How much chocolate people eat
Tables ranking countries by chocolate eaten per head are everywhere and are almost never what they claim. There are four different things that get called consumption, they differ severalfold for the same country, and only one of them measures eating.
The four things called consumption
- Intake
- What a sample of people report eating, in a dietary survey. The only measure of eating, and the smallest number.
- Purchases
- What households report buying. Says nothing about who ate it, or whether.
- Supply
- What is left in a country after cocoa exports are subtracted from imports, per head, in bean equivalent. A residual. Most league tables are this.
- Production
- What factories sold, wherever in the world it was eaten.
The same countries, measured differently
Read down the United Kingdom rows first. A row can be compared only with another row of the same kind, and even then with care.
| Place | Kind of quantity | Figure | Period | What it covers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | Intake: reported eaten, in a dietary survey | 8.70 g a day | 2019 to 2023 | Adults aged 19 to 64, chocolate confectionery, averaged over everyone including those who ate none |
| United Kingdom | Intake: reported eaten, in a dietary survey | 24.07 g a day (median 16 g) | 2019 to 2023 | The 37.57% of adults aged 19 to 64 who ate any during the recording period |
| United Kingdom | Purchases: reported bought by households | About 85 g a week | 2024-25 | Solid and filled chocolate bars bought for the household, per person. Eating out is recorded separately |
| United Kingdom | Supply: a trade residual, in cocoa bean equivalent | 3.94 kg a year | 2023 | Cocoa beans and products available per head after trade, in bean equivalent. An estimate |
| Australia | Intake: reported eaten, in a dietary survey | 6.3 g a day | 2023 | Adults, chocolate and chocolate-based confectionery, averaged over everyone, from one 24-hour recall |
| Australia | Intake: reported eaten, in a dietary survey | 36 g (median) | 2023 | Adults who ate any on the recall day, who were 11% of adults |
| France | Intake: reported eaten, in a dietary survey | 8.6 g a day | 2014 to 2015 | Adults aged 18 to 79, sugar confectionery and chocolate together, averaged over everyone |
| Germany | Intake: reported eaten, in a dietary survey | 8.99 g a day | National survey, as held by the European database | Adults, chocolate and cocoa products, averaged over all 10,419 subjects |
| Germany | Intake: reported eaten, in a dietary survey | 28.77 g a day | Same survey | The 31% recorded as consumers |
| Germany | Supply: a trade residual, in cocoa bean equivalent | 0.71 kg a year | 2023 | Cocoa beans and products per head after trade. Imports of 957 thousand tonnes less exports of 897 thousand |
| Germany | Production: sold by factories | 739 thousand tonnes | 2024 | Chocolate bars sold by German factories: three published lines (filled, with additions, plain) added together here. Much of it exported |
| European Union (27) | Production: sold by factories | About 1.84 million tonnes | 2024 | Chocolate in blocks, slabs or bars sold by factories. Excludes other confectionery and bulk chocolate |
| United States | Production: sold by factories | 18.4 billion dollars | 2021 | Shipments by chocolate and chocolate confectionery manufacturers. A value, from a sample survey |
Sources for every row are cited in the sections below. Figures are as published; nothing has been converted from one kind of quantity to another.
British households buy more solid chocolate than in 1992, and fewer filled bars
Grams bought per person per week
- Filled chocolate bars
- Solid chocolate bars
Scroll the chart sideways to see the most recent years.
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Family Food, household consumption tables published 17 September 2026 (codes 350 and 351). Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Values rounded to two decimal places; otherwise unchanged.
Purchases for the household only. Chocolate bought and eaten away from home is recorded in a separate series. The survey changed from calendar years to financial years in 2001-02, back to calendar years from 2006, and to financial years again from 2015-16, so the axis is not evenly spaced in time. Diary surveys under-record small purchases.
