Chocolate Bars
Dragees
Cakes & Muffins
Sweets & Gummies
Cookies
Dessert Sauces
Chocolate Gift Boxes
Wafers
Spreads
Muesli Bars
Hampers
Sales & Promotions
Inulin is a dietary fiber taken from chicory root. Your body cannot break it down, so it reaches the large intestine intact. In chocolate it adds fiber to the label and gives the bar body where sugar used to sit.
Ours, if you would rather read it on a real ingredients list:
What is inulin made from?
Chicory root, in almost every case. Chicory stores its energy as inulin the way a potato stores it as starch, and the fiber is drawn out of the root with hot water. The chains are built from fructose units, which is why inulin is classed as a fructan rather than a starch or a sugar.
The British and EU claim registers define native chicory inulin as a mixture with a mean degree of polymerization of 9 or more, meaning an average of at least nine linked units per chain.
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, and it brings fiber along.
Food scientists have measured what that swap does. A study in the International Journal of Food Science and Technology tested inulin as a sucrose replacer in dark chocolate and found that raising the inulin share increased viscosity and hardness, while melting behavior barely moved. In plain terms: the bar sets firmer and still melts on the tongue like chocolate should.
In our bars inulin takes a back seat. The bulk sweetener is maltitol, and inulin sits behind it adding fiber 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.
For the other half of the picture, we have a full explainer on what maltitol is and how it sweetens.
How much fiber is in a no added sugar chocolate bar?
Enough to show up clearly on the panel. Our Dark Chocolate with Orange declares 8 g of fiber per 100 g and the Milk Chocolate Bubble Bar declares 5.3 g per 100 g.
Not all of that fiber is inulin. Cocoa carries fiber of its own, and in a dark bar it carries most of it.
A Nutrition Facts panel works per serving, so do the arithmetic. The dark bar's serving is 25 g, which puts 2 g of fiber in a serving, or 7 percent of the 28 g Daily Value the FDA sets for dietary fiber. The bubble bar's 30 g serving works out at 1.6 g, or about 6 percent.
A chocolate bar is not going to carry your whole day of fiber. It is simply a bar that brings some along with it.
Both bars are no added sugar rather than sugar free, and they contain naturally occurring sugars: 2 g per 100 g in the dark bar, from the cocoa and the dried orange, and 9.8 g per 100 g in the bubble bar, from the milk. Nothing sweet is added on top. Neither is a low calorie food. See the nutrition information for sugar and calorie content.
Does inulin count as fiber on a US label?
Yes, by way of an FDA guidance document rather than a regulation. When the FDA rewrote the Nutrition Facts label it narrowed what may be declared as dietary fiber to carbohydrates with a demonstrated physiological benefit. That left several common ingredients in limbo, inulin among them.
On June 14, 2018 the agency published guidance naming eight non-digestible carbohydrates it had reviewed:
mixed plant cell wall fibers (a broad category that includes fibers like sugar cane fiber and apple fiber, among many others), arabinoxylan, alginate, inulin and inulin-type fructans, high amylose starch (resistant starch 2), galactooligosaccharide, polydextrose, and resistant maltodextrin/dextrin
From the FDA constituent update of June 14, 2018. The agency said it intends to add these to the regulatory definition and will exercise enforcement discretion in the meantime.
So inulin counts in the Dietary Fiber line on a US pack. The rulemaking that would make that permanent has not finished.
Is inulin a sugar or a sweetener?
Neither. Inulin is built from fructose units, so it is related to sugar by chemistry, but the chains pass through the small intestine undigested and the Total Sugars line does not count them. Its contribution lands in the Dietary Fiber figure instead.
It is also a different thing from a polyol. Maltitol, sorbitol and isomalt are sugar alcohols, and they get their own treatment on a nutrition panel. Our guide to sugar alcohols covers that family properly.
Because both of these bars run above 10 percent polyols, 44 g per 100 g in the dark bar and 40 g in the bubble bar, the packs carry the line excessive consumption may produce laxative effects. Polyols are absorbed slowly, which is the whole point of them, and a couple of squares at a time is how the bar is meant to be enjoyed.
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 fiber built from chains of fructose units, and your body cannot break those chains down. Because it is not digested, it is not counted in the Total Sugars line on a Nutrition Facts panel. Its contribution shows up in the Dietary Fiber figure.
Does inulin count toward my daily fiber?
Yes. Inulin is declared as dietary fiber and counts toward the 28 g Daily Value the FDA uses on the Nutrition Facts label. A 25 g serving of our Dark Chocolate with Orange carries 2 g of fiber in total, from the inulin and the cocoa together, which is 7 percent of a day.
Why does one Diablo pack list inulin on its own and another inside a bracket?
Both name the same ingredient. On the Milk Chocolate Bubble Bar it sits inside the chocolate's own bracket. 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.