Chocolate Ingredients: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

What's in YOUR chocolate bar?

I’ve cooked up this post—and this eye-catching cornucopia of a few of chocolate’s favorite ingredients—so you can always refer to it whenever you’re out shopping and suddenly get that urge to pick up a few bars of chocolate. Bookmark it, print it out, screenshot it. It will save your life a few times over. And be sure to subscribe to The Cacao Muse—it does a chocolate lovin’ body good.

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THE GOOD

This part’s simple. If Nature made it, it gets an A in my book. The only caveat is to watch for ingredients you might be allergic to.

• Cacao beans—These guys need no introduction. No cacao beans, no chocolate.

• Cacao butter—The edible fat of the cacao bean. It’s also used in ointments and toiletries, and makes a great lip balm.

• Sweetener—This can be honey, cane sugar, coconut sugar, or other natural sweet things like stevia or erythritol. Personally I don’t like erythritol in chocolate as it messes up the flavor of the cacao.

• Sea salt—Or other kinds of gourmet salt. As long as it’s not street salt—you know, what they lay down after it snows—you’re good.

• Vanilla—A core staple in many bars. Just make sure it’s real vanilla, not vanillin (that’s a vanilla flavor made from the bark of the vanilla vine)

• Spices—Cinnamon, turmeric, cardamom, even all kinds of pepper. I should know… I’ve judged the Spicy Chocolate Awards and survived.

• Nuts—Pistachios, walnuts, almonds, peanuts & pecans… any nut you can be nuts about! And hopefully not allergic to.

• Seeds & grains—Things like puffed quinoa add a wonderful crunch to chocolate (Did you know quinoa is technically a seed?)

• Fruit—Anything goes. I’ve tasted chocolate with all kinds of berries, passion fruit, pineapple, mango, oranges, cherries.

• Flowers—Believe it or not, there are beflowered chocolates just as there are bejeweled ….. I judged a bar once that had rose petals embedded in it. I was very kind to it.

• Milk—This can be cow’s milk or goat milk. Yes, I have tasted a goat’s milk chocolate bar and it was… feta-like.

Did you know there’s such a thing as a dark milk chocolate bar?

THE BAD

Anything that you do not recognize, cannot pronounce, or just sounds unhealthy, most likely is. The following are the primary culprits that you’re likely to see in low-quality chocolate. Steer clear of “chocolate” that contains these ingredients. And if you come across anything not on this list, email me!

• Artificial flavors or colors—If it says artificial anything, skip it. Artificial means not natural. Not yummy. Not healthy. Probably made out of old shoe leather or used crayons. The only “artificial” thing that I’d consider remotely interesting is artificial intelligence, which I also write about, but that’s also not natural. At least they don’t put it into our chocolate. Yet.

• Corn syrup—High fructose corn syrup, corn syrup solids, etc. Corn, in the form of maize, was a gift from the gods to humankind. What did humans do with corn? They hybridized and genetically modified it, then processed the hell out of it until it couldn’t recognize itself in the mirror—er, stomach. If you’re gonna do corn, do corn. Not that syrup crap.

• Hydrogenated vegetable oils—I’m sorry, hydro-whaaat? Hydrogen. You read that right. They use actual hydrogen to turn a liquid unsaturated fat into a solid fat. Fun science experiment but, like, why?? Well it extends shelf life, increases the “stability” of the food, and saves costs for the manufacturing company. Nothing about you, the consumer, the buyer. Let me be very direct: There. Is. Zero. Reason. To put hydrogenated vegetable oils into chocolate. Zero.

• PGPR—A four-letter acronym. Might as well be a bad word. Its full name is Polyglycerol polyricinoleate. Clear as mud, right? Actually, it’s clear as sludge. That’s really what PGPR is. It’s an emulsifier made from glycerol and fatty acids, usually from castor beans or soybeans. Lovely. In reality, companies use this concoction to avoid having to use the real deal (read: more expensive)—cacao butter. Pardon me while I throw up.

• TBHQ—Here’s another one. TBHQ, or tert-Butylhydroquinone, is a food preservative most often used to extend the shelf life of unsaturated fats, such as the vegetable oils often found on the ingredients lists of cheap chocolates. In larger amounts, TBHQ is considered an irritant and an environmental hazard. Makes ya just wanna lather it all over your garden salad doesn’t it?

Keep your distance from PGPR and TBHQ. They’re the evil mafia twins of organized chocolate crime. (If you see either one—or both—in a chocolate bar, here’s a chocolate crime tip line you should notify.)

THE UGLY

These ingredients aren’t really ugly but they are a bit gross and they most certainly are the awkward cousins of food additives. These are things some chocolate companies add to hurry the chocolate making process along, give their bars a little extra shelf life, or enhance flavor or whatever. None of these are actually necessary though. I still can’t get over the idea of vegetable oil in my chocolate. 🤢 I like veggies, and I like chocolate. But I don’t like to see them fused into one.

