200-mg... (1000 pieces)

Instead having something like this:

https://moncoinsante.com/mcs/en/ibuprofen/3173-nurofen-200mg... (30 pieces)

I'm trying to figure out consumption rates for the first one. I think Ibuprofen should expire in max 2-3 years after it's opened, so that would be... 700-1000 days. That's at least 1 pill per day for the entire period.

I'm not against them being available per se, but last time I was in a CSV they were all over the place (and other similar ones with huge quantities numbering in the hundreds, at least), which means that there is demand and widespread usage like that.

I highly doubt most people buying them are using them correctly (either overdosing, taking them when they're not actually needed, or taking them past their expiry date).