Show these figures as a table
| Period | Filled chocolate bars | Solid chocolate bars |
|---|---|---|
| 1992 | 56.0 g | 26.6 g |
| 1993 | 55.9 g | 28.0 g |
| 1994 | 57.3 g | 26.1 g |
| 1995 | 58.1 g | 28.6 g |
| 1996 | 65.4 g | 30.4 g |
| 1997 | 68.2 g | 28.0 g |
| 1998 | 65.7 g | 28.9 g |
| 1999 | 63.4 g | 26.1 g |
| 2000 | 80.1 g | 32.9 g |
| 2001-02 | 57.4 g | 27.5 g |
| 2002-03 | 56.3 g | 26.7 g |
| 2003-04 | 58.8 g | 27.3 g |
| 2004-05 | 59.7 g | 29.8 g |
| 2005-06 | 53.6 g | 30.1 g |
| 2006 | 53.8 g | 30.6 g |
| 2007 | 56.1 g | 31.5 g |
| 2008 | 57.5 g | 30.9 g |
| 2009 | 59.3 g | 30.5 g |
| 2010 | 56.9 g | 31.6 g |
| 2011 | 58.4 g | 31.5 g |
| 2012 | 50.2 g | 33.1 g |
| 2013 | 50.4 g | 35.4 g |
| 2014 | 51.5 g | 35.6 g |
| 2015 | 51.5 g | 34.6 g |
| 2015-16 | 53.5 g | 34.5 g |
| 2016-17 | 48.5 g | 36.5 g |
| 2017-18 | 52.3 g | 39.9 g |
| 2018-19 | 50.0 g | 38.4 g |
| 2019-20 | 53.8 g | 43.2 g |
| 2020-21 | 56.4 g | 55.2 g |
| 2021-22 | 48.6 g | 47.0 g |
| 2022-23 | 51.4 g | 46.1 g |
| 2023-24 | 46.8 g | 38.3 g |
| 2024-25 | 47.4 g | 37.3 g |
Where these figures come from
- Publisher
- Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs — Family Food datasets: UK household purchases and UK household expenditure
- Release used
- Published 17 September 2026; retrieved 9 October 2026.
- Covers
- United Kingdom. 1992 to 2024-25, in 34 periods: calendar years to 2000, financial years 2001-02 to 2005-06, calendar years 2006 to 2015, and financial years from 2015-16.
- Units
- Grams per person per week, and pence per person per week in the prices of each year.
- Licence
- Open Government Licence v3.0
- How it is revised
- Reissued annually with a new year and occasional revisions to earlier years. The survey behind it changed from the National Food Survey to the Expenditure and Food Survey in 2001-02 and is now the Living Costs and Food Survey.
- Next check here
- 1 October 2027. Annual.
What was changed
- Three rows taken from each of two published sheets: codes 350 (chocolate bars, solid), 351 (chocolate bars, filled) and 350355 (confectionery).
- Period labels written out in full (2015-16 for the publisher's 201516).
- Values rounded to two decimal places for display and download; the raw extract keeps the publisher's precision.
- No conversion to grams per day, to calendar years or to constant prices.
What these figures cannot tell you
Purchases, not intake: what households reported buying, whoever ate it and whether or not it was eaten.
Household supplies only. Confectionery bought and eaten away from home is a separate series, not included.
A diary survey, which the publisher says tends to under-record purchases, small top-up purchases most of all.
The reporting period switches between calendar and financial years, so the points are not evenly spaced in time.
Expenditure is in the prices of each year and is not adjusted for inflation.
Download
Reusing them: Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Family Food datasets, published 17 September 2026. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Rounded to two decimal places by ChocolateHQ.
