9

Chocolate doesn't have caffeine according to this Snopes thread. Wikipedia stated that chocolate has it:

[Cocoa solids] also contain alkaloids such as theobromine, phenethylamine and caffeine.

Does a 30g (1 oz.) chocolate bar have a significant amount of caffeine, e.g. as much as an 23cl (8 oz.) cup of coffee?

Improve this question
6
  • I note that Wikipedia doesn't claim that chocolate has that much caffeine.
    – Oddthinking ♦
    Commented Jul 20, 2014 at 4:46
  • 4
    Your "e.g. as much as an 8 oz. cup of coffee?" is a ridiculously high level to put "significant" at. I think anyone who has consumed both chocolate and coffee can tell you that a 1oz chocolate bar contains nothing like the amount of caffeine in an 8oz cup of coffee.
    – David Richerby
    Commented Jul 20, 2014 at 9:25
  • 4
    Use metric units, people, especially when they are misleading like in this case
    – Sklivvz
    Commented Jul 20, 2014 at 13:20
  • @David Richerby: yours is a bit of non sequitur... even if one could accurately measure levels of caffeine by eating something (which is debatable, depends on your sensitivity to caffeine), I don't see how that would affect the fact that an arbitrarily chosen level of caffeine is "significant" or not. To be honest, the "content of a cup of coffee" seems like a reasonable thing to use when comparing caffein levels, although the type of coffee should also be specified as caffein content varies.
    – nico
    Commented Jul 20, 2014 at 14:30
  • 1
    @nico "Significant" normally means "noticeable" or at least "more than trace amounts". In contrast, a cup of coffee is about the most caffeinated thing I can think of in which the caffeine is naturally present, rather than added as an ingredient. It's like asking, "Can domestic cats run at significant speeds, e.g., as fast as a cheetah."
    – David Richerby
    Commented Jul 20, 2014 at 16:17

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
16

Depends on the type of chocolate.

According to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), a bar of dark chocolate (i.e. 162 grams, or about 6 oz) contains almost as much caffeine as a cup of coffee (resp. 70mg v.s. 95mg).

So yes, chocolate does contain a significant amount of caffeine (but just not as much as coffee. You are more likely to ingest more caffeine by drinking coffee, simply because you drink more cups of coffee than you eat chocolate bars.)

Notice that this holds only for dark chocolate; white chocolate does not contain caffeine.

EDIT: Notice how, if you click "full report" it lists theobromine separately. Coffee does not contain theobromine, chocolate does (about 10x the amount of caffeine it contains).

Sources:

Improve this answer
13
  • Those mind-reading bots strike again ;) +1 - Good answer.
    – Jiminy Cricket.
    Commented Jul 20, 2014 at 0:32
  • Note: This is referring to a much larger-sized chocolate "bar" than the OP. It also doesn't address the substance of the claim in the page referenced by Snopes, that even some references are wrong, and that direct experiments show it is not the case.
    – Oddthinking ♦
    Commented Jul 20, 2014 at 5:04
  • 1
    The articles Jori links to look much more serious than the link in the Snopes forum. This article from the Journal of Food Science says that analysis shows chocolate does contain some caffeine, although much less than theobromine.
    – Mr Lister
    Commented Jul 20, 2014 at 6:52
  • 1
    @DavidRicherby Significant here means that you are likely to notice the effects if you eat a reasonable amount of chocolate, not 1 oz, (where I live these bars don't even exist lol) most bars are 200 grams here, so they will contain 86mg of caffeine, about a cup of coffee, or a liter of cola.
    – Jori
    Commented Jul 20, 2014 at 10:02
  • 1
    White chocolate is not chocolate in the sense that cocoa solids are not an ingredient (only cocoa butter). The caffeine is derived exclusively from the cocoa solids, and different kinds of chocolate have different proportions of this ingredient. (Unsweetened and dark chocolate having the highest.)
    – Jacob Budin
    Commented Jul 20, 2014 at 14:47

You must log in to answer this question.