People often ask us, “Is it true chocolate has caffeine in it?” Or, if they’ve read a bit about it they ask, “how much caffeine is in chocolate?” For the record, chocolate does contains small amounts of caffeine. Chocolate also contains another closely related substance called theobromine in much larger levels. It’s the presence of these two substances that has been the cause of so much confusion among chocolate lovers.

Caffeine Molecule

First let’s get the techno-babble out of the way. Caffeine is a xanthine alkaloid substance that is found in the leaves, fruits and nuts of many different plants. That includes coffee, guarana, tea, yerba mate, and over 60 other plants spanning the globe. One of these plants is the cocoa tree.

Caffeine is found in the seeds of the Cocoa tree’s fruit. These seeds are called cocoa beans. It is from these beans that we make chocolate. Cocoa beans are similar in size and shape to almonds, and they grow inside a fruit called a cocoa pods. The hard cocoa pod is about the size of a small Nerf football. It grows off the branches and trunk of the cocoa tree and typically contains between thirty to forty beans.

Protecting the Seeds

The cocoa tree depends on wild animals to spread and plant its seeds. The cocoa pod that surrounds the cocoa beans is tough and is not easily broken in the wild. (When cocoa farmers break them open, they often use machetes or a heavy stick) So how do the pods break in the wild? Nature, of course, provided an answer — the cocoa beans are surrounded by a delicious, sweet, white pulp. (It actually tastes very much like a light lemonade) Not only do cocoa farmers love to eat the pulp on a hot day underneath the tropical sun, the wildlife do as well. Rats, monkeys and other animals break, chew, and find all variety of ways to open the cocoa pods to eat this delicious treat.

A cocoa pod after wildlife
have removed the cocoa beans.

Depending upon wildlife to open the tough pods causes its own set of problems — how do you keep the animals from eating the cocoa beans? Nature provided an answer to this as well. First, the cocoa beans are covered with a tough, fibrous husk. In addition the cocoa bean contains all sorts of thing to deter animals from eating them. One of the primary substances are tannins. When eaten fresh, these tannins cause the cocoa beans to taste very astringent. The wildlife will eat the sweet, delicious pulp on the outside of the cocoa beans and spit the astringent cocoa beans onto the jungle floor. There these cocoa beans just might find the right conditions to grow.

The tannins are not the only weapons in the cocoa tree’s arsenal. The cocoa trees also load up the cocoa beans with theobromine as well as caffeine. While we may consider both of these mild stimulants, to insects and wildlife they can be toxic. (Theobromine is what is responsible for making dogs sick when they eat chocolate.)

It is all in the Bean

Each cocoa bean contains between 0.1% and 0.7% caffeine (0.2% is the most common amount) Caffeine is also present in lesser amounts in the husk that surrounds the cocoa beans. (usually from .05% to 0.3%) By way of comparison, dry tea leaves contain approximately 3% caffeine. Dry coffee beans are about 1.2% caffeine.

A Handful of cocoa nibs
ready to be made into chocolate

During chocolate making the fibrous husk that surrounds each bean is removed. The husk is removed through a process of breaking the bean into pieces, separating the husk from the bean, and then winnowing away the husk from the heavier nibs with vacuums or high-pressure fans. (See our article on winnowing for more information) The pieces of bean left after winnowing are called cocoa nibs. These nibs are often ground up and called cocoa liquor. These nibs that contain the caffeine found in chocolate. The more nibs (or liquor) used to make a piece of chocolate, the more caffeine it will contain.

Cocoa nibs contain about 54% fat. This is akin to how peanuts contain peanut oil. The fat of the cocoa nibs is called cocoa butter but contains no caffeine. The plant material (i.e. the solid non-fat) part of the cocoa nibs are called cocoa solids. This is where the caffeine is found. Dark chocolate is called dark simply because it contains a greater percentage of cocoa solids than milk or white chocolate.

Dark Chocolate

Since dark chocolate contains a greater percentage of cocoa solids than does milk chocolate or white chocolate it will contain more caffeine as well. Dark chocolate typically contains cocoa nibs, sugar, cocoa butter, and sometimes vanilla, salt, or lecithin. Dark chocolate is made with varying percentages of cocoa bean. Chocolate is often labeled either as semi-sweet or bittersweet, terms that are not well defined, though semi-sweet is typically sweeter than bittersweet.

Because these terms are fairly nebulous many manufacturers label their chocolate with the actual percentage that comes from the cocoa bean. This doesn’t really clarify the confusion though. That’s because cocoa butter is typically counted as part of the percentage and different manufacturers use more or less cocoa butter than others.