Beyond the United Kingdom: a share of spending
No current official series of chocolate bought or eaten, comparable across countries, was found. What does exist is a measure of money. The weights behind the European consumer price index record what share of household spending goes on chocolate, cocoa and cocoa-based products in each member state. Across the European Union in 2026 that share was 0.45%, against 16.3% for all food and non-alcoholic drink. In 2017 it was 0.42%.
| Country | Share of household spending, 2026 | Share of spending on food and drink | Share of household spending, 2017 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Austria | 0.32% | 2.7% | 0.26% |
| Belgium | 0.46% | 3.3% | 0.50% |
| Bulgaria | 0.92% | 4.1% | 0.66% |
| Croatia | 0.53% | 2.4% | 0.44% |
| Cyprus | 0.44% | 2.8% | 0.32% |
| Czechia | 0.63% | 3.4% | 0.54% |
| Denmark | 0.52% | 3.8% | 0.55% |
| Estonia | 0.56% | 2.8% | 0.61% |
| Finland | 0.43% | 2.8% | 0.39% |
| France | 0.62% | 4.2% | 0.63% |
| Germany | 0.46% | 3.6% | 0.41% |
| Greece | 0.19% | 1.0% | 0.17% |
| Hungary | 0.58% | 2.9% | 0.60% |
| Ireland | 0.66% | 5.0% | 0.45% |
| Italy | 0.25% | 1.4% | 0.23% |
| Latvia | 0.77% | 3.3% | 0.64% |
| Lithuania | 0.55% | 2.6% | 0.59% |
| Luxembourg | 0.40% | 3.3% | 0.29% |
| Malta | 0.60% | 3.3% | 0.36% |
| Netherlands | 0.41% | 2.9% | 0.40% |
| Poland | 0.48% | 2.5% | 0.49% |
| Portugal | 0.47% | 2.3% | 0.27% |
| Romania | 0.39% | 1.4% | 0.23% |
| Slovakia | 0.93% | 4.1% | 0.64% |
| Slovenia | 0.59% | 3.2% | 0.37% |
| Spain | 0.33% | 1.9% | 0.28% |
| Sweden | 0.43% | 2.6% | 0.49% |
A share of spending is not an amount eaten, and not an amount of money. Where households spend less in total, the same bar is a bigger share: a high figure can mean a poorer country as easily as a fonder one. The table is in alphabetical order for that reason and should not be read as a ranking.
These are estimates built for a price index, mostly from spending patterns of a year or two earlier, and they count spending by visitors as well as residents. Small differences between countries mean little.
Where these figures come from
- Publisher
- Eurostat — Harmonised index of consumer prices (HICP), ECOICOP version 2, item weights (prc_hicp_iw)
- Release used
- Published 17 September 2026; retrieved 9 October 2026.
- Covers
- The European Union of 27 member states as an aggregate, and each member state. Annual, 2017 to 2026.
- Units
- Published in parts per thousand of household final monetary consumption expenditure; shown here as per cent.
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- How it is revised
- Set once a year for the price index, from national accounts and household budget surveys of earlier years, updated for price change. The classification changed with the 2026 data and earlier years were republished on the new basis.
- Next check here
- 1 March 2027. Annual, with the January index.
What was changed
- Two categories taken: CP01185 (chocolate, cocoa and cocoa-based food products) and CP01 (food and non-alcoholic beverages).
- Divided by ten to give per cent, and rounded to two decimal places.
- No conversion to money, and no figure per person.
What these figures cannot tell you
A share of spending, not an amount of money and not a quantity of chocolate. A country where households spend less in total can show a larger share while spending less on chocolate.
A weight is an estimate built for a price index, mostly from the spending patterns of one or two years earlier. It is not a survey of that year.
The category is chocolate, cocoa and cocoa-based food products together, not chocolate bars alone.
National statistical offices build their weights differently, so small differences between countries mean little.
Spending by residents and visitors inside a country is counted, so tourism raises some countries' figures.
Download
Reusing them: Source: Eurostat, harmonised index of consumer prices, item weights, dataset prc_hicp_iw, updated 17 September 2026. Converted from parts per thousand to per cent by ChocolateHQ; Eurostat is not responsible for the converted figures.
