- Face the future - 28th August 2026
- Tastey - 28th August 2026
- In the mind’s eye - 27th August 2026
During 23 years with the BBC, and in a 43 year journalistic career (when he was trained to use clear and simple language, avoiding jargon), for our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry, it has always been central to emphasise changing tastes, and this is underlined (bizarrely) by the liking, or otherwise, for tea and chocolate!
They seem inconsequential, but actually they’re very important – TEA and CHOCOLATE!
The fondness, or otherwise, for these things gives you an insight into how people relax, and they are a good social indicator.
Famously Wales is a nation of tea drinkers, and sups more of the stuff (per head of population) than anywhere else in the UK.
This is supported by research, and one study two years ago showed that each Welsh person slurped an average of almost three cups a day.
Tea drinkers have more selection available than ever before, with an extremely high quality coming from (or drunk by people in) Wales.
Although known mostly to those with a cultural connection to Wales, these teas are becoming more popular.
A good cup of tea always has been a traditional sign of hospitality in Wales, with Welsh teas closely resembling Irish teas, which are extremely popular with tea drinkers.
Both brews are blended, using teas from Africa and India, and use the soft waters of Ireland and Wales.
The leading Welsh teas are Welsh Brew and Glengettie, with both brands packaged in English and Welsh.
Welsh Brew was an answer to Yorkshire Tea and created specifically for Wales – it has even made an appearance in the film ‘The Replacements”.
Let’s turn now to chocolate, which has enormous social ramifications for the United Kingdom (UK) as a whole and around the world, with concern now about the smaller size of bars where the same price is paid.
A study analysing ‘shrinkflation’ in chocolate bar weights between the 1990s and now has revealed that chocolate bars today have significantly reduced in weight.
The study by experts at the Liquidation Centre found that of the 10 chocolate bars they analysed, bars have reduced by an average of 15.4 per cent.
Mars bars lost the most chocolate, shrinking by 36 per cent. Snickers have seen a reduction of 23.2 per cent, while Terry’s Chocolate Orange shrunk by 17.1 per cent.
Richard Hunt, Director at Liquidation Centre, declared: “Keeping the price the same can make the product feel more affordable to shoppers, but if the pack gets smaller, customers are still paying more for less.
“And when it’s a product people have been buying for years, they’re bound to notice when their favourite chocolate bar suddenly feels a little smaller”.
The study comes after a picture of a 35 year old Mars bar went viral for weighing 22.5g more than today’s version.
Searches for ‘35 year old Mars bar’ have soared by 3,000 per cent since the discovery, according to Google Trends.
In China, the issue is a rather different one – that people there don’t eat much chocolate AT ALL.
The country has more coffee-shop brands and more KFC branches than anywhere else in the world, but chocolate has never really hit the spot for Chinese people, with the average person in China eating just 100g a year – a mere hundredth of what a French person guzzles.
A few mass-market foreign brands (Mars, Ferrero, Nestlé and Hershey), account for four-fifths of Chinese consumption.
Of all the chocolate eaten worldwide, only two per cent caresses Chinese tastebuds, although it may now be changing, thanks to a handful of Chinese chocolatiers springing up around the vast country.
Most are artisanal shops, but some are investing in supply chains and building big businesses, like Choc Revive in Shanghai, the firm was founded in 2023 by Xie Liang, a fresh-produce trader.
He now cannot open shops quickly enough. From 80 outlets today he expects to have 300 by the end of the year.
Mr Xie says that his company had 160 million yuan ($23.7 nillion) in sales last year and hopes to quadruple that, or more, this.
Perhaps they will want a cuppa with their chocolate – although I doubt they will drink as much as in Wales!
The memories of Phil’s decades-long award-winning career in journalism as he was gripped by the rare disabling condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A GOOD STORY’ (when LOTS of cups of tea were drunk writing it!). Order it now!
Next week, ‘Investigation report part two’ – and how for Phil the importance of the kind of investigative journalism he practices has always been fundamental, and now this is underlined by news today coming out of the Ukraine war, where a small media site has calculated that the total number of troops from a supposed ally of Vladimir Putin is NOTHING like as high as has been described.
