Is Chocolate Vegan: Learn All About Vegan Chocolate

1 September 2021

Vegan chocolate is the tastiest and healthiest chocolate alternative around. Learn all there is about this fantastic chocolate. Is Vegan chocolate for you?

Vegan chocolate is a thing, and it’s super popular right now. It’s easy to see why — you get all the flavor of your favorite chocolate with no animal-derived products. That’s a win-win and a delicious one indeed.

Vegan chocolate is still a new product, and you need to know where to find it. The good news? Read on and discover all there is about this healthier alternative. You’ll love vegan chocolate!

What is Vegan Chocolate?

The vegan diet is more than a trend; it’s a lifestyle and one that has gained an immense number of fans worldwide. The idea of not consuming animal products might not be new, but vegans are taking it to the next level — this is what we call a serious commitment!

Being vegan is more than a healthier lifestyle; it’s also good for the planet, so why not give it a try? The thing is, going vegan is a bit harder than it seems — you can’t just eat anything; you must be on the lookout! Many things that you’d think are vegan aren’t.

So, here’s today’s big question: is chocolate vegan? What is vegan chocolate anyway? And can you find chocolate with no animal products in it?

What is vegan chocolate? In a nutshell, most chocolate is vegan — after all, it’s just cacao beans and sugar, which come from plants. What’s not vegan is milk. So, any chocolate without milk is vegan.

What Chocolate Is Vegan?

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Not all chocolate is created equal. After all, there’s dark chocolate, white chocolate and the famous milk chocolate. Which of these is vegan?

You might have already guessed milk chocolate isn’t vegan since milk is a big no-no for the plant-based diet. What you might not know is that white chocolate isn’t vegan either, at least for the most part.

Dark chocolate is often your safest bet for vegan chocolate, but let’s take a closer look at each type of chocolate and see if they’re vegan or not and why.

Before going into detail, we should mention all types of chocolate can be produced with vegan ingredients, but it all depends on the producer. To find authentic vegan chocolate, you must read the label carefully. And knowing a thing or two about the chocolate brand helps as well. Here’s all you need to know about the types of chocolate; which of them are vegan?

Is Dark Chocolate Vegan?

Dark chocolate is almost always vegan, and here’s why. To make dark chocolate, producers ground the roasted cacao beans to get cocoa butter and cacao solids out of them — together, we know this mix as chocolate liquor.

The combination of this chocolaty paste and sugar becomes dark chocolate. There are no dairy products here, such as milk solids, so this type of chocolate is entirely vegan. Some dark chocolates have up to 70% or more cacao solids, making them quite bitter. You’ll also find unsweetened dark chocolate, which is made with pure cacao.

Keep in mind some producers make dark milk chocolate, and they’ll add milk solids to it. You’ll know it when you see ingredients like casein on the label. Casein is the main protein in milk. In a nutshell, dark chocolate is almost always vegan, and there are many types of it. Just make sure there are no milk solids in the mix.

Is White Chocolate Vegan?

White chocolate is elegant, creamy and silky. It’s easy to love! Sadly, white chocolate is rarely vegan. Producers use cocoa butter from the cacao beans to make milk chocolate but leave out the cocoa solids. This cacao butter, combined with milk solids and milk fat, becomes the white chocolate we know and love.

Regularly, at least 15% of any standard white chocolate comes from milk. The good news? If you look hard enough, you’ll find vegan white chocolate in the market, but it’s rare. Some people make their own version of vegan white chocolate at home with cacao butter, coconut oil and sugar, and it works!

We should mention the law, both in the USA and Europe, is quite clear about what white chocolate is, and it must contain milk fat and milk solids for producers to label it as such. Maybe it’s time to revise those legal definitions, don’t you agree?

Is Milk Chocolate Vegan?

Milk chocolate is the least vegan type of chocolate out there; you can tell by the name. In fact, for producers to label milk chocolate as such, they must combine chocolate liqueur, sugar and between 12% and 14% of milk solids and milk fat.

Some producers might not print the word milk directly on the label, but you’ll always find terms like casein. There’s hope, though. Some producers make vegan milk chocolate using rice milk or oat milk instead of cow’s milk. This means the chocolate is still sweet and creamy, but it’s entirely vegan.

At the end of the day, the vegan trend is just getting started, but we’ll see more producers making chocolate without animal-derived products, that’s guaranteed. While we wait, we must look for vegan chocolate in specialty stores. So yes, although dark chocolate is almost always vegan, white and milk chocolate rarely is. Now you know. So, how to find nice vegan chocolate? Here are some producers.