What is in chocolate bars
What labels actually say: 484 dark, milk and white chocolate tablets listed as sold in the United Kingdom and 1617 listed as sold in Germany, each with its sugar, fat, stated cocoa percentage and what its ingredient list names. They are two samples of an open database, not of two markets, and the page is built around that difference.
What this sample can and cannot tell you
- A convenience sample. The database holds what volunteers chose to scan, so no figure here describes British chocolate as a whole.
- Transcribed by contributors, not by this site. Each record has a photographed ingredient list so that it can be checked; the rows have not been checked one by one.
- One record can be listed for many countries. A record is here because the United Kingdom is among them and its ingredient list is in English.
- The database's own categories are used as given. A few records filed under chocolate are biscuits or other products containing it.
- A record's age is the date it was last edited, not the date the pack was on sale. Recipes change, and an old record may describe a bar no longer made.
- A flag means an ingredient is listed. It says nothing about how much.
- Cocoa percentages are only those a label states. None is worked out from anything else.
How the sample was drawn
The rule was written first and applied by script on 9 October 2026: every record that Open Food Facts listed under dark, milk or white chocolates for the United Kingdom, kept only if its full record had an ingredient list in English, seven nutrition values per 100 g, and a photograph of the ingredient list. Nothing was picked and nothing was corrected.
- Records listed by the index
- 764
- Full records read
- 762
- Left out: no ingredient list in English
- 198
- Left out: nutrition values incomplete
- 46
- Left out: no photograph of the ingredient list
- 28
- Left out by a consistency check, such as an impossible energy value
- 6
- In the sample
- 484
Not every listed record had been read when this was built. The database was read one record at a time in barcode order, and the rest will be added by the same rule. Barcode order is not random, so the part read is not a random part.
Sugar and fat, by type
Grams per 100 g, as labelled. “Middle half” is the range from the lower to the upper quartile: half the sample’s products of that type fall inside it. A type with fewer than 30 products is counted and not summarised.
| Type | Products | Sugars: middle product | Sugars: middle half | Sugars: lowest to highest | Fat: middle half |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dark | 269 | 30.0 g | 25.0 to 44.0 g | 0.2 to 75.5 g | 33.0 to 44.1 g |
| Milk | 166 | 51.0 g | 45.1 to 56.0 g | 7.6 to 68.9 g | 30.0 to 36.2 g |
| White | 49 | 54.0 g | 47.9 to 59.0 g | 10.0 to 71.6 g | 31.0 to 37.0 g |
These describe the products in this sample. They are not the average sugar content of dark, milk or white chocolate in Britain.
Stated cocoa percentage, and sugar against it
Only what a label states. Of the 269 dark tablets, 142 state a cocoa percentage in their ingredient list or name; of the 166 milk tablets, 77 do. No percentage is worked out for the rest.
| Stated cocoa | Products | Sugars: middle product | Sugars: middle half |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 60% | 31 | 47.9 g | 44.0 to 50.1 g |
| 60 to 74% | 69 | 29.0 g | 27.0 to 30.9 g |
| 75 to 89% | 36 | 15.3 g | 14.0 to 19.9 g |
| 90% and over | 6 | Too few | Too few to summarise |
A declared cocoa percentage counts cocoa butter as well as cocoa mass, and what is not cocoa is not all sugar. The table shows what labels with a given percentage also say about sugar. It is not a formula, and bands with fewer than 30 products are not summarised.
What the ingredient lists name
How many products of each type list an ingredient of each kind, read with the same rules as the label decoder. Listed means named, at any amount.
| Listed ingredient | Dark (of 269) | Milk (of 166) | White (of 49) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lecithin | 160 (59%) | 129 (78%) | 48 (98%) |
| PGPR (E476) | 11 (4%) | 25 (15%) | 1 (2%) |
| A vegetable fat other than cocoa butter | 27 (10%) | 62 (37%) | 9 (18%) |
| Milk fat or butter oil | 32 (12%) | 50 (30%) | 14 (29%) |
| Flavouring, including vanillin | 82 (30%) | 90 (54%) | 29 (59%) |
| A sweetener in place of sugar | 2 (1%) | 7 (4%) | 1 (2%) |
What comes first on the list
Ingredients are listed in descending order of weight, so the first is the largest.
| Type | First ingredient | Products |
|---|---|---|
| Dark | Cocoa mass | 165 |
| Dark | Sugar | 60 |
| Dark | Cocoa butter | 8 |
| Dark | Vanilla | 7 |
| Milk | Sugar | 107 |
| Milk | Milk powder | 31 |
| Milk | Cocoa butter | 8 |
| Milk | Cocoa mass | 6 |
A listed vegetable fat or a first-listed sugar is a fact about a label. Whether a product may legally be called chocolate depends on quantities the label does not give: see what legally counts as chocolate.