For the sake of argument (and to make our calculations simple), let’s assume that the chocolate manufacturers use 10% added cocoa butter. We can then calculate the approximate amount of caffeine in one pound of dark chocolate as follows:

We should note that almost nobody eats a whole pound of chocolate — especially dark chocolate — in one sitting. Typically the darker the chocolate the less people eat. (You become satisfied much quicker with dark chocolate) This makes it difficult to relate the percentage (how dark the chocolate is) with how much people really tend to eat.

In general, a dark chocolate bar is eaten in small pieces, not all at once. Most manufacturers of quality dark chocolate mold the chocolate with deep scores, the intent being that the chocolate be eaten in small bite-size pieces and savored. For example, our two ounce (56 gram) chocolate bars are scored into 15 pieces of equal size (.113 ounce / 3.2 grams) — the perfect size for slowly savoring one piece at a time. We expect that a chocolate bar will last far beyond a single sitting, generally several days to a week.

In the end, there is a moderate amount of caffeine in dark chocolate although not nearly as much as in coffee. It would not be typical for someone to consume enough dark chocolate in a single sitting to equal the amount of caffeine found in a cup of coffee. The amount of caffeine actually consumed will, of course, depend on the person, the darkness of the chocolate, and the number of tasting squares the chocolate is divided into.

Milk Chocolate

Milk chocolate does contain trace amounts of caffeine. It does not have nearly as much as dark chocolate. It is hard to quantify how much caffeine is in milk chocolate because each manufacturer has its own recipe, and the percentage of chocolate that comes from the cocoa bean varies widely from manufacturer to manufacturer. According to one study that examined the recipes used by milk chocolate manufacturers, milk chocolate was found to contain as little as 8.5% or as much as 40% content from the cocoa bean. (The rest being cocoa butter, milk, sugar, and sometimes, vanilla, soy lecithin and salt). A typical recipe for milk chocolate uses only about 16% cocoa nibs.

If we use this as an average amount, we can calculate that one pound of milk chocolate contains 145 milligrams of caffeine. (One prominent chocolate company in the United States reports that its chocolate contains approximately 100mg of caffeine per pound of chocolate.) This is approximately the same amount of caffeine as is in one cup of coffee.

Is this a lot of caffeine? Not too many people can eat a whole pound of milk chocolate in a single sitting. If they do, then they are also eating close to a half a pound of sugar. The large amount of sugar will more than likely cause much more of a “buzz” than will the naturally occurring caffeine.

White Chocolate

White chocolate is made from cocoa butter, milk, and sugar. Sometimes a little vanilla is added to round out the flavor. Almost all white chocolate uses deodorized cocoa butter as its main ingredient. This means that the solid portions of the cocoa bean have been removed through filtering and exposing the melted cocoa butter to hot steam. All that remains is the naturally occurring fat from the cocoa bean (cocoa butter). Since there is no caffeine in milk, sugar or vanilla, then for all practical purposes, caffeine is not found in white chocolate.

Conclusion

So does chocolate contain caffeine? The answer is yes. Does chocolate contain a lot of caffeine? No.

Chocolate has been found to contain enough caffeine to be of concern to people with heart or other ailments. For this reason, some doctors will recommend that some people who are not in good health not eat foods that contain caffeine.

Doctors will of course recommend that people reduce or eliminate other foods from their diets if those foods are not healthful. A prime example is salt, which can cause severe problems for people with high blood pressure. If consumed in large enough quantities, salt is also capable of killing a perfectly healthy individual. And while salt can kill when consumed in large enough quantities, salt is also necessary for life.

Preliminary studies on coffee suggest that it may have some health benefits to people who suffer from Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease, heart disease, and diabetes, among others. Some of these studies indicate that part of these health benefits are due to the caffeine naturally present in coffee. Whether this holds for chocolate as well has yet to be investigated, though it would be natural for some of these affects to carry over.

So should the caffeine that is in chocolate be a concern? It probably should be if you are not healthy. Otherwise, I doubt that the amount of caffeine in chocolate is enough to affect most people unless enormous amounts of chocolate are consumed. The fact that chocolate contains caffeine is simply one of those interesting curiosities that surround what is in a lot of our food. When food is eaten in moderation it can be enormously pleasurable, and one of the most pleasurable foods to be found anywhere is chocolate.

References:

Food / Beverage Caffeine Table Data from EnergyFiend.com
Industrial Chocolate: Manufacture and Use, Third Edition. S.T. Beckett Editor.
Chocolate Production and Use. L. Russell Cook
Chocolate, Cocoa, and Confectionary: Science and Technology, Third Edition. Bernard W. Minifie
Cocoa; C.J.J. Van Hall
Cocoa and Chocolate: Their History from Plantation to Consumer; A.W. Knapp

Comparisons

For comparison purposes, a chart containing the amount of caffeine in various beverages is included below.