What Do Cacao Percentage in Dark Chocolate Really Mean?
Dark chocolate is loaded with nutrients that benefit and positively affect your health. A 100 g bar of dark chocolate with 70%- 85% cocoa contain:
11 g of fiber
67% of the RDA for Iron
58% of the RDA for Magnesium
89% of the RDA for Copper
98% of the RDA for Manganese
And plenty of Potassium, Phosphorus, zinc, and Selenium
Additionally, dark chocolate has a variety of powerful antioxidants, way more than other food, and can improve blood flow and lower blood pressure in the body to the bioactive compounds such flavanols, which serve as protector for skin against sun-induced damage.
knowing all of these health benefits of dark chocolate, it is good to know what does cacao percentage on the label means.
Is it always the case that 80% cacao dark chocolate is more tense and bitter than 70%? Well, it is not always the case!
And is it always the higher percentage of cacao means more healthy?
Also, sometimes but not always!
The truth about what "%cacao" means is nuanced. Here is why.
the "%cacao" number that you see refers to the total percentage of ingredients by weight that come from cacao bean. In other words, total percentage of the cocoa and the cocoa butter.
First there are 3 terms you should know about:
1- Chocolate liquor: the viscous liquid resulted from grinding down cacao nibs. It contains both cocoa and cocoa butter.
2- Cocoa butter: the fat that is in cocoa bean.It gives the chocolate mouthfeel that most people expect.
3-Cocoa powder: is what you get when you press most of the cocoa butter out of the nibs and grind the rest to a powder.
It is the cocoa powder that gives you its "chocolatey" taste, and it is the cocoa that has all the nutrients and health benefits. Cocoa butter does has no health benefits associated to it. All the flavonoids-related health benefits come from cocoa.
So as an example lets take a 70% cocoa dark chocolate bar and assume it composed of only cacao and sugar. Here what we have in it:
1- 30% sugar
2- 70% cacao, and we will assume that break down between cocoa and cocoa butter is 50-50
But what happens when chocolate makers add more cocoa butter to mix in order to make the chocolate smother?
Two things will happen:
1- The overall percentage of your cacao is going up
2- As the percentage in the overall mix, the amount of cocoa ( the dark, chocolaty, healthy stuff) is going down
Reading the ingredients list on a chocolate bar package does not give you exactly whether extra cocoa butter has been added or not, so it is almost impossible to know the percentage of cacao in the front bar.
Credits: Jeff Goodman, Vice president of sales at Genweb2, San Francisco Bay Area
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