Vegan chocolate

Two of the latest (and perhaps long lasting) trends in the chocolate,- and even generally in the food industry are raw and vegan chocolate. In this blog I try to give some overview of vegan chocolate. Chocolate, or its origin, the cocoa bean comes from a plant, making it vegan in the first place. However in the process of going from the tree through the refinery, all the way to the end consumer, a variety of ingredients are added, such as for instance sugar and milk. A good quality chocolate, generally speaking has a higher chocolate content, pure ingredients, and no additives. The ingredients will be simple: cocoa, cocoa butter, sugar, and occasionally lecithin, or as a taste refiner a certain amount of vanilla.

Quite often in literature we find that dark chocolate is put forward as recommendations for people looking for vegan chocolate. But we must remember that many dark chocolates (dark chocolate being a chocolate with a lesser amount of milk in it than say milk chocolate) also can contain milk. Ideally any trully dark chocolate should contain only the following: cocoa butter, cocoa powder, vanilla and perhaps lecithine. In Europe for instance if any chocolate producer wants to sell their chocolate as dark chocolate, the chocolate needs to have a minimum of 43% cocoa. In the US the required minimum is 35%.

It is remarkable that many supermarket chains and discounters are also offering vegan chocolate by now. Consumers however should keep in mind that vegan chocolate is not necessarily “more healthy” than non vegan. Vegan chocolate for example might still contain a high percantage of sugar. Sometimes you might see a ‘may contain milk’ warning, which can be confusing. This is simply due to the fact that the product is actually being made on the same line as dairy products. The fact is that vegan chocolate is becoming an increasingly global trend and recently Dubai based brands Caho chocolate and Mirzam Chocolate also started to offer their own vegan chocolate bars.