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By Dan
🍫 When Chocolate Isn’t Chocolate Anymore
I don’t need to tell you — because I’ve been going on about it for the past year — that cocoa prices have gone absolutely mad.
But now it’s official: some of Britain’s best-loved bars can’t even be called chocolate anymore.
According to the Daily Mail, Club and Penguin bars have had to drop the word “chocolate” from their labels. They’re now legally “chocolate-flavoured,” because the coating has more palm oil and shea oil than cocoa solids.
You couldn't make this up!
Why They Can’t Call It Chocolate?
In the UK, a product must contain a certain percentage of cocoa solids and cocoa butter to qualify as chocolate.
If you swap that for cheaper fats — boom — it becomes “chocolate-flavoured coating.”
McVitie’s says their “sensory testing shows the new coating delivers the same great taste.”
But as someone who spends his life around cacao, I can tell you — palm oil, shea butter and vegetable oil isn’t cacao butter.
I believe chocolate should be...well chocolate!
My Shea Horror Moment (Literally!)
Funnily enough Shea butter (one of the worst alternative oils) and I have a bit of history.
A while back, my supplier accidentally sent me shea butter instead of cacao butter.
When I opened the tub, I thought, this doesn’t look right.
And it didn’t smell right either.
I gave it a cautious sniff, then a poke — and realised it would probably make a lovely hand moisturiser… but absolutely awful chocolate.
We sent it back and got a refund, obviously!
But here’s the thing — that same shea butter is now being used by major brands in their “chocolate-flavoured” coatings.
I’m not kidding. It’s brilliant on dry elbows — not so much on your tongue.
So why are the Big Brands using it?
Our standards are too high for Shea, Palm and Vegetable oil so why isn't this the case for the big players?
Over the last few years, extreme weather in West Africa (where most of the world’s cocoa comes from).
This means smaller harvests and record-high cocoa prices.
And I know this because I buy cocoa butter for DGF — I must admit I've clicked buy with a chill running down my spine as I see the price rises from only a few weeks before!
So the big manufacturers did what big manufacturers do
Out goes the expensive quality and in comes the cheap ingredients— they cut back on cacao and swapped in cheaper oils.
It keeps their profit margins safe… but at the cost of taste and quality.
Why It Matters
Chocolate isn’t supposed to be an accounting exercise — it’s meant to taste rich, smooth, and satisfyingly real.
When you start replacing cacao with cheap fats, it's no longer chocolate.
But worse than that it's actually less healthy too.
Trans fats have becoming an increasing "ingredient" replacing in many foods and have been linked to cardiovascular disease and other inflammatory illnesses - even cancer!
So next time you see “chocolate-flavoured” on a label, just remember: that’s a polite way of saying “we took the chocolate out of the chocolate.”
At Deliciously Guilt Free, we’ll keep doing what we’ve always done —
making real chocolate that loves you back!
Why DGF Will Never Cut Corners
If you’ve followed me for a while, you already know I bang on about this — I’m not reducing my standards.
Our bars use a minimum of 40% organic cacao, and always will.
No palm oil. No shea butter. No vegetable/seed oil.
We make real chocolate, the proper way — with organic cacao butter, and organic cacao beans.
I even make it healthier by taking out the sugar and replacing it with our clean SweetLock™ sweetener blend, and nothing that belongs in a cosmetics aisle!
It’s the same promise I make every time I temper a batch: if it’s not good enough for me and my family, it’s not good enough for you either.
📰 Source & Further Reading
This blog post is based on an article originally published in the Daily Mail on 20 October 2025, reporting on how several British chocolate bars — including Club and Penguin — have been reclassified as “chocolate-flavoured” due to reduced cocoa content and recipe changes.
👉 Click here to read the original Daily Mail article
And if reading that made you want to taste real chocolate made with organic cacao and no seed oils, you can:
or explore our most popular bars below 👇
THE REAL DEAL (40% min CACAO)
