Chocolate myths worth correcting

It is legally chocolate in the EU, with a defined composition requiring at least 20% cocoa butter and 14% milk solids. The kernel of truth is that it contains no cocoa solids, which is why it has none of chocolate's characteristic flavour or colour.

So the accurate version is that white chocolate is chocolate without cocoa solids, not that it is fake.

The grey-white film is fat bloom — unstable cocoa butter crystals converting and migrating to the surface. Sugar bloom, from moisture, is rougher. Neither is mould and neither is a safety problem.

Bloomed chocolate has lost gloss, snap and some texture. It melts and bakes perfectly well.

Percentage predicts sweetness. It does not predict quality, and above about 85% the reduced sugar leaves nothing to mask defects, which raises rather than lowers the bar the beans must clear.

Most makers put their best beans at 70%. That is where fine character reads most clearly.

The evidence here does not support a simple causal claim, and the dietary picture around acne is complicated and contested. The chocolate myth records set out what has and has not been shown.

What can be said is that the confident popular version — chocolate causes spots — is stronger than the evidence behind it.

Chocolate contains phenylethylamine and other compounds that get cited in support of this, generally without noting that orally ingested phenylethylamine is largely metabolised before reaching the brain.

The association is cultural and commercial, and it is old and durable. That is a genuine and interesting fact about chocolate; it is not a pharmacological one.

A vivid detail repeated in nearly every chocolate history, and traceable to a single early Spanish account with obvious reasons to exaggerate.

It survives because it is a good story. The myth records cover what the sources actually say, which is considerably less specific.