I’d assume the opposite. People are much more conscious of that stuff nowadays.

You're thinking of it from the wrong perspective. Lots of formulas were changed so that ingredients were substituted with cheaper alternatives. There's an artificial chocolate that uses no cocoa used by lots of items claiming to be chocolate. Just because people are more aware of it does not mean the companies are not using the cheaper formula. One of these stories was recently in the news about Reese's peanut butter cups[0]. So it seems to be one of the rare times evilCorp relented under public pressure instead of stock price pressure

[0]https://apnews.com/article/hershey-reeses-chocolate-peanut-b...

In the 90s it was more common to find aspartame and artificial colors in candy (although those haven't disappeared), but less common to find polyglycerol polyricinoleate and similar emulsifiers in chocolate.