What Is Inulin? The Chicory Fibre on a Chocolate Label

Both of these bars list inulin on the pack:

What is inulin made from?

Nearly all the inulin used in food comes from chicory root, which stores its energy as inulin the way a potato stores it as starch. The fibre is drawn out of the root with hot water. Its chains are built from fructose units, which makes inulin a fructan.

Great Britain defines native chicory inulin as a non-fractionated mixture with a mean degree of polymerisation of 9 or more, meaning an average of at least nine linked units per chain. The definition is that tight because the one authorised claim was assessed on that material alone.

What does inulin do in a chocolate bar?

Take sugar out of chocolate and you lose more than sweetness. Sugar is roughly half the weight of a normal bar, so something has to fill the gap or the chocolate turns thin and greasy. Inulin is one of the ingredients that fills it, which is how the fibre gets onto the label.

A study in the International Journal of Food Science and Technology tested inulin as a sucrose replacer in dark chocolate. Raising the inulin share increased viscosity and hardness, so the chocolate ran thicker when molten and set firmer, while its melting behaviour barely moved.

In our bars inulin takes a back seat. The bulk sweetener is maltitol, with inulin behind it adding fibre and structure. On our Dark Chocolate with Orange it is the fifth of nine ingredients, after the maltitol, cocoa mass, cocoa butter and dried orange.

Maltitol has its own explainer: what maltitol is and how it sweetens.

How much fibre is in a no added sugar chocolate bar?

Our Dark Chocolate with Orange declares 8 g of fibre per 100 g, which clears the 6 g per 100 g that GB law sets as the threshold for a high fibre claim. The Milk Chocolate Bubble Bar declares 5.3 g per 100 g, above the 3 g threshold for a source of fibre.

Not all of that fibre is inulin. Cocoa carries fibre of its own and, in a dark bar, most of it.

The NHS puts the adult target at 30 g of fibre a day and notes that most adults manage about 20 g. No bar of chocolate is going to close that 10 g gap on its own.

Both bars are No Added Sugar, a separate claim from Sugar Free with its own rules. They contain naturally occurring sugars: 2 g per 100 g in the dark bar from the cocoa and the dried orange; 9.8 g per 100 g in the bubble bar from the milk. No sugar is added on top.

What is anyone allowed to claim about inulin?

Great Britain authorises a single health claim for chicory inulin, with fixed wording:

That wording comes with a condition: it applies where a daily intake of 12 g of chicory inulin is reached, which is supplement territory. So you will not find that sentence on our wrappers. Only claims listed in the Great Britain nutrition and health claims register may be used here at all.

Is inulin a sugar or a sweetener?

Inulin is neither a sugar nor a sweetener, although its chains are built from fructose, which is a sugar. Those chains pass through the small intestine undigested and the sugars line on the panel does not count them. On a UK label its contribution lands in the fibre figure instead.

Nor is inulin a polyol. Maltitol, sorbitol and isomalt are sugar alcohols, which get their own line on the nutrition panel under polyols. Our guide to sugar alcohols covers that family properly.

Both bars run above 10 percent polyols (44 g per 100 g in the dark bar, 40 g in the bubble bar), so UK labelling law puts the line excessive consumption may produce laxative effects on each pack. Polyols are used because the body absorbs them slowly; a couple of squares at a time is how a bar like this gets eaten anyway.

Inulin turns up in seven products across our range: three of our chocolate bars, both sizes of the coated buttons and both 450 g fruit cakes.

Frequently asked questions

Is inulin a sugar?

No. Inulin is a dietary fibre built from chains of fructose units that your body cannot break down. Because it is not digested, it is not counted in the sugars line on a nutrition panel. Its contribution shows up in the fibre figure.

Does inulin count towards my daily fibre?

Yes. Inulin is declared as fibre on a UK label and counts towards the 30 g a day the NHS recommends for adults. Most adults currently get around 20 g, so the gap is real for a lot of people.

Why does one Diablo pack say fibre (inulin) and another just inulin?

Both name the same ingredient. On the Milk Chocolate Bubble Bar it sits inside the chocolate's own bracket as fibre (inulin). On the Dark Chocolate with Orange it is listed on its own, fifth of nine ingredients. Ingredients are ordered by weight, so its position tells you roughly how much of it is in there.

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