Weren't peanut butter cups already vegan? No, they contain milk and vegans say any milk produced by an animal is bad. This new thing swaps out the milk for highly-processed oats and continues their efforts to appeal to everyone with money to spend on their belief system.
I applaud such unbridled capitalism; they even rolled out non-GMO peanut butter cups last year, so the high sugar content in them is made without using GMO corn syrup, and if you don't accept science you are willing to pay a big premium for that.
They invoke a bunch of surveys that politically allied journalists will repeat - Gen Z wants to eat healthier by avoiding meat, blah, blah, blah - but then wrap themselves in a halo of awesomeness by basically saying darn it those vegans deserve more options.
Prefer old-timey Reese's when it was organic? The chemicals C57H104O6 and C12H22O11 were added to chemicals like theobromine, anandamide, and phenylethylamine and then mixed with yellow-brown phosphatidylcholine, phosphatidylethanolamine, phosphatidylinositol, phosphatidylserine, and phosphatidic acid plus the chemical NaCl to provide 25 percent of your recommended daily allowance of fat - in one spoon. All those chemicals and yet those could still be sold at Whole Foods. It's almost like "organic" labels are a money-making marketing designation and don't mean anything scientific at all. Because that is true.
These new vegan treats won't be any healthier, despite what Hershey's hopes influencers will try to suggest. The calories are the same as regular old animal-milk peanut butter cups. And in actual science studies, not agenda-driven epidemiology or surveys, calories are what makes the biggest difference in obesity, which is what follows after cigarettes and alcohol as a key lifestyle disease killer.
They shouldn't stop at non-GMO and vegan. Here are three more things they can try.
Other ways Hershey's can claim they're now healthier and more ethical
(1) Peanut butter cups contain tert-Butylhydroquinone(TBHQ) and anti-science activists hate chemical names, especially if they are preservatives that keep children from getting food poisoning, so the company can instead note that TBHQ is an antioxidant which prevents fat oxidation - their 210-calorie treats are practically an anti-aging supplement when framed that way!
(2) Polyglycerol polyricinoleate (PGPR) is a science-y sounding "emulsifier" but it can instead be stated as a natural chocolate smoother made from sunflower seeds. Even Marion Nestle can't argue with that health rebranding.
(3) Critics of regular old Reese's peanut butter cups claim it is created using a product derived from aspergillus niger (black mold) but they are just being racist because in new Heshey's marketing it can be wholesome, natural citric acid. Hershey's can even slap a giant orange on their Reese's packaging and imply it is health food. It probably is at least as healthy as a glass of orange juice, which has almost as many calories as a peanut butter cup. If they throw a vitamin C supplement in the mix they have a brand new health food segment.
How will this new vegan effort do? It sounds counter-intuitive to people who have never run a business but a bad decision is better than no decision at all. It is why if you are reading this at work you may be working near people you know are incompetent. Hershey's has to do something and this is...something.
However, marketing is tricky and they run the risk that even vegans aren't as stupid as billion-dollar companies hope they will be. Chipotle claimed to go non-GMO, for example, but were busted for lying when we revealed that only the burritos were non-GMO, the soda and cheese and meat in there all involved GMOs. Cheerios wrapped itself in the non-GMO flag and sales went down; they lost more scientist customers than they gained in health food evangelists because those didn't suddenly rush to buy their processed cereal.
Will vegans rush to buy this anyway? Probably. They have the worst diets you can imagine.
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