If you love white chocolate, then you likely know that it’s not really chocolate at all. It’s cocoa butter with sugar and milk added. What you might not know is that white chocolate generally doesn’t have any caffeine in it. That may be a surprise considering how much we associate chocolate with caffeine. But the truth is that white chocolate has very little of the stimulant—even less than natural cocoa or dark chocolate. Theobromine, which is the primary alkaloid found in cacao, is what gives cocoa its bitter flavor and mild stimulating properties.
Caffeine in Natural Cocoa
Unlike white chocolate, natural cocoa is a lot higher in caffeine than dark or milk chocolate. This is because the fat in dark chocolate inhibits the caffeine from being released. The fat in cocoa, on the other hand, doesn’t have the same effect. So, if you want to get the most caffeine from your cocoa, then go for the natural stuff. Cocoa contains about half the caffeine of coffee, which amounts to about 10 milligrams per ounce. This is about a third of the amount in dark chocolate. You may be wondering why so much less. The answer is that the cocoa bean is about 50% fat, and fat doesn’t dissolve caffeine very well, so most of the caffeine is trapped in the fat of the cocoa bean rather than the solids. When you make cocoa out of cocoa beans, you melt the fat and stir it into a liquid, and that traps most of the caffeine in the fat. When you make chocolate out of cocoa beans, you separate the fat and put it in a different container, and then you stir cocoa solids into a liquid. Since most of the caffeine is in the cocoa solids, not the fat, most of the caffeine ends up in the chocolate.
So, Does White Chocolate Have Caffeine?
White chocolate actually has very little cacao solids in it. The amount of cacao solids determines the amount of caffeine content in a chocolate product. White chocolate actually has less than 10% cacao solids, so it has virtually no caffeine. However, it does have a lot of sugar. This means that white chocolate is a better choice for a evening snack than it is for a bedtime snack.
How Much Caffeine is in White Chocolate?
Let’s take a look at the caffeine amounts in a few different types of chocolate. The numbers are per ounce of chocolate. – Dark chocolate: 10-14mg – Natural cocoa: 10mg – Milk chocolate: 3-4mg – White chocolate: 0mg
All in all, white chocolate practically no caffeine in it. Dark chocolate has about half the amount of caffeine as coffee, and natural cocoa has about 10mg of caffeine per ounce. Milk chocolate has about a fifth of the caffeine as dark chocolate. And white chocolate has even less if any at all. Keep these facts in mind the next time you’re craving some chocolate. Whether you go for the rich taste of dark chocolate or the delicate sweetness of white chocolate, you can be sure you’re not getting a caffeine kick.