7 Mistakes Everyone Makes When Buying Chocolate

Like any specialty commodity, chocolate operates within an extremely complex chain of growing, harvesting, shipping, making, and consuming. A sudden craving can quickly turn into a nightmare of decoding advertising jargon, complicated labels, and ethical concerns — not to mention the decision fatigue that comes from facing rows of sleek, stylish packaging at the grocery store. Cacao is primarily grown in the global South and is facing increasingly volatile growing conditions due to climate change, making it even more important to know a few things about where it comes from and how it's produced. 

The good news: A little education goes a long way. Knowing a handful of important things about how chocolate is grown, made, advertised, and sold can help you make confident choices that align with your wallet, taste preferences, and values. Whether you're a baker looking for the ideal chocolate for chocolate chip cookies or chocolate ganache, a religious observer of the singular post-dinner dark chocolate square, or a conscientious shopper interested in fair and sustainable sourcing, a basic understanding of chocolate's ingredients and labeling can make you a far more savvy consumer. 

As a former chocolatier for a bean-to-bar chocolate company (more on that below), and as a food systems researcher, I've learned that the chocolate industry follows the timeless philosophical truth: The more you know, the more you realize there is to learn. Here is a crash course on the seven most important things to keep in mind when buying chocolate, ranging from its ethical and sustainable concerns to its taste and quality.

The ingredient list on a good bar of chocolate should be refreshingly short, usually just two to four ingredients, not counting add-ins like nuts, fruit, or spices. Once you know what to look for, a chocolate label should be scannable in seconds. For high-quality, craft dark chocolate, you'll usually see just two ingredients: cacao and cane sugar. Sometimes there's cocoa butter too, which is added for a silkier texture. If it's a milk chocolate bar, you'll also find milk or milk solids listed. The presence of cocoa butter doesn't mean it's lower quality — some cacao varieties naturally contain less cocoa fat, and a skilled chocolatier will add more to achieve the right consistency.

Mass-produced chocolate, on the other hand, will have a longer ingredient list. You might see soy lecithin, vanilla, or even vegetable oils. Chocolate is a notoriously temperamental medium because its cocoa solids and fats separate easily, so lecithin is used as an emulsifier to keep everything stable. Though it's nearly flavorless, many small-batch makers skip lecithin for the sake of purity, but lecithin does make chocolate behave much more predictably, and it's often added to chocolate used for baking. Vanilla is dubious as it can enhance chocolate beautifully when used judiciously, but it can also disguise mediocre cacao. Be especially wary of vanillin, a synthetic substitute for real vanilla. Other red flags include corn syrup, PGPR, TBHQ, carrageenan, guar gum, xanthan gum, and citric acid, which are all signs you're dealing with a lower-quality, industrial product.

Simply put, cacao is a commodity with an extremely complex and costly supply chain. According to a report by Wells Fargo's Agri-Food Institute (via Reuters), cacao prices have more than doubled since 2024. Cacao is a resource-intensive crop that relies on heavy use of fertilizers and thrives only in specific equatorial climates. It's also highly sensitive to changing weather patterns, which are becoming more common across West Africa, where roughly 70% of the world's cacao is grown. The costs of agricultural inputs such as fertilizer and fuel have also risen, which translates into consumers paying more. Once harvested, cacao travels thousands of miles from farms in Ghana, the Ivory Coast, or Ecuador to processors and producers in Europe and North America, relying on costly fuel and transportation. 

The combination of climate stress and geopolitical instability has made cacao one of the most volatile commodities on the market, according to Time. For consumers, it means higher chocolate prices. For farmers, who often make less than a dollar a day, it exposes the inequities of a system that rarely rewards those at the beginning of the supply chain. The best chocolate companies are passionate about correcting this imbalance, and high prices shouldn't mean record profits on the company's behalf, but rather that the company is adhering to fair labor practices, paying farmers fairly, sourcing directly, and investing in sustainable farming practices. Chocolate Scorecard is a good resource for assessing company practices, though it generally only provides information for larger companies. 

So much of a chocolate's flavor depends on where it was grown. If you've heard of single-origin coffee — beans grown in one region, country, or estate — you can think of chocolate in the same terms. Many small-batch chocolatiers produce single-origin bars that are a fantastic expression of terroir and highlight how soil, sunlight, and even fermentation methods impact taste.

Most industrially produced chocolate in the U.S. comes from the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Dominican Republic, and Ecuador, but smaller craft companies feature single-origin bars from a variety of equatorial countries that have shockingly different flavor profiles. Getting to know a region's or a country's flavor profile is a fun and enlightening project that sharpens the palate while supporting companies that are passionate about transparent sourcing.

Some single-origin bars to keep an eye out for include those from Madagascar, Costa Rica, Peru, Venezuela, Brazil, and Colombia. Unlike the deep, dark richness of many standard bars that aim for that classic "chocolatey" flavor, you'll notice a marked difference in these bars if they're executed well, and it doesn't take a well-trained palate to notice the layering of citrus, red berries, tangy acidity, and spice. Most single-origin bars will cost you more, and they're usually best reserved to be eaten in their pure form instead of being used in baked goods or desserts. That said, their compelling complexity can work tremendously in some applications, like in pot de crème or chocolate mousse, where chocolate is playing the leading role. 

