Chocolate label decoder
Paste a chocolate ingredient list and see what each ingredient is and why it is there.
7 ingredients, 0 not recognised
The label declares 30% cocoa. That figure counts cocoa mass, cocoa butter and cocoa powder together.
- Sugar is listed first. Ingredient lists are normally written in descending order of weight, so it is likely to be the largest ingredient.
- Sugar comes before any cocoa ingredient, which means there is more sugar than any single cocoa ingredient. That is usual for milk and white chocolate and for many dark ones.
From the cocoa bean
Cocoa butter
Written as “cocoa butter”, number 2 in the list.
The fat pressed from cacao nibs, making up around half the weight of the bean. It is what makes chocolate melt at body temperature.
Cocoa mass
Written as “cocoa mass”, number 4 in the list.
Ground nibs — a fluid suspension of cocoa solids in the bean's own cocoa butter, containing no alcohol despite the name liquor.
Sugars
Sugar
Written as “sugar”, number 1 in the list.
The main sweetener, and in most milk and many dark chocolates the largest single ingredient. It also provides bulk: taking it out means replacing it with something.
Milk ingredients
Milk powder
Written as “whole milk powder”, number 3 in the list.
The non-water components of milk — protein, lactose and minerals — used in milk and white chocolate.
Emulsifiers
Lecithin
Written as “emulsifiers (soya lecithin, E476)”, number 6 in the list.
A phospholipid emulsifier used at 0.3–0.5% to reduce chocolate's viscosity, replacing several times its weight in cocoa butter.
Flavourings
Vanilla
Written as “natural vanilla flavouring”, number 7 in the list.
Flavouring from the vanilla pod itself, used in small amounts to round out sweetness. It is the plant ingredient; vanillin on a label is the single aroma compound, however it was made.
Inclusions and additions
Nuts and peanuts — 10% stated
Written as “hazelnuts (10%)”, number 5 in the list.
An addition, either as pieces or ground to a paste. Nut paste carries its own oil, which softens the chocolate around it.
Allergen wording in this text
Words that usually indicate: milk, soya, tree nuts.
Precautionary statement, as written: “May contain other nuts”
This is a word match, not an allergen check. It can miss an allergen and it cannot tell you a product is free of one. If you have an allergy, rely on the packaging in your hand and the manufacturer.
What this cannot tell you
- It is not an allergen check. It matches words, can miss an allergen, and can never show that a product is free of one. Anyone with an allergy should rely on the actual packaging and the manufacturer.
- It explains ingredients; it does not rate products. Nothing it shows means a chocolate is good, bad, healthy or unhealthy.
- It reads English ingredient names only, and only the kinds of ingredient it has been taught. Anything else is listed as not recognised rather than guessed.
- A list does not give quantities. The order suggests which ingredients are larger, and nothing more, unless a percentage is printed.
- It cannot tell which part of a product an ingredient belongs to. A vegetable fat or a syrup may be in a filling rather than in the chocolate.
- It does not check whether a product meets any legal definition of chocolate, or whether a claim on the pack is true.
How to read the order
An ingredient list is normally written from the largest ingredient by weight to the smallest. So the first two or three items tell you most of what the bar is made of, and anything after the emulsifier is usually present in fractions of a per cent. A milk chocolate that begins “sugar, cocoa butter, milk powder, cocoa mass” has more sugar than anything else and more cocoa butter than cocoa mass.
More in reading a chocolate ingredients list and how to read a chocolate label. What a name such as milk chocolate legally requires is set out in what legally counts as chocolate.
What it recognises
27 kinds of ingredient: cocoa mass, cocoa butter, cocoa powder, sugar, glucose syrup or invert sugar, lactose, milk powder, whey powder, milk fat, vegetable fat other than cocoa butter, lecithin, pgpr, mono- and diglycerides, emulsifier (not named), vanillin, vanilla, natural flavouring, flavouring, maltitol, erythritol, steviol glycosides, other sugar alcohol or sweetener, added fibre, glazing agent, nuts and peanuts, salt, malt. Fruit, spices, biscuit pieces and other inclusions are mostly not in the list, and will be shown as not recognised.