• Carrageenan, guar, xanthan, and other gums—It’s crazy how many foods carry gums these days (here’s an article to consume for more deets). They’re used to thicken, emulsify, and stabilize food. While it’s not super common, from time to time you’ll see a gum or two listed in your chocolate bar. Many gums are made from food sources, such as corn, soy, and wheat (xanthan gum); guar beans (guar gum); the sap of the acacia tree (acacia gum); the seeds of the carob tree (locust or carob bean gum, which you’ll find in commercial hot chocolate drink mixes). Carrageenan gum is made from red algae, has no nutritional value, and is “undigestible.” Personally, I try to stay away from gums wherever they may lurk—but when it comes to chocolate, that’s a definite no, thanks.

• Citric acid—Usually followed by the innocuous statement “to maintain freshness.” Umm, did you know the honey they found buried with Egyptian mummies was still edible thousands of years later? Chocolate don’t need no citric acid unless it’s not … fresh. Yikes.

• Lecithin—Lecithin is an emulsifier extracted from soybeans. AnThis means it helps disparate food textures blend together well. You don’t need an emulsifier to make chocolate—but companies concerned about production times and cost use it to help bind the cocoa solids and cacao butter, faster and improve viscosity (the melted chocolate can be poured easier). You’ll often see “soy lecithin” listed on a chocolate bar. Problem is, soy is an allergen. It might also be genetically modified. So if you think you’re allergic to chocolate, what you might actually be allergic to is things like soy lecithin.

• Milk—Milk does a body good, right? Mhm maybe. I’ve listed “milk” in the “good” ingredients above, but I also need to list it here because. It’s. Complicated. There is real milk and then there are MILK PARTS. Non fat milk, milk powder, milk fat. The most oxymoronic ingredient listing I’ve ever seen on a chocolate bar was quite recently, on a rather massive peanut butter milk chocolate bar from a company that bills itself as a “gourmet” brand. I had to look twice to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. It said “NON FAT MILK, MILK FAT, LACTOSE …” Ok so let me get this straight. They pull the natural fat out of the milk and mix that in, but then they add milk fat separately, and also lactose. Why don’t they just say “deconstructed milk” and be done with it? Maybe take that silly “gourmet” label off that bar too.

• Natural flavors—In a nutshell, “natural” flavors are anything but. They’re additives originally sourced or extracted from some natural thing, such as fruits, but made mostly of chemical solvents and preservatives, and surprise surprise, they’re designed to be addictive (see this 60 Minutes interview with the “flavorists,” scientists whose job it is to manufacture flavors for food corporations). More like “natural born deceivers.”

• Oils—As long as these are not hydrogenated or otherwise processed, you’re ok in terms of health but the taste of your chocolate might get tweaked a bit. I’ve tasted bars with THREE different oils baked into them. Don’t these chocolate companies know about cacao butter??

  • Examples: vegetable oil, canola oil, palm oil, palm kernel oil, coconut oil, sunflower oil, shea oil, safflower oil, soybean oil

• Vanillin—Tempting to categorize vanillin as a baddie, but it’s not that black & white. Vanillin is the primary component of vanilla extract; it’s what gives vanilla that distinct, aromatic flavor. But vanilla doesn’t exactly rain from the sky so, naturally, we humans had to find a way to make it artificially. Synthetic vanillin today can be made from lignin (wood pulp), eugenol (spice), yeasts (what??), and yes, petrochemicals. Vanilla is famously costly to grow and process, so many food companies now use synthetic vanillin to flavor their food products, including—gasp—chocolate. Is it safe to eat? Sure, unless you’re allergic to vanilla in general. Question is, do you really want to eat another fake flavor molecule. Always check that ingredient list!

I’ll stop there, for now. This is by no means an exhaustive catalog of ingredients you’ll find listed on chocolate bars and mixes, but it covers those you’ll see most often.

Is all of this information making your head spin, or did you “yep, knew that” your way through the entire post? Are you bursting at the seams wanting to tell all your friends and loved ones about the no-good-for-you things they should avoid in their chocolate? Maybe you work in the food industry and have always wanted to slide down that chocolate rabbit hole so you can make better choices about the chocolate you use. Whatever the source of your cacao passion, you can get a group subscription for your team or organization—depending on your organization, it can even be expensed. Just hit the orange button below.

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Whatever you do, don’t stay a Cacao Noob for too long, especially if you have more questions than ever and want to know everything about chocolate. You can rise to the level of a Cacao Deity—or at the very least a Cacao Tree.¹ That will enable you to contact the Cacao Oracle with all your questions so that she may add them to our list of future post topics.

Hope you enjoyed this post even more than I did writing it. Till next time, my fellow chocophiles!

1. For an explanation of these annoyingly esoteric terms, scroll down to the “Money does grow on trees” section in the About page.