Intake: what dietary surveys record
A dietary survey asks a sample of people to record or recall everything they ate over one to four days. It is the only one of the four that measures eating.
- Averaged over everybody, adults eat a single-digit number of grams of chocolate a day wherever it has been measured: 8.70 g in the United Kingdom, 6.3 g in Australia, 8.6 g in France for confectionery and chocolate together. (source 1; source 2; source 3)
- Most people eat none on a given day. The British median was 0 g with a 97.5th percentile of 50 g; in Australia 11% of adults reported chocolate on the day before interview; in the United States one adult in eight ate chocolate candy on a recall day. (O'Neil et al. 2011; source 4; source 2)
- Among those who do, the amount is several times the average: 24 g a day in the United Kingdom, a median of 36 g in Australia, about 40 g in the United States. (O'Neil et al. 2011; source 1; source 2)
- Teenagers eat the most. In every period of the British survey children aged 11 to 18 had the highest mean, 9.77 g a day in 2019 to 2023, and in France adolescents averaged 18.4 g of confectionery and chocolate against 8.6 g for adults. (source 1; source 4; source 3)
- Across Europe, national adult means in the food safety agency's database run from 2.14 g a day in Italy to 14.21 g in the Netherlands. The agency says the surveys used different methods and are difficult to compare. (source 5; source 6)
- How a survey defines its group moves the figure. The German survey report publishes no chocolate figure at all, only sweets at 21 to 23 g a day; France combines chocolate with sugar confectionery; the British survey changed from a paper diary to an online recall in 2019. (source 7; source 3; source 1)
- Dark chocolate is a small part of it: in American recalls 11.1% of adults reported any chocolate and 1.4% dark chocolate. (Jackson et al. 2019)
Not shown: A ranking of countries. The surveys differ in year, method, age range and what they count as chocolate.
Not shown: True intake. People under-report snacks in dietary surveys, by an amount these sources do not give.
Not shown: Anything for Africa, Asia or Latin America beyond one Korean questionnaire study. No official intake table from those regions was read.
Purchases: what households buy
A household budget survey records what is bought, not who eats it or whether it is eaten. One long series was obtained, for the United Kingdom, and it is charted above.
- British households bought 26.60 g of solid chocolate bars per person per week in 1992 and 37.32 g in 2024-25. Filled bars went the other way, from 56.00 g to 47.35 g. Together they came to about 85 g a week. (source 8)
- All confectionery bought for the home, chocolate and sugar together, has stayed in a narrow band for three decades: 120.59 g a week in 1992, 127.21 g in 2024-25. (source 8)
- Spending rose while quantity did not: 27.38 pence a week on filled bars in 1992 and 62.09 pence in 2024-25, in the money of each year. (source 8)
- Confectionery bought to eat away from home is recorded separately, and fell from 22.97 g a week in 2001-02 to 2.44 g in 2024-25. (source 8)
- The publisher warns that people keeping purchase diaries tend to under-report, and that small top-up purchases are the likeliest to be missed, which is what a chocolate bar usually is. (source 8)
- The European household budget survey cannot be used for chocolate: its finest category lumps it with sugar, jam, honey and confectionery. (source 9)
Not shown: Why the eating-out figure fell so far. The series changed its methods over the period, and the source read does not explain the fall.
Not shown: That Britons eat about 12 g of chocolate bars a day. That is what households reported buying, divided by seven.
Not shown: Purchases anywhere else. No other national series separating chocolate was obtained.
Supply: the figure behind most league tables
A food balance sheet takes a country's production and imports, subtracts exports and other uses, and divides what is left by the population. For cocoa it is counted in bean equivalent.
