WHAT DOES THE % OF COCOA IN CHOCOLATE PRODUCTS SAY?

Most of the chocolates sold on the market have a cocoa % on the packaging, not everyone understands what this number says.

Simply put, the % of cocoa on the packaging describes how much of the chocolate product comes from the cacao tree, which is calculated as the sum of the amount of crushed cocoa beans and cocoa butter added.

What are ground cocoa beans?

What is Cocoa Butter?

Crushed cocoa beans, also known as cocoa paste or cocoa blocks, are cocoa beans after being fermented, dried, roasted, blown out of the shell, leaving only the kernels and crushed by these kernels.

Cocoa butter is a natural fat inherent in cocoa beans. People squeeze cocoa butter from cocoa beans and then add it to ground cocoa beans and some other ingredients to make chocolate. Without cocoa butter, the chocolate product wouldn’t have the melting softness you might see.

However, this figure will not tell us specifically how much % of cocoa paste and how much % of cocoa butter accounts for.

For example, 2 chocolate products are labeled as containing 70% cocoa, but these 2 products can differ significantly. A product that can contain 70% cocoa paste and does not contain cocoa butter, this product will have a strong taste and high consistency when melted. Meanwhile, the other product may contain 50% cocoa paste and 20% cocoa butter, which will have a much milder and liquid flavor when melted.

Consumers are now quite interested in the % of cocoa on the product packaging, this is understandable because the common thinking is that the larger the % of cocoa, the more cocoa the product contains, and the more cocoa the product contains, the higher the quality. However, this is not true at all.

The percentage of cocoa on the packaging can give us a relative idea of how sweet or bitter the product is, but it won’t say anything about the taste or quality of the product. A 75% cocoa chocolate bar can absolutely be far inferior in quality and taste to a 60% cocoa chocolate bar.

So if the percentage of cocoa is not an indicator to choose good chocolate, where should customers rely on it?

The answer is: rely on your own taste buds. That’s the most accurate thing.