What's the Stuff Between the Wafers of a Kit Kat?

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by James Hunt

If you've ever eaten a chocolate bar, you've probably eaten a Kit Kat. The four-fingered bar is one of the world's most popular treats and in 2014 was named the "most influential" candy bar of all time by TIME Magazine. Over the years, Kit Kats have been produced in over 200 flavors, from the standard milk chocolate to Japanese-created oddities like ginger ale, soy sauce and sake. The candy even had a version of the Android operating system (v4.4) named after it.

But no matter how familiar you are with Kit Kats, there's something about the filling that you might have wondered about. In between the layers of wafer, there's a different type of chocolate. It's lighter in color, and has a much softer, more crumbly texture than the hard chocolate on the outside. That's because it's not actually chocolate; it's mashed up Kit Kats.

You see, not every chocolate bar is created perfectly. When they roll off the production line, quality assurance technicians remove the Kit Kats that have too many exterior air bubbles, off-center wafers, or any other imperfections, right down to those that simply aren't shiny enough. As far as the manufacturers are concerned, consumers don't want imperfect chocolate bars. But rather than being thrown away, those second-class bars are recycled back into the production process.

After being ground up into a fine paste, they form the filling you find between the Kit Kat's wafers. In many ways, it's a stroke of genius—no edible Kit Kat is wasted!

BBC's Inside the Factory: How Our Favourite Foods are Made, Episode 1.2 (Chocolate)

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