Why Eat 100% Dark Chocolate?

Image by Bean To Bar World. Cacao, the seed of the cacao fruit is what we use to make chocolate. 100% chocolate is essentially these seeds ground up and refined into chocolate, with no other ingredients added.

Great question. I ask myself that question as well. Many people like to brag about the fact that they eat 100% dark chocolate (few people actually enjoy it). There is an unspoken badge of honour, especially among chocolate snobs, for saying you eat very high percentage dark chocolate. It’s like bragging you drink espresso with no sugar. I think this pride comes from the fact that 99% of the 100% chocolate bars on the market are awful bitter blocks of dark madness. And if you can swallow that, you’re some kind of champion. Or it could be that adding sugar to it is like making it more child’s play. Whatever the reason, many people like to eat 100% dark chocolate.

What is 100% dark chocolate?

Real dark chocolate is made by grinding up the nibs of the cocoa bean with some sugar. Often times extra cocoa butter is added (fat that was pressed from other cocoa beans), and usually that is it. 100% dark chocolate does not contain sugar and there is no need to add the extra cocoa butter. It is essentially just ground up cocoa beans that are refined (as all chocolate it is) into a smooth mass that is shaped into bars.

Does chocolate really need sugar?

"A treatise on the novelties and curiosities of coffee, tea and chocolate", c. 1671. A book that discusses the “three amigos” of imported dark drinks into Europe centuries ago. All water-based drinks from The East and The West.

It does. I used to the example of espresso above without sugar. Keep in mind that originally, chocolate was a drink. It was a dark water-based drink just like coffee and tea is. Coffee beans are ground up and steeped with hot water to make coffee. Tea leaves are dried and steeped in hot water as well. Chocolate used to be a drink (before the idea of a chocolate bar was invented) where the ground up cocoa beans were turned into a paste and mixed with water and other spices and ingredients which was served hot or cold. Chocolate, tea, and coffee all entered Europe as exotic imports roughly around the same time. So Europeans were drinking these 3 dark water based drinks.

Although all 3 ingredients are very intense on their own, they were all diluted and mix with water. This is why you can enjoy a black coffee or black tea with no sugar, because the intensity of these ingredients are tempered with water. It’s a dilution of the flavour. The intensity of the dilution should be strong enough that you can taste and enjoy the tea or coffee, but not too strong where it becomes to intense, bitter, or astringent.

Now, when the chocolate bar was invented in the mid 19th Century the idea of adding water was no longer relevant. Chocolate is made by grinding up the very high fat cocoa bean into a paste with sugar, and eating it as so. You can’t add water because water and fat do not like each other. The water would ruin the beautiful texture and flavour of chocolate that everyone has known to love. Therefore, a little sugar is necessary to temper the cocoa beans, since water cannot be used in this case to temper or dilute the flavour as it had been done when it was a drink.

Think of it this way. If you were to grind up coffee beans or tea leaves and press them into a bar, would you enjoy eating it? Probably not. It’s not the flavour you don’t like, but it’s the intensity of the flavour. It’s too much for most of us to handle. This is why we don’t eat solid bars of ground up coffee beans or tea leaves. Now if you added lots of sugar to this ground up mixture, could you then enjoy the bars of coffee or tea? You may! There is the element of texture, but lets assume the texture is silky smooth. You would likely enjoy it a lot more with the sugar than without it. Is it because coffee or tea requires sugar to taste good. Surely not, especially if it is a high quality fine coffee or tea. The same goes for cocoa beans. If it is no longer a drink and diluted with water, then the intensity needs to be diluted with sugar. The sugar reduces the intensity and allows other flavours to come through. So, if you want to enjoy chocolate in bar form, then yes, generally speaking sugar is necessary.

But does fine 100% chocolate require sugar?

100% dark chocolate bar, Papua New Guinea Origin, made by Kasama Chocolate based in Vancouver, Canada. If you like 100% bars, this would go well with dark roasted hazelnuts or even a fine sharp aged cheese from Spain such as Idiazabal.

I don’t care what continent you live on, the world now is addicted to sweetness. Whether you are in North America, Europe, or Asia, our diets contain more and more sugar. So in general, people have a high tolerance for sweetness and sugar, especially compared to people from generations ago. Sugar seeps into many areas of our food, not just desserts. That being said, most people today, unless they willingly train themselves, likely can’t eat chocolate without sugar. An espresso? Yes. Remember my point about the dilution with water. I doubt espresso drinkers would enjoy solid bars of ground up coffee beans sans sugar.

There is the idea of very tiny pockets of cacao trees that grow very aromatic cacao that contain no to very little bitterness. I have even tried some of this cacao that was “lightly fermented” and not roasted, and many had no sign of bitterness whatsoever. Could these be slightly roasted and turned into a 100% dark chocolate bar with no sugar and still be enjoyable? I think so, especially for those who enjoy foods with little to no sugar.

