Does Chocolate Have Caffeine?

Are you wondering does chocolate have caffeine? Chocolate is made from Cocoa Beans, and does not contain much caffeine. The cocoa bean contains between 0.1% and 0.7% caffeine, and the most common amount found in chocolate is 0.2%. However, chocolate has enough to cause concern to people with heart disease or other ailments. Doctors recommend that some people who are not in good health not eat foods containing caffeine.

Dark chocolate contains more Cocoa than Milk or White Chocolate, so it contains more caffeine. Many manufacturers of dark chocolate have begun labeling their products with the actual percentage that comes from the cocoa bean. Since dark chocolate contains more, it’s usually made into smaller pieces so that the consumer is not eating large amounts of it at one time.

Milk Chocolate contains trace amounts and not near as much as in dark chocolate. 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% from the cocoa bean. Averaged out, we can calculate that one pound of milk chocolate contains 145 milligrams of caffeine. This is approximately the same amount of caffeine as in one cup of coffee.

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 this is all that is left and there is no caffeine in milk, sugar or vanilla, for all practical purposes, caffeine is not present in white chocolate.