Social Media Craze: Russian Chocolate Burns, Not Melts, on Fire—Then a Guy Tries It With Swiss Chocolate

A social media trend has emerged in Russia where people try to melt Russian-made chocolate with fire. The experiment demonstrates that the chocolate doesn’t melt so much as it burns—with an open flame. Even a single matchstick can set a bar of Russian chocolate on fire.

Some people have taken the experiment as proof of the questionable quality of the chocolate.

“This is some kind of a catastrophe,” says a woman in a Youtube video uploaded by user Eduard Masterovoy on March 29, while she sets a piece of “Russia” chocolate (70 percent cocoa) on fire.

“Here’s what they feed us,” she says. “This is a horror.”

The chocolate piece indeed burns with a bright flame. After about 40 seconds, the burning part melts and falls off.

The woman then comments on how bad the burning chocolate smells and recommends the viewers to not buy the “Russia”-brand chocolate.

“Russia” is a Russian chocolate factory which was founded in the Soviet times in 1969. In 1995, it was sold to Swiss food and drink company, Nestlé.

The burning chocolate experiment has become a phenomenon enough for the Russian federal service for consumer protection, Rospotrebnadzor, which stated the propensity of food to burn was a “natural physiochemical process.” It urged consumers not to trust “random sources of information,” reported TASS, a Russian state-owned news agency.

While chocolate of different brands can differ in quality, the fact that it can be set on fire doesn’t seem to prove much.

Other videos posted online show that chocolate of many other brands burns too, including the Swiss brands Lyndt and Toblerone, as well as the German brand, Ritter Sport.

Still, some noted that the Russian chocolate melted slower than some other brands while burning.

“The difference is obvious!” says Youtube user Cavescourier in the March 31 video.

He said he bought a bar of Swiss chocolate (Lyndt) and tried to set it on fire to compare the result with the Russian one.

The video shows the Lyndt, 85 percent cocoa chocolate catch on fire and the burning part melting and falling off in about 20 seconds.

Credit: Cavescourier via Storyful

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