Notes on chocolate: What next if the sugar tax is put on chocolate?

Chocolate can’t legally be called chocolate unless it consists of cocoa solids and sugar (100% cocoa bars are sometimes called chocolate but, strictly speaking, should be called simply 100% cocoa). It’s the addition of sugar which makes it chocolate.

In April 2018 the sugar tax was levied on soft drinks; this resulted in more diet drinks appearing on our shelves and anyway, as a chocolate insider told me, ‘You can just add more water to soft drinks.’ You can’t do that to chocolate, which is a concern given that there’s talk of the sugar tax extending to chocolate.

In readiness for this some chocolate manufacturers have launched ‘less sugar’ bars by adding either sugar substitutes or simply air. The issue with some of the former is that they can really upset your gut as I know to my cost after snaffling a bar of chocolate containing maltitol (a sugar substitute).

Public Health England wants no more than 43.7g of sugar per 100g in chocolate by next year. The majority of half-decent chocolate manages this already. However, when you start to get a low cocoa-content chocolate bar (the sort you’ll see in your local newsagent), say at 20% cocoa solids (the minimum cocoa solids allowed in the UK for it still to be called milk chocolate), you can see how the lack of cocoa bean has to be made up for elsewhere.

Over the next few weeks I’ll be looking out for better alternatives, nay better chocolate bars to those low-cocoa, high-sugar offerings.