A second sample: Germany
Drawn on the same day by the same rule, with one change: the ingredient list must be in German, the language of the market, and it is read by German rules written to match the English ones term for term.
- Records listed by the index
- 2093
- Full records read
- 2090
- Left out: no ingredient list in German
- 409
- Left out: nutrition values incomplete
- 39
- Left out: no photograph of the ingredient list
- 22
- Left out by a consistency check
- 3
- In the sample
- 1617
Only 2090 of the 2093 listed records had been read when this was built. They were read in barcode order, which is not random, so the part read is not a random part, and every German figure on this page is provisional until the rest are added by the same rule.
| Type | Products | Sugars: middle product | Sugars: middle half | Sugars: lowest to highest | Fat: middle half |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dark | 656 | 35.0 g | 26.0 to 44.0 g | 0.2 to 69.0 g | 33.1 to 45.0 g |
| Milk | 774 | 49.0 g | 45.0 to 53.0 g | 7.7 to 69.0 g | 32.0 to 39.0 g |
| White | 187 | 52.0 g | 43.0 to 55.0 g | 8.1 to 65.0 g | 32.2 to 39.0 g |
The two samples side by side
Before reading the table
- Two convenience samples of one volunteer database. A difference between them may reflect who scans products in each country as much as what is sold there.
- Neither sample describes its country's chocolate, so no row says that German chocolate is, or British chocolate is, anything.
- The two lists are read by different rules, English and German, written to match term for term. A term one language's rule misses would show up here as a difference.
- Some records are listed for both countries and so sit in both samples.
- 22 records are in both samples, out of 484 and 1617.
| Measure | United Kingdom sample | Germany sample |
|---|---|---|
| Products in the sample | 484 | 1617 |
| Brands | 146 | 282 |
| Dark tablets | 269 of 484 (56%) | 656 of 1617 (41%) |
| Milk tablets | 166 of 484 (34%) | 774 of 1617 (48%) |
| White tablets | 49 of 484 (10%) | 187 of 1617 (12%) |
| Sugars per 100 g, dark: middle product | 30.0 g (middle half 25.0 to 44.0) | 35.0 g (middle half 26.0 to 44.0) |
| Sugars per 100 g, milk: middle product | 51.0 g (middle half 45.1 to 56.0) | 49.0 g (middle half 45.0 to 53.0) |
| Sugars per 100 g, white: middle product | 54.0 g (middle half 47.9 to 59.0) | 52.0 g (middle half 43.0 to 55.0) |
| Pack weight, where recorded: middle product | 100.0 g (middle half 90.0 to 125.0) | 100.0 g (middle half 100.0 to 125.0) |
| State a cocoa percentage in the list or the name. How often a contributor typed the declaration, as much as how often labels carry it. | 225 of 484 (46%) | 355 of 1617 (22%) |
| Stated cocoa, dark tablets that state one: middle product | 70.0% (middle half 60.0 to 75.0) | 70.0% (middle half 60.0 to 80.0) |
| List lecithin | 337 of 484 (70%) | 1212 of 1617 (75%) |
| List PGPR (E476) | 37 of 484 (8%) | 35 of 1617 (2%) |
| List a vegetable fat other than cocoa butter. Includes fats in fillings and inclusions, not only in the chocolate. | 98 of 484 (20%) | 262 of 1617 (16%) |
| List milk fat or butter oil | 96 of 484 (20%) | 548 of 1617 (34%) |
| List a flavouring, including vanillin | 201 of 484 (42%) | 653 of 1617 (40%) |
| List a sweetener in place of sugar | 10 of 484 (2%) | 53 of 1617 (3%) |
| Tagged fair trade, Rainforest Alliance, UTZ or organic. Tags are added by contributors and are not checked against the certifiers' registers. | 233 of 484 (48%) | 852 of 1617 (53%) |
In these convenience samples the mix of types differs: dark tablets are 56% of the United Kingdom sample and 41% of the German one. That alone would move any figure taken across all types, so sugars are shown type by type and nothing is pooled.
Where a row differs, the cautious reading is that the samples differ. Whether the shelves do would need a sample drawn from the shelves.
Look through the sample
Choose a sample, then filter and sort its rows. This lists products; it deliberately does not average what you filter, because a filter can leave five bars and a mean of five bars would look like a finding.
