Want to make chocolate healthier? This is what really counts

Jennifer Bowden

Nutrition writer·New Zealand Listener·

11 Feb, 2026 05:08 PM4 mins to read

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If manufacturers remove sugar from chocolate, they typically replace it with fat or carbohydrate-rich ingredients. Photo / Getty Images

I was intrigued to learn in a documentary about making chocolate that even if the amount of sugar included were halved, it would not reduce the calories in the product. How come? This really puzzles me.

Answer:

Nutrition has a long history of breaking hearts. Just when we
think we’ve cracked the code – eat less of this and more of that – along comes a well-meaning expert to tell us we’ve misunderstood it all. So, yes, it’s disconcerting to hear that halving the sugar in chocolate doesn’t actually halve the energy (calorie) content. But food science doesn’t always obey the neat mathematical logic we expect.

A classic chocolate bar is a mix of cocoa solids, cocoa butter (the natural fat from the cacao bean), sugar and, in milk chocolate, milk solids. Sugar adds about 17 kilojoules of energy per gram, whereas the fat in cocoa butter adds a much higher 37kJ per gram. In other words, gram for gram, fat contributes more than twice as much energy as sugar.

If manufacturers remove sugar from chocolate, they typically replace it with fat or carbohydrate-rich ingredients to maintain the texture and flavour people expect. Thus, the overall energy density – the number of kilojoules per 100g – can remain very similar because one energy source is simply swapped for another.

This is not unique to chocolate. We saw similar in the 1980s and 90s with the low-fat trend. Foods that once delivered mouthfeel from fat were stripped of it and had sugar added to keep them palatable. The resulting processed foods, including salad dressings, flavoured yoghurts, breakfast cereals and snack foods such as crackers and baked chips, ended up with just as many, or more, kilojoules as their full-fat counterparts.

In subsequent decades, we discovered our intake of “hidden” sugars had ballooned, contributing to a range of health problems. So, reducing a single macronutrient without considering the food structure and overall energy content often leads to unexpected trade-offs and potentially negative health effects.

Still, sugar aside, both cocoa and chocolate contain flavonoids – plant compounds with antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects that can help blood vessels relax and widen. In laboratory and small human studies, cocoa flavanols have been shown to improve blood vessel function and modestly lower blood pressure, and they may influence how the body handles glucose and fats. At a population level, observational studies have found people who eat moderate amounts of chocolate tend to have lower rates of cardiovascular disease, stroke and diabetes.

However, it’s important not to overinterpret these findings. Most of the strongest clinical trial evidence relates to high-flavanol cocoa, often in dark, minimally processed forms rather than the sugar-rich, highly processed chocolate most of us eat. And although a higher chocolate intake is consistently associated with lower cardiovascular risk, these studies cannot fully rule out other lifestyle factors (such as overall diet quality or socio-economic status) that may also contribute to the apparent benefit.

So what’s the take-home message? Halving the sugar in chocolate sounds great in theory, but it wouldn’t necessarily reduce the total energy of the chocolate bar because manufacturers are likely to add more fat or other ingredients to maintain flavour and texture.

The good news is there’s no solid evidence to suggest chocolate needs to be avoided by people concerned about health; it just shouldn’t be mistaken for a health food, either. Chocolate is still typically high in sugar and energy and best enjoyed in moderation.

If you want to enjoy chocolate in a healthier way, aim for the darkest chocolate you can find and avoid white, milk, or filled varieties. Choosing dark chocolate instead of other high-fat or sugary treats such as ice cream or lollies can let you enjoy its flavour and potential benefits while keeping added sugar and energy in check.

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