Don’t worrry vegetarians - Mars bars still suitable
Rushda:
May 20th, 2007
About a week ago Mars announced that it would change its recipes and start using animal products in its chocolates - thereby making the famous chocolate bar (and others such as Twix and Snickers) unsuitable for vegetarians. Apparently this decision was due to its “methods of food sourcing” and it was an unfortunate but reasoned decision they had to make. As you can imagine, the protest was enormous - indeed the company received more than 6,000 complaints in just one week. As a result, Mars has now stepped down from the decision and apologise deeply for their obvious mistake.
Not being a vegetarian myself, even I was shocked at the initial decision, especially considering Mars even made a point of mentioning that the current products have a best before date till October. What did they expect everyone to do? Start going on a Mars Bar buying frenzy before the new products came in? And then eat greedily until October only to wave goodbye to their favourite chocolate bar forever? Sounds terribly tragic to me and I’m glad Mars came to its senses!
May 20th, 2007 at 11:06 am
I’m a vegetarian and I probably would be outraged by the inclusion of animal fats if Mars was the only brand of chocolate on the market. But nowadays I tend to buy Green & Black or Traidcraft chocolate anyway. Sure, it’s a little more expensive but a little goes a long way and it tastes divine. Because so much cocoa, the raw material for chocolate, comes from developing countries in West Africa and Central America, it’s a product where consumer choice can make a real difference to the lives of the producers. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’d gladly go without a Mars bar for the rest of my life to achieve that.
May 20th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
Of course you’re absolutely right, but I think that still doesn’t stop vegetarians from being upset. First of all, not everyone has that much money. And secondly, if it comes down to a question of taste I can imagine many veggies prefering Mars as their all-time favourite brand which they’ve grown up with, over any other chocolate. It is a question of the fact that their choice was removed from them - you’d still want to be ABLE to eat Mars even if in the end you chose something else.