quote:
Originally posted by gap
…
As we all know, the cocoa butter % often gets altered by the mfter. My question is, can you use the Fat % on the nutritional information panel of the chocolate bar to estimate the cocoa butter % of the product?
Eg., if I have a 70% chocolate bar with a 40% fat content, is it possible to say that the bar has 40% cocoa butter and, therefore, 30% cocoa solids? …
Yes. The only exceptions would be milk chocolate, which contains some milkfat (dry powdered milk is around 25% milkfat) and vegelate or other “doctored” chocolates. Some manufacturers add milkfat to “dark” chocolate – a strange grey area since by the fact that milk chocolate contains it as well, an argument could be made that this was simply a very dark milk chocolate, and therefore possibly a “fine” chocolate. IMHO the addition of milk fat is one of the more acceptable additives, marginally similar to soya lecithin although much more in a grey area, but nonetheless, the use of an additive like this makes me question the manufacturer’s commitment to quality.
All of these cases are, however, obvious on the label so you know when there’s no guesswork involved.
Alex Rast
Alex_Rast_Alternate@hushmail.com