So, it is of my opinion that it is possible to create 100% dark chocolate bars with cacao that has no bitterness and create an enjoyable product. This would likely be expensive due to how inaccessible the cacao is, how small the production of it may be (it could just be one or a few trees which produce this type of cacao on one farm), and that you can’t add cheap sugar to lower the cost of the product (sugar helps dilute the cost of chocolate as well). But I have no doubt it is possible, and there may be some people out there trying to achieve this.

Now, there are some bean to bar craft chocolate makers who do produce a 100% chocolate bar that may not be zero bitterness, and still intense, but still enjoyable to those who seek such foods. It’s something that I likely wouldn’t eat on its own, but pair it with cheeses, nuts, or dried fruits and it would go beautifully together. So there are some bars out there that are not too bad, and have some other flavour notes going on for them other than just “bitter cacao”, but they are also hard to come by. Many well known and respected bean to bar makers make 100% dark chocolate bars. Their other bars I would say are wonderful, but their 100% bar just does not work. To achieve a great 100% bar you need not only the skillset of a great maker (which many have) but access to the right cacao bean (which is harder to come by these days).

So Why eat 100% bars?

Truth is, even for most chocolate sommeliers/connoisseurs, most of us don’t consume 100% dark chocolate regularly or often. And these are people who usually understand well the health benefits and the idea of flavour and quality in fine chocolate. Once in a while you can appreciate a good 100% bar, but they are hard to come by, and not for everyone or every moment.

Image by @averey. The antioxidants in fine chocolate may benefit your healthy in many ways including cardiovascular health, bone density, memory, cognition, and more.

Some people force themselves to enjoy 100% chocolate for the health benefits. However, there are still tons of health benefits from high percentage dark chocolate (70% +). You don’t have to force yourself to eat 100% just for the sake of health benefits. Truth is, good quality roasted cacao beans have the same level (or possibly slightly more) of antioxidants and minerals than 100% dark chocolate, and actually taste much better to most people! Some cocoa beans taste like well roasted nuts, without the bitterness. 

Bitterness is a sign of a poor quality cacao and chocolate, not a synonym for dark chocolate. The flavour of the cocoa beans changes just from grinding it into 100% chocolate (100% chocolate is one ingredient, cocoa bean). The grinding actually releases much of the bitter alkaloids trapped within the cells of the cocoa bean. So the same bean which may be very enjoyable and not bitter, can become a little bitter and way too intense if turned into a 100% chocolate bar. You could try this yourself if you have a chocolate refiner.

Keep in mind that most of the research that delves into the health benefits of dark chocolate, have found health benefits on those who eat 65-75% dark chocolate. You don’t need to only eat 100% dark chocolate to reap the benefits cacao and dark chocolate can provide.

Still want to enjoy 100% dark chocolate bars?

Now, there may be people who have trained their palates to enjoy 100% dark chocolate, such as those who trained their palates to enjoy a high API beer or bitter melon. The bitter taste is something that we are born to detest. Those who learn to like it train their palates either from the foods they were fed, or from choosing to eat bitter foods over time. 100% chocolate is no different in this manner. As an Italian, there were some foods such as chicoria (dandelion), rapini, or bitter aperitifs, so I learned to tolerate bitterness to some degree growing up. You can train yourself to enjoy higher percentage dark chocolate just as you would drinking espresso without sugar. However, it would require weeks if not months of training your palate, and slowly decreasing overall sugar and sweet tolerance by omitting more and more sugar from your diet. You don’t need to omit it all, but you may be surprised how much sugar you actually consumer by conducting this experiment on yourself.

Keep in mind that most 100% dark chocolate are made with cacao beans that are considered “bulk” or “commercial grade” by the fine chocolate industry. These cocoa beans may have the typical cocoa flavour, but not much else in regards to aroma. As well, they may also be much more bitter. If you do honestly enjoy really high percentage chocolate, and wish to seek out a high quality brand, your best bet is to first find a fine craft bean to bar chocolate maker. The Bean To Bar App that I created does a great job helping you find these sometimes well-hidden chocolate shops. When you find one, see if they make a 100% bar. You will look for one that will be intense, but without true bitterness. It shouldn’t be so bitter like bitter melon, the bitterness in grapefruit, or in overstepped black tea. There should also be some other flavour notes that go beyond just cocoa. These flavours will likely be “darker” and “heavier” with more toasty, earthy notes. As I said earlier, even within the craft chocolate world, chocolate makers who can make superb single origin dark chocolate can fail at 100% bars. It’s not easy to make it well. But these bars are out there, for the right person, if that’s your preference.