Have a heart — if you like peanut butter.
Dane Wilcox, a hot sauce maker from Oregon, has done the world a great service: He deconstructed Reese’s candies to determine that Reese’s Hearts — sold around Valentine’s Day — have the highest peanut-butter-to-chocolate ratio.
Better still, the Feb. 14 holiday offers sweet lovers the opposite option: Reese’s small peanut butter hearts have the highest chocolate-to-peanut-butter ratio.
Wilcox had been collecting different varieties of Reese’s products since October, when he first contemplated the greatest existential question there ever was.
“I was just wondering which ones were the best, and which had the most peanut butter,” he told the Daily News.
Consumers have been on the hunt for the perfect mix of chocolate and peanut butter ever since those Reese’s TV ads from the 1980s featured inattentive, candy- and nut butter- toting pedestrians crashing into each other.
“You got chocolate in my peanut butter,” one said.
“Well, you got peanut butter on my chocolate,” retorted the other before both sampled the fluke treat.
The rest is dessert history (though left unsaid is why anyone would be walking down the street with an open jar of peanut butter).
For the most epic math project of our time, Wilcox amassed nine of Reese’s key products and, in open defiance of those classic commercials, separated the chocolate from the peanut butter.
When he compared the weights of the filling and the outer shell, he ended up with these results (from most peanut butter to least):
Peanut Butter Hearts: 60.34%
Peanut Butter Eggs: 59.50%
King Size Peanut Butter Cups: 53.96%.
Pumpkin: 51.07%
Snack Size Peanut Butter Cups: 43.46%
Reese’s Miniature: 39.23%
Peanut Butter Cups: 38.33%
Reese’s Minis: 28.16%
Small Hearts: 19.30%
Wilcox posted his findings on Reddit Tuesday, where users went beserk.
“You’re doing God’s work,” wrote user ColorDodge.
“You truly are the hero we need right now,” said TheFinalDeception.
Wilcox says his valiant efforts will save many Reese’s fans heartache because everyone knows “the chocolate is the worst part.”
But of course, there are always opposing viewpoints.
“The chocolate is the worst part?! Godless heathen!” wrote StarWarsYeah.
Reese’s said in a statement to the Daily News that Wilcox’s measurements “were pretty close in most cases.”
“Our Reese’s products always provide the perfect combination of chocolate and peanut butter but with slight differences in ratio due to the shape and size,” said Anna Lingeris, a spokeswoman for Hershey’s.
The hearts may be the most PB-heavy, but Wilcox’s favorite Reese’s products are eggs.
“I feel like the heart, you either bite the small end or the (other) end and there’s a lot more chocolate in each section,” he theorized. “Whereas the egg, you can take a bite from anywhere and get the most peanut butter at all times.”
mengel@nydailynews.com