Each sample is one CSV file. Load it here to filter it in your browser; nothing you choose is sent anywhere.
Where these figures come from
- Publisher
- Open Food Facts — Open Food Facts product database, records categorised as dark, milk or white chocolates
- Release used
- Published 9 October 2026; retrieved 9 October 2026.
- Covers
- Products that the database lists as sold in the United Kingdom. A record may be listed for other countries as well. Records as they stood on 9 October 2026; each was last edited on the date in its row.
- Units
- Grams per 100 g, kilocalories per 100 g, grams per pack, and percent of cocoa as stated on the label.
- Licence
- Open Database Licence (ODbL) v1.0
- How it is revised
- The database is edited continuously by its contributors. This is a snapshot; a later extract by the same rule will differ.
- Next check here
- 1 April 2027. Re-extracted when a further market is added, by the same rule.
What was changed
- Selected by a rule written in advance: listed under dark, milk or white chocolates for the United Kingdom, with an English ingredient list, seven nutrition values per 100 g and a photographed ingredient list.
- Records failing a consistency check (for example sugars exceeding carbohydrate, or an energy value impossible for chocolate) dropped by rule and counted, not corrected.
- A declared cocoa percentage read from the ingredient list or, failing that, the product name. None computed.
- Each ingredient list read with the label decoder's rules to flag lecithin, PGPR, other vegetable fat, milk fat, flavouring and sweeteners.
- Text cells collapsed to one line. No value changed.
What these figures cannot tell you
A convenience sample of a crowd-sourced database, not a survey of the market. No figure from it describes British chocolate.
Values were typed by contributors from packs and have not been checked against the packs by ChocolateHQ.
The database's categories are used as given; some records filed under chocolate are other products containing it.
A record's date is when it was last edited, not when the product was on sale; recipes change.
A flag means an ingredient is listed, at any amount.
Download
Reusing them: Contains data from Open Food Facts (openfoodfacts.org), made available under the Open Database Licence (ODbL) v1.0; individual contents under the Database Contents Licence. This extract, and the reading of each ingredient list added by ChocolateHQ, is offered under the same licence.
Where these figures come from
- Publisher
- Open Food Facts — Open Food Facts product database, records categorised as dark, milk or white chocolates
- Release used
- Published 9 October 2026; retrieved 9 October 2026.
- Covers
- Products that the database lists as sold in Germany. A record may be listed for other countries as well. Records as they stood on 9 October 2026; each was last edited on the date in its row.
- Units
- Grams per 100 g, kilocalories per 100 g, grams per pack, and percent of cocoa as stated on the label.
- Licence
- Open Database Licence (ODbL) v1.0
- How it is revised
- The database is edited continuously by its contributors. This is a snapshot; a later extract by the same rule will differ.
- Next check here
- 1 April 2027. Re-extracted when a further market is added, by the same rule.
What was changed
- Selected by a rule written in advance: listed under dark, milk or white chocolates for Germany, with a German ingredient list, seven nutrition values per 100 g and a photographed ingredient list.
- Records failing a consistency check (for example sugars exceeding carbohydrate, or an energy value impossible for chocolate) dropped by rule and counted, not corrected.
- A declared cocoa percentage read from the ingredient list or, failing that, the product name. None computed.
- Each ingredient list read with German rules, written to match the label decoder's English ones term for term, to flag lecithin, PGPR, other vegetable fat, milk fat, flavouring and sweeteners.
- Text cells collapsed to one line. No value changed.
What these figures cannot tell you
A convenience sample of a crowd-sourced database, not a survey of the market. No figure from it describes German chocolate.
Values were typed by contributors from packs and have not been checked against the packs by ChocolateHQ.
The database's categories are used as given; some records filed under chocolate are other products containing it.
A record's date is when it was last edited, not when the product was on sale; recipes change.
A flag means an ingredient is listed, at any amount.
Read in German by rules of this site's own. A wording the rules miss is recorded as not listed or not stated.
Download
Reusing them: Contains data from Open Food Facts (openfoodfacts.org), made available under the Open Database Licence (ODbL) v1.0; individual contents under the Database Contents Licence. This extract, and the reading of each ingredient list added by ChocolateHQ, is offered under the same licence.
What comes next, and what never will
Further markets will be added only as samples drawn by the same rule, and compared as samples. A statement about a market needs a different kind of sample, drawn from retailers’ ranges, and none is held here. No ranking of brands, no score and no recommendation will be made from this data, and no statement about a country’s chocolate will rest on it.
Related: the label decoder, the formulation calculator, chocolate standards, how much chocolate people eat and reading a chocolate ingredients list. All data.