Hershey's Chocolate Bars Used To Have A Much Simpler Ingredient List

The Hershey Company might sell the "Great American Chocolate Bar," but its formula isn't precisely the same as it was when it first captured hearts back in 1900. The brand's original Hershey's Chocolate Bar recipe contained four simple ingredients: chocolate liquor made of ground cacao beans, sugar, cocoa butter, and condensed fresh milk. Nowadays, the chocolate bars also include milk fat, soy lecithin, what Hershey calls "natural flavor," and Polyglycerol Polyricinoleate, or "PGPR," an ingredient commonly found in chocolate. 

These ingredient additions double-underline how the company's master recipe has been changed to match the demands of mass production. Milk fat makes the finished bar taste creamy; soy lecithin keeps the chocolate at a moldable temperature and consistency that allows it to be worked into bars; and PGPR is an emulsifier that also helps with the texture of the chocolate. These changeups might make the bars easy to create, but they have led consumers to accuse Hershey of using lower-quality ingredients.

This isn't the only time The Hershey Company's candy recipes have changed, or people have accused it of using low-quality ingredients. In a February 2026 LinkedIn post, Brad Reese, whose grandfather invented Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, accused Hershey of cutting corners by replacing the chocolate and peanut butter in the candy with compound coatings and "peanut‑butter‑style crèmes." Hershey subsequently insisted that it had previously planned to stop using compound coatings and vowed to return to making candy with real chocolate after suffering a public backlash over the change. Reese's comments preceded a set of viral videos that hit the internet in April 2026, showing consumers bending Hershey's Chocolate Bars like a hunk of rubber without them breaking in half, engendering further customer concerns about the company's candy. 

Despite the controversy it generated by mucking about with its ingredients, you shouldn't expect Hershey to stop tweaking its formulas any time soon. In 2026 alone, The Hershey Company announced it'd remove artificial colors from certain products and change the recipe of KitKat Bars to make them creamier. Time will tell if these tweaks will reap controversy for the conglomerate.