Yeah, but a tiny, crap 7-Eleven bar you eat all at once. A big, high-quality, high-% gourmet bar like Cluizel lasts a week or two. You savor a few bites, have an orgasm, and then put it away for a few days. I think it’s about $270/bar, but I’m not sure. I’ll check.
It’s not really one for choco-snobs, but I quite like the Dove 71%. Surprisingly creamy, and a bit cheaper than some of the other options.
Lindt 70%. Valrhona 85%. or just about any Valrhona: dissolve in hot extra-creamy milk for the best hot chocolate ever.
even 60-65% chocolate has the same effects, there is no magic cut-off point at 70%. the problem that is avoided by recommending the higher percentages of chocolate are the added cream and sugar which make up the rest of the block, which are not going to make your diet happy… if you are on a weight loss diet. if you are on a weight GAIN diet, like me, then it’s cool too if you don’t get scared off by the ‘cream is bad for you’ mantra of the hyper-holier-than-thou brigade of so-called “nutrition” experts. (just look at Dr Atkins… now what did he die of? )
much of the milk chocolate around is only 30-40% chocolate, if that, so seeking out chocolate with a quoted % of the real ingredient is bound to put you onto a better source of it.
and DB, how can you say that 40g is too much? i can easily knock off more than 100g of 80% in a single sitting, and often do.
I LOVE chocolate, dark included, but the first time I had about 40 g of 70% I got high, and then got a headache from it.
Yeah, but a tiny, crap 7-Eleven bar you eat all at once. A big, high-quality, high-% gourmet bar like Cluizel lasts a week or two. You savor a few bites, have an orgasm, and then put it away for a few days. I think it’s about $270/bar, but I’m not sure. I’ll check.[/quote]
Speak for yourself. A 68% Dove bar lasts me about 5 days. It makes a nice little after-dinner treat, but I would never gorge on a whole bar in one sitting. The migraine alone would do me in, oy vey!
Well, I will definitely have to try one of those. I actually looked at my super today, as they had a series of Dove bars, but none of them had any percentages conspicuously on the front of the wrapper, so I gave them a miss.
Just tried terravita Délicate 77% from Poland. It’s surprisingly (dare I say suspiciously?) sweet for a bar of this percentage, so if you’re afraid of the dark you might want to try it. It’s a bit waxy-chalky (?), but I suspect that’s because they replaced a lot of the cocoa butter with sugar to get it this sweet.
i must sheepishly admit that i tried to eat a whole 150g of Valrhona 80% and found i could not. man, that is rich and oh so bitter…
Oh, if you’re eating dark chocolate for your health, and avoiding ones high in sugar, here’s one to DEFINITELY avoid:
Cadbury Old Gold Dark Chocolate
What a ripoff! I should have read the label carefully before buying this one. It’s not ‘dark’ chocolate by any stretch of the imagination. The number one ingredient is sugar, and it has milk too. It’s cloyingly sweet. Disgusting, really. I’m not even going to finish eating it, and it’s a huge 150g bar. 
To take cloyingly sweet milk chocolate and market it as dark chocolate is downright unethical. I won’t be buying anything by Cadbury ever again.
got some good saretti (sp?) bars at rt the other day. that and droste are my favorite big brands.
[quote=“Bu Lai En”]From NZ, Wittaker’s chocolate bars are now at the 7-11 (new/trial/promotion products area). Peanut slabs are awesome (but even better in NZ). If you want some dark chocolate, they