Ever since early January this semester, the Bookstore has started stocking Feastables bars. They are now available for $3.50 in flavors Milk Chocolate, Peanut Butter and Milk Crunch at a display reading “You could win $1,000,000 … Scan to learn more.”
According to Nate McBride, assistant director of Auxiliary Services at Delta, the Bookstore ordered the chocolate bars due to Feastables’ claims of using natural ingredients, different from most other comparable candy products. The Bookstore’s supplier had also run a promotion for the product.
Feastables’ marketing has always revolved around being a “better-for-you” chocolate on the market, its selling points being ethical sourcing and a simple formula of organic ingredients. This reflects the image of their creator himself, Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson — the most-subscribed YouTuber on the platform and multi-millionaire philanthropist.
Donaldson’s image has also come under fire for multiple controversies in recent years, including allegations of sexual misconduct committed by a co-host of the YouTube channel to accusations of workplace harassment and abuse, including a class action lawsuit filed by contestants of his reality television series “Beast Games.”
There has also been ongoing discourse about the potentially performative nature of his philanthropy that may be exploiting people in need for clout and profit, or the effects of parasocial relationship between Donaldson and his audience of primarily youth — including whether Donaldson promotes gambling to his audience.
Various other food products from Donaldson’s have also been criticized. MrBeast Burger, a ghost kitchen chain launched by Donaldson, received numerous complaints of serving poor quality or even raw food to customers. Several consumers also reported mold in Lunchly — the boxed lunch kit launched by Donaldson and collaborators Olajide “KSI” Olatunji and Logan Paul.
Investigating the Feastables brand in and of itself, the product relies on predatory marketing to deliver chocolate that is less guilt-free than it’s made out to be, which Delta students need to be aware of.
Feastables’ claims of being healthier than other chocolate brands doesn’t quite live up to the marketing.
The current Feastables Milk Chocolate Bar, after swapping over to a new formula in 2024, uses similar ingredients to the Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Candy Bar: sugar, chocolate, cocoa butter, soy and variations of milk products. Feastables bars use whole milk powder while Hershey’s uses milk and milk fat. What separates them is the use of vanilla extract for Feastables and polyglycerol polyricinoleate and “natural flavor” for Hershey’s.
A 100 milligram comparison between the Feastables Milk Chocolate Bar and the Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Candy Bar, conducted by Swedish medical doctor and health company CEO Andreas Eenfeldt through his nutrition app Hava, reveals that Hershey’s is higher in sugars and total carbohydrates than Feastables at 58 grams-to-40 grams and 61 grams-to-50 grams, but Feastables had higher total fats and calories at 40 grams-to-30 grams and 567 calories-to-485 calories.
Additionally, whether Feastables are ethically sourced is less clear than they are advertised to be.
According to the Feastables’ website, the brand’s ethical sourcing strategy revolves around:
- Helping farmers and their families earn a living income.
- Investing in local communities, in children’s education and their wellbeing.
- Ensuring farmers have access to skilled and mechanized labor to successfully operate their farms, without child labor.
To accomplish this, Feastables formed a partnership with Tony’s Open Chain, an industry initiative campaigning for responsible sourcing in the chocolate industry that was launched by the chocolate maker Tony’s Chocolonely; both Feastables and Tony’s Chocolonely are members of the International Cocoa Initiative (ICI), a Swiss-based non-profit dedicated to protecting the rights of chocolate farm workers in West Africa. The ICI have developed the Child Labor Monitoring and Remediation System employed by both brands, a model where community facilitators visit households to identify potential child laborers and provide support when needed.
However, both Feastables and Tony’s Chocolonely have been removed from their initial inclusion in a list of ethical chocolate companies, published by the American grassroots coalition Slave Free Chocolate founded by Ayn Riggs in 2007.
The organization removed Tony’s Chocolonely from their list since 2021 for their continued collaboration with Barry Callebaut, a chocolate company that found 21 thousand cases of child labor in a 2020 to 2021 report. The removal also coincides with 1,701 cases of child labor in Tony’s Chocolonely’s supply chain that year, correlated with a 52.8 percent child labor prevalence rate among new partner cooperatives according to 2021-22 Tony’s Chocolonely’s Annual FAIR Report. For comparison, the same report found a prevalence rate among old partner cooperatives of 4.4 percent.
The Feastables brand also sparked discourse over accusations of unpaid labor on March 3, 2023 when Donaldson announced a call to action on Twitter for fans to clean aisles stocking Feastables bars in stores. Feastables announced the same day that participants could win a chance to receive $5,000 in a contest.
“It’s fascinating to watch the stage of capitalism where people are honored to do free labor for rich people that don’t care about them because they feel some kind of connection and loyalty like a dog wanting a treat, only the treat is an imagined feeling of connection,” said Iñupiaq Twitter User, @DanDanTransient, in response to Donaldson’s tweet.
It’s clear that the Feastables brand is exploitative one way or another. The brand relies on predatory marketing, promising a healthier chocolate bar when the product is only marginally different to other low nutrition chocolate bars on the market. Feastables are also advertised as an ethical chocolate, yet their partnership for ethical sourcing is questionable given a potential bad apple. Given that Donaldson’s many controversies indicate a lack of commitment to people’s wellbeing, it’s unlikely he has anyone’s interests in mind behind the ethical posturing other than himself — there’s reason to doubt the philanthropy of the wealthy saving face.
The expectation is that the target audience, the youth, will not know any better when it comes to the brand. Delta students should think wisely about the purchases they make and what they end up supporting, especially for a product meant to be consumed by the body. Perhaps next time when you visit the Bookstore, maybe think about passing out on the Feastables bars.
