A leading consumer group has identified the ‘best’ milk chocolate available in supermarkets in France, in a study of the top ‘industrial’ bars on the shelves.
60 Millions de Consommateurs - the magazine published by the Institut national de la consommation - conducted an analysis of the recipes of more than 30 of the most popular chocolate bars sold in supermarkets.
The ‘best’ (i.e. the healthiest and purest) chocolate was found to be a dark chocolate bar, which is unsurprising, given that dark chocolate has higher cocoa content and fewer additional ingredients than other options.
Yet, one milk chocolate bar also stood out from the others, winning the highest score and the best ratings.
The winning barEpiceriecorner.co.uk
This was the:
Lait nature tendre et fondant Pérou milk chocolate bar from the Ethiquable brand.
It typically costs €2.29 per bar of 100g, depending on the supermarket.
The bar had a final score of 11 out of 20, a good mark for sweet, inherently ‘unhealthy’ food.
It is made with:
32% cocoa
Cane sugar
Whole milk powder
Cocoa butter
Cocoa mass
Vanilla extract.
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It was found to have lower fat content than the dark chocolate overall ‘winner’, because it contains less cocoa butter. Similarly, it stood out from other comparable bars in its category due to the absence of soy lecithin in its recipe.
Soy lecithin is a food additive found in most industrial milk chocolate, and is used to stabilise fat content. Ethiquable replaces this with sunflower lecithin.
The bar, whose brand is a play on words of the French terms ‘equitable’ (fair) and ‘ethique’ (ethical), has ingredients that the company says are sourced from small-scale, ethical farms and fair-trade producers in Peru. It is also made from 99.5% organic ingredients, the brand says.
Each person in France eats 13.2kg of chocolate per year on average.
As much as chocoholics might prefer artisanal, handcrafted options, the majority of chocolate eaten in France is ‘industrial’ chocolate that is made by large manufacturers and sold in supermarkets.
