Chocolate Percentages Explained: What the Number Means

Ours, if you want the number on the front and the sugar figure to match up:

What does the percentage on a chocolate bar actually mean?

It is a weight figure. Take everything in the bar that came from the cocoa bean, add it up and divide by the weight of the bar. A 70 percent bar is 70 percent cocoa by weight.

Three things count towards it. Cocoa mass (also written as cocoa paste or cocoa liquor) is the whole roasted bean ground to a paste. Cocoa butter is the fat pressed out of that paste, and it is what gives chocolate its snap and its melt. Fat reduced cocoa powder is what is left after the butter comes out, and it counts too.

So the percentage is a poor guide to bitterness on its own. A maker can hit 70 percent with a lot of cocoa butter and comparatively little cocoa mass, and that bar tastes rounder and softer than a 70 percent built the other way round. Nothing on the front of the pack separates the two.

What are the legal minimums for dark, milk and white chocolate?

In the UK the thresholds sit in Schedule 1 of the Cocoa and Chocolate Products (England) Regulations 2003. Below the minimum, a product cannot legally be sold under that name.

Schedule 1 has no category called dark chocolate. Bars sold that way fall under plain "chocolate", which needs at least 35 percent total dry cocoa solids, of which at least 18 percent must be cocoa butter and at least 14 percent dry non-fat cocoa solids. Milk chocolate needs 25 percent cocoa solids and 14 percent dry milk solids. Family milk chocolate, the sweeter British category, drops to 20 percent cocoa with 20 percent milk solids. Schedule 1 names that entry "Family milk chocolate or Milk chocolate", so a 20 percent bar can sit on the shelf labelled plain milk chocolate. That is the rule behind a lot of British bars.

White chocolate has no cocoa solids minimum at all, because it contains no cocoa mass. The law asks for at least 20 percent cocoa butter and 14 percent dry milk solids instead. That is why a white bar rarely carries a cocoa percentage, and where one does appear it is counting cocoa butter.

Does a higher cocoa percentage mean less sugar?

Only by accident. The percentage fixes the cocoa share and says nothing about what fills the rest. On an ordinary bar most of that remainder is sugar, so the two numbers do move together: a 70 percent bar has less room for sugar than a 40 percent one. But the label is telling you about the cocoa, and you are inferring the sugar.

Our 80 percent dark bar splits the two numbers apart. The cocoa takes 80 percent. The panel then shows 20 g of polyols per 100 g and 1.1 g of sugars per 100 g, so the sweetness is arriving from somewhere other than sugar. The bar carries no added sugar and contains naturally occurring sugars from the cocoa itself. A polyol is a sweetener the body absorbs slowly. Maltitol does nearly all of that work in this bar, with steviol glycosides at 0.02 percent alongside it, in place of the sugar an ordinary bar would carry. That slow absorption belongs to the whole polyol family, and it is why any pack carrying more than 10 percent polyols, ours included, prints the line "excessive consumption may produce laxative effects".

Eighty is the only percentage we put on the front of a bar, and it is about as far as we want to take it. Past that the bitterness starts crowding out everything else the bean is doing.

Put an ordinary 80 percent bar beside ours and the front of the pack says the same thing, because it is measuring the same cocoa. The two bars part company on the nutrition panel.

Why do UK and US chocolate labels use different numbers?

The UK counts total dry cocoa solids, cocoa butter included. US standards of identity count chocolate liquor instead, which is the cocoa mass on its own, with any extra cocoa butter counted separately.

Two of the American floors come out lower as a result. The bittersweet one does not: 35 percent of chocolate liquor is a harder number to hit than 35 percent of total dry cocoa solids, because the American measure leaves out the added cocoa butter. Under 21 CFR 163.123, sweet chocolate needs 15 percent chocolate liquor, while semisweet and bittersweet chocolate need 35 percent. US milk chocolate needs 10 percent liquor against the UK's 25 percent cocoa solids. Two bars made to the two rulebooks are not comparable by their front-of-pack numbers. Worth remembering next time you bring one home from a trip.

Frequently asked questions

Is 100 percent chocolate real chocolate?

Yes in the everyday sense, though not quite in the legal one. A 100 percent bar is pure cocoa mass and cocoa butter with no sweetener at all. Schedule 1 defines chocolate as the product obtained from cocoa products and sugars, so a bar with no sugars sits just outside that description on paper. It tastes fiercely bitter because nothing balances the cocoa.

Why does white chocolate never show a percentage?

Because it contains no cocoa mass, so there are no cocoa solids to count. UK law defines it by a minimum of 20 percent cocoa butter and 14 percent dry milk solids. A percentage on the front would have nothing to measure.

Does a higher percentage always taste more bitter?

Not always. The figure counts cocoa butter alongside cocoa mass, and cocoa butter is mild. A bar built with more butter and less mass reaches the same percentage while tasting softer. Bean origin and roast move the flavour too.

Cocoa percentage and sugar content are two separate lines on the same pack. Our breakdown of sugar in milk, dark and white bars covers the line most people are actually hunting for, and the guide to maltitol explains the sweetener doing the work in ours.

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