- It is a residual and not a measurement of eating, and the body that publishes it says so: the figure reflects what reaches the consumer, and the amount eaten may be lower. (source 10)
- For 2023 it puts Côte d'Ivoire, the largest grower, first at 8.65 kg a head, ahead of Luxembourg, Iceland and Montenegro, which is a sign of what the residual is picking up. (source 11)
- For countries that trade cocoa products heavily it is unstable. Belgium's figure was 0.16 kg a head in 2021, 0.20 in 2022 and 2.01 in 2023, on imports and exports of more than 600 thousand tonnes each. (source 12)
- Germany's comes out at 0.71 kg a head, below the United States, because 957 thousand tonnes of imports are set against 897 thousand of exports. A small error in either moves the result greatly. (source 12; source 11)
- The cocoa trade body's own per-head tables are sold by subscription and were not read. (source 13)
Not shown: Who eats the most chocolate. This series cannot say, and the examples above show why.
Not shown: Kilograms of chocolate. The unit is cocoa beans and products, not finished chocolate, which is also sugar and milk.
Production: what factories sold
- Factories in the European Union sold about 1.84 million tonnes of chocolate bars in 2024: 870 thousand tonnes filled, 504 thousand with cereal, fruit or nuts, and 467 thousand plain. (source 14)
- Germany is the largest producer and a large exporter: 381 thousand tonnes of filled bars sold in 2024, of which 206 thousand were exported. (source 14)
- The largest single line is not a consumer product. Bulk chocolate in packs over 2 kg came to about 1.4 million tonnes, most of it destined to become the bars and confectionery counted elsewhere, so adding the lines together counts chocolate twice. (source 14)
- Some European totals are deliberately rounded or suppressed to protect individual companies. (source 15)
- In the United States, chocolate and chocolate confectionery manufacturers reported shipments of 18.4 billion dollars in 2021, from a sample survey. (source 16; source 17)
Not shown: Consumption. A country can make far more chocolate than it eats, or far less.
Seasons
- In France more adults ate confectionery and chocolate in autumn, 70%, than in summer or winter, 57 and 56%. (source 3)
- In Germany sweets were eaten mainly from November to April. (source 7)
- Monthly sales of chocolate, and the size of the Easter and Christmas peaks: no official series was found.
Not shown: How large any seasonal peak is. Both statements come from dietary surveys and give no monthly quantities for chocolate.
What may be reused
This site republishes a series only where the publisher's licence permits it.
- British government statistics are under the Open Government Licence, which permits copying, adapting and commercial use with acknowledgement. The charted series is published on that basis. (source 8; source 18)
- The United Nations food supply data are under a Creative Commons attribution licence; European Union statistics, the European food safety agency's website and the Australian statistics office all permit reuse with acknowledgement. (source 19; source 20; source 21; source 22)
- No reuse terms were found for the French and German survey reports or for the American census files, so their figures are quoted and not republished as data.
Not shown: Legal advice on any licence.
Sources
Studies are cited by author and year and summarised, with their limits, on the research pages. The official documents are listed here. Each was downloaded and read, and the passage relied on was checked to be in it.