Some people who eat chocolate for its antioxidants and health benefits can have a reductive view of cacao percentage, assuming that darker is better. On the other hand, milk chocolate devotees often assume that dark chocolate will be bitter and harsh. Cacao percentage is all about balance — not just sweetness — and sugar also helps develop texture, offset acidity, and coax out other flavors. When bitter flavors are suppressed, others are highlighted, like a cacao's fruitier notes.

Most chocolatiers prefer a ratio of 70% cacao to 30% sugar. This is often considered the golden ratio because it's not too sweet and not too bitter, allowing the palate to pick up on the other interesting flavors in the chocolate. Too much cacao, and you might miss out on those tropical fruit notes, or the subtle molasses-vanilla in others. Too much sugar, and all the palate can register is sweetness.

Good chocolate, like good wine or coffee, is about harmony. If you naturally gravitate towards darker percentages, a chocolate with a bit more sugar is going to sing on the palate compared to the one-note bitterness of a bar with 85% cacao. If you tend to think of chocolate purely as candy, you might be surprised by how palatable and approachable a bar with a well-rounded amount of cacao can actually taste.

It probably doesn't need to be said that you should spend the most money on a chocolate that's going to be eaten in its pure form, or for a dessert where it's the star of the show. For other applications, like baking, where chocolate is a supporting ingredient, you can be more flexible. For a chocolate that's more forgiving in baking and cooking, look for chocolate with emulsifiers like lecithin (yes, it has a time and a place!). It's also useful to understand the difference between couverture and compound chocolate.

Couverture chocolate contains a high percentage of cocoa butter, which gives it a smooth, glossy finish and makes it ideal for molding and dipping. Couverture is mostly used for these purposes (like dipping truffles) and less so for baking, where its high cocoa butter percentage might not be ideal. Take note that if you're melting a couverture, it will need to be tempered, which is an intricate process where chocolate is heated to precise temperatures to achieve a specific crystal formation in order to produce chocolate with a beautiful sheen and satisfying snap. Tempering can be done without a tempering machine, but it's a process that requires a high amount of patience, troubleshooting, and time.

This is where compound chocolate, which is made with vegetable oils instead of cocoa butter, can be a better option for the home cook. Compound chocolate doesn't require tempering, and you can melt it at home and use it right away, like for making a chocolate drizzle or coating pretzels, nuts, or fruit. Many big chocolate companies rely on compound chocolate as it lasts longer, is cheaper, and is an easy alternative for the home cook compared to couverture.

The cacao industry has been embroiled in some of the most egregious child labor practices of any other commodity, not to mention some highly unsustainable farming practices. Cacao is an incredibly resource-demanding crop, and without proper practices, the environmental and ethical impact of cacao becomes untenable quickly.

In West Africa, where the majority of the world's cacao is produced, child labor is common, with many children working in dangerous conditions without proper protective equipment. One of the highest risk factors is pesticide exposure. In 2019, nearly 27% of child laborers in cocoa farming were exposed to dangerous pesticides, a significant increase from 10% in 2014, according to Chocolate Scorecard. Environmentally, cocoa farming has been a major cause of deforestation. Estimates from the International Wildlife Conservation report that around ⅓ of forest destruction in the Ivory Coast and Ghana is linked to cocoa cultivation, where natural rainforests are razed to plant more cacao trees.

If you have the means, spending more money upfront on responsibly produced cacao ultimately ensures the continuation of cacao cultivation into the future. The Chocolate Scorecard is a fantastic resource for assessing different companies' sustainability practices (though it mostly only provides information on large corporations), including factors such as child labor, deforestation, pesticide use, and transparency. Additionally, if you want to remain up-to-date on the cacao industry, the Institute for Cacao and Chocolate Research (ICCR) is a non-profit organization that encourages ethics, critical thinking, and sound research within the industry.

Because of the ethical and environmental issues that besiege the cacao industry, a slew of labels have been slapped onto chocolate that can either be clarifying or confusing. Some claims you'll see on chocolate include "bean to bar," "Fairtrade," "organic," and "sustainable."

"Bean to bar" is a term that indicates that a company controls the entire chocolate-making process, from sourcing cacao beans to producing the final product. Quality chocolate companies use the term to convey their commitment to fair, sustainable, and transparent practices. There's no official criteria for the term, however, and some large companies appropriate it without adhering to its traditional meaning.

"Fairtrade" signifies that a portion of the ingredients meet Fairtrade standards, which attempt to regulate fair wages and ethical practices. To be able to use the Fairtrade guarantee, only 20% of ingredients need to be certified (per Fairtrade International), and critics of Fairtrade note that, for farmers, it's a small fortune to buy into the certification. Direct trade, though not a regulated label, is a model where chocolate makers cut out the middleman by sourcing their cacao directly from farmers. Direct trade companies generally value paying farmers a fair wage and transparent relationships.

Organic is a label with rigorous bureaucratic requirements, and like Fairtrade, many small farmers lack the means to obtain official "organic" certification. Lastly, "sustainable" is a loose term with no standardized criteria. Without third-party verification, "sustainable" can be used vaguely, making it difficult for buyers to weigh the actual impact of what they're purchasing.