Made from the seed of a cocoa tree, dark chocolate is one of the best sources of antioxidants in the world.
Not only that but the more cocoa content you have in the chocolate, the more nutritionally rich it becomes, namely in terms of fiber and vital micronutrients like iron and magnesium.
Is dark chocolate vegan? Dark chocolate, for the most part, is vegan. In fact, dark chocolate is essentially a form of chocolate that contains cocoa solids, cocoa butter, without the milk or butter found in milk chocolate. Dark chocolate has a considerably higher cocoa content than milk chocolate, with most vegan-friendly dark chocolates containing upwards of 70% cocoa content.
However, that’s not always the case, and you can clearly see that by reading this blog post I wrote on the different Lindt dark chocolate varieties. While Lindt has over 10 dark chocolate varieties, the ones that are NOT vegan usually contain less than 70% cocoa content.
With that being said, you should ALWAYS check the label for any dark chocolate, regardless of the cocoa content.
In this article, we’re going to provide you with more detail into why not all dark chocolates are vegan (because milk and butter are not always culpable), and we’ll also provide you with suitable vegan alternatives that you can easily find online.
Why Not Every Dark Chocolate Is Vegan
Yes, not all dark chocolate is vegan, as some varieties may contain dairy-based ingredients such as milk or butter, but whether or not that accounts for the majority of dark chocolate is debatable.
From my personal experience, finding vegan dark chocolate has always been easy, and I live in a country where only a tiny portion of the population (around 0.6%) is vegan. For someone living in nations like the United States or the United Kingdom — I’m positive that finding vegan dark chocolate is even easier.
Let’s look at the ingredients of one of the most popular dark chocolates:
This dark chocolate represents a legitimate example of dark chocolate according to sources such as Wikipedia and the USDA, which demonstrates that real dark chocolate should typically be made without dairy-based ingredients.
However, it’s also true that Lindt’s Lime Intense (also labeled as dark chocolate) contains animal-based ingredients:
For this reason, it is always a good thing to check the ingredient label for surprises.
There’s also the fact that not all sugar is suitable for vegans.
Why Sugar May Not Be Vegan
Sugar typically comes from two sources: sugar canes and beets.
While they taste the same and share an identical texture, their refinement process is completely different. Sugar that is derived from sugar beets is ALWAYS vegan, but the one derived from sugarcane isn’t always so.
When refining the sugar extracted from sugarcane, the sugarcanes are crushed and the juice is separated from the pulp. Then, half of the time, that juice is filtered, refined, and bleached using a decolorizing agent called bone char, which is essentially obtained by incinerating the bones of cattle.
According to PETA, most of the bones used are from cattle derived from countries like Afghanistan, Argentina, India, and Pakistan. These bones are sold to traders in Egypt, Brazil, and Scotland who then resell them to sugar suppliers in the United States.
Not All Sugar Suppliers Use Bone Char
It’s important to emphasize that not all sugar suppliers use bone char as a decolorizing agent. Some use alternatives that are vegan-friendly, namely granular carbon or ion-exchange resins.
However, the issue is that