- Office for Health Improvement and Disparities and Food Standards Agency. National Diet and Nutrition Survey 2019 to 2023: chapter 4 data tables (Year 12 to 15 UK) (2025-06-11). www.gov.uk/government/statistics/national-diet-and-nutrition-survey-2019-to-2023
Official statistics · UK - Australian Bureau of Statistics. National Nutrition and Physical Activity Survey: Food and Nutrients, 2023, Table 5 (Daily intake of AUSNUT food groups) (2025-09-05). www.abs.gov.au/statistics/health/food-and-nutrition/food-and-nutrients/latest-release
Official statistics · Australia - Anses (French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety). Etude individuelle nationale des consommations alimentaires 3 (INCA 3): avis de l'Anses, rapport d'expertise collective (2017-06). www.anses.fr/fr/system/files/NUT2014SA0234Ra.pdf
Official statistics · France - Public Health England and Food Standards Agency. National Diet and Nutrition Survey rolling programme Years 9 to 11 (2016/2017 to 2018/2019): descriptive statistics tables, Table 7.12 (2020-12-11). www.gov.uk/government/statistics/ndns-results-from-years-9-to-11-2016-to-2017-and-2018-to-2019
Official statistics · UK - European Food Safety Authority. EFSA Comprehensive European Food Consumption Database: chronic food consumption statistics in grams per day, all subjects (FoodEx Level 2 and 3 extract) (2015). www.efsa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/chronicgdaytotpop.xlsx
Official statistics · EU - European Food Safety Authority. Food consumption data (topic page). www.efsa.europa.eu/en/data-report/food-consumption-data
Official guidance, not law · EU - Max Rubner-Institut. Nationale Verzehrsstudie II, Ergebnisbericht Teil 2 (2008). www.mri.bund.de/fileadmin/MRI/Institute/EV/NVSII_Abschlussbericht_Teil_2.pdf
Official statistics · Germany - Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Extract of chocolate rows from Family Food datasets (published 17 September 2026) (2026-09-17). www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/family-food-datasets
Official statistics · UK - Eurostat. hbs_str_t211: Structure of consumption expenditure by COICOP consumption purpose (extract for CP0118) (2025-10-15). ec.europa.eu/eurostat/api/dissemination/statistics/1.0/data/hbs_str_t211?format=JSON&lang=en&coicop=CP0118
Official statistics · EU - Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Food balance sheets: a handbook (2001). www.fao.org/4/x9892e/x9892e00.htm
Official guidance, not law · International - Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. FAOSTAT Food Balance Sheets (2010-): Cocoa Beans and products, food supply quantity, extract for 2021 to 2023 (undated (bulk file timestamp 2025-10-14)). www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/FBS
Official statistics · International - Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. FAOSTAT Food Balance Sheets (2010-): Cocoa Beans and products, 2023 balance for selected areas (extract of the bulk download) (undated (bulk file timestamp 2025-10-14)). bulks-faostat.fao.org/production/FoodBalanceSheets_E_All_Data_(Normalized).zip
Official statistics · International - International Cocoa Organization. Statistics (web page). www.icco.org/statistics/
Official guidance, not law · International - Eurostat. PRODCOM DS-059358: Sold production, exports and imports (extract for cocoa and chocolate product codes 1082xxxx, 2021 to 2024) (2026-09-16). ec.europa.eu/eurostat/api/comext/dissemination/statistics/1.0/data/ds-059358?format=JSON&product=10822239&lang=en
Official statistics · EU - Eurostat. Statistics on the production of manufactured goods (prom): reference metadata in Euro SDMX Metadata Structure. ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/metadata/en/prom_esms.htm
Official guidance, not law · EU - U.S. Census Bureau. Annual Survey of Manufactures: Summary Statistics for Industry Groups and Industries in the U.S.: 2018 - 2021 (AM1831BASIC01), extract (undated (data file timestamp 2023-01-18)). www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/asm/data/2021/AM1831BASIC01.zip
Official statistics · United States - U.S. Census Bureau. About the Annual Survey of Manufactures (web page). www.census.gov/programs-surveys/asm/about.html
Official guidance, not law · United States - The National Archives. Open Government Licence for public sector information, version 3.0. www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/
Official guidance, not law · UK - Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Statistical Database Terms of Use. www.fao.org/contact-us/terms/db-terms-of-use/en/
Official guidance, not law · International - Eurostat. Copyright notice and free re-use of data. ec.europa.eu/eurostat/help/copyright-notice
Official guidance, not law · EU - European Food Safety Authority. Legal notice. www.efsa.europa.eu/en/legalnotice
Official guidance, not law · EU - Australian Bureau of Statistics. Website privacy, copyright and disclaimer. www.abs.gov.au/website-privacy-copyright-and-disclaimer
Official guidance, not law · Australia
Reviewed 9 October 2026.
Related: the consumption studies, the health trials, cocoa trade, the cocoa atlas and chocolate nutrition. All data.