How Real Is Chocolate In Local Stores?

2024 Author: Jasmine Walkman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 08:29

Everyone loves to eat delicious food and to be pampered with various sweet temptations. One of the favorite treats is the chocolate, and quite naturally in its production there are certain standards that all manufacturers are obliged to comply with.

Here you can find great variety of different chocolates in terms of brands and types, but until recently no more detailed ones have been made quality studies or safety.

Recently, however, a study was done that radically changed this, looking at the ingredients of the chocolate products offered in Bulgaria.

The species chocolate in local stores are really many, and in the production process different ingredients are used, such as milk, cocoa mass or powder, sugar, cocoa butter. These are all different raw materials that can be stored conveniently, but also transported and traded, including.

An interesting fact is that cocoa butter and powder are made from "chocolate liqueur". It, in turn, is made from the beans of the cocoa tree, which are roasted. In the original chocolate recipes of the leading brands with a proven standard in production, chocolate is made from this liqueur, not from cocoa butter or powder.

Considering the raw materials used in the production of chocolates, we can distinguish 4 different groups in these sweet products:

- Milk chocolate - it uses not only cocoa butter and powder, but also milk or cream powder and condensate are added to the raw materials of the process. It also contains various milk fats;

- Dark chocolate - in the USA the standards are that it must contain at least 70% cocoa mass, and no milk or sugar is added during its production. However, it is not included in the study, namely because there are still no uniform national or European product quality standards;

- "bitter" / raw chocolate (also called unsweetened) - this is a variety of dark chocolate, which lacks sugar in content and the total cocoa mass is more than 70%. It is this type of chocolate that is closest to the content of the original products, in which chocolate liqueur is used in the production;

- White chocolate - it is assigned to the category of low quality products, because in its production process no cocoa powder is used, only butter.

After the study, it was found that only 2 of the 27 chocolates meet certain European Union standards for these products and have in their content cocoa mass more than 35%, as it should be with quality products. The sweet temptations that have successfully passed the study are Ritter Sport - Fine milk chocolate and Ritter Sport - Cocoa selection. These are chocolates from the German manufacturer Alfred Ritter GmbH. In the other 25 studied brands the cocoa mass content was below normal, namely in the range of 25-35%, which is the requirement for milk chocolates.

What are the European criteria for quality chocolate?

- The product must contain at least 35% cocoa mass (butter or powder);

- In dairy products this figure is lower, namely in them the content of cocoa mass should not be less than 25% and 20% in certain species;

- The vegetable fats used in the production process in these chocolate products cannot be more than 5%, as is the case with palm oil.

Conclusions about the quality of chocolate in our country

The investigation revealed that there was not a single brand that fully complied with the criteria for chocolate from the European Union, which is produced according to the original recipe, namely with chocolate liqueur. In dairy products, the content was again below the norm. The conclusions are made that very often with the brands and types of chocolate that are sold in our country, an increased sugar content is used, namely over 50%, which, in turn, carries a serious health risk. In addition, as many as 17 of the 27 studied were found to use atypical ingredients, including palm oil and the additive E476 - polyglycerol polyricinoleate. Along with this, it was found that in a large part of chocolate labels are written with vague and illegible information about the end user of the product.

From the goals 27 examined chocolates only one of the brands specified the country of origin, with 7 using vegetable fat, mainly palm oil. In addition, E476 (polyglycerol polyricinoleate) is a commonly used additive in almost 1/3 of manufacturers, and one of the chocolates was found to contain E492 (sorbitan tristearate).

There is also a high risk of an allergic reaction in some consumers, because 4 of the brands used hazelnut paste, and this was not mentioned in any way in the name of the product. In 6 of the species lactose was used in the production. At the same time, unfortunately, no specific brand has described the specific content of palm oil, and according to the criteria of the European Union, this amount should not exceed 5% in chocolate products.

The authors of the analysis Active users are of the opinion that mislead consumersas they are attracted to buy the product with the attractive and attractive design. On the other hand, the back is full of vague and illegible information, which is also incomprehensible to the average customer.

It has been found that the carbohydrate content is quite high, mainly sugar. In 22 of the brands in the study it was found that it is 50%, and even in 4 of them the amount of sugar exceeds the already dangerous for health 60%.

Only 5 out of 27 chocolates in the study found that the amount of sugar was below 50%. The study found that only Ritter Sport chocolate - Cocoa selection contains less sugar in its composition than the total cocoa mass.

Recommendations for consumers when choosing chocolate

The advice for the end user is to bet on the products where the labels are written legibly. In this way, they will be able to orient themselves in the content of the cocoa mass in the specific chocolate product. Accordingly, the higher its content, the higher the quality of the chocolate. In the content of these sweet temptations all components are superfluous except cocoa butter, cocoa powder, sugar, milk / cream powder.

Of course, this does not include ingredients such as nuts, raisins, caramel and others, which are rather the customer's personal choice whether to be present in the chocolate they buy. It is also important to orient yourself to the purchase of chocolate, which has a lower carbohydrate content, namely around and below 35%.

Our country has already received 10 official warnings that various products are offered for sale in retail chains, which are not properly categorized according to European Union standards, given the ingredients in them. The last such warning was received in March last year, but there is no official information on how exactly the BFSA reacted to this and what measures it took against these official warnings.