The first solid chocolate bars were made in 1847 by Joseph Fry of Fry & Sons of Bristol. This paved the way for hundreds more chocolate manufacturers, and there are now thousands of different bars of chocolate to choose from.
Whether the chocolate bar you buy is gourmet, organic, sugar free or mass-produced in a factory, there are generally only three different types of chocolate: milk, white and dark.
Milk chocolate
The milk chocolate bar was first created in Switzerland in 1875 by Swiss chocolatier, Daniel Peters. This is a creamy, sweet variety of chocolate with more sugar, milk, vanilla and cocoa butter than other varieties of chocolate. A good quality milk chocolate bar should contain a minimum of thirty percent cocoa solids. Milk chocolate complements caramel and nut fillings very well, but its light flavour can leave some people feeling unsatisfied and uninspired.
White chocolate
White chocolate is made from c ocoa butter, sugar, milk solids and other flavourings, but does not contain any actual cocoa liquor. Because of this, many people argue that white chocolate is not a genuine type of chocolate.
Dark chocolate
Dark chocolate is simply chocolate that contains no milk solids. It is made with cocoa liquor and cocoa butter and should contain at least fifteen percent cocoa liquor. In the US this term is the same as 'sweet' or 'bittersweet' chocolate and denotes any sweetened chocolate that does not contain milk. In the UK , it is sometimes referred to as plain chocolate.
There is no regulation that stipulates the minimum requirement of total cocoa content, but a good quality dark or plain chocolate bar will contain at least fifty percent cocoa solids. Its high cocoa content means it will satisfy a chocolate craving quickly. This, coupled with the fact that it contains no milk solids, makes it the healthiest of the three types of chocolate.
Perhaps this is the reason that the popularity of dark chocolate has been growing steadily over the last few years. Whilst milk chocolate by far outsells any other type of chocolate, mainly due to its mass-production, large-scale availability and affordable price, an ongoing study in the US claims that the number of people who prefer dark chocolate to milk chocolate has risen from 15% to 27% in the last ten years. And this figure is even more pronounced for the older generations, with almost forty percent of people aged thirty-five and over opting for dark chocolate instead of milk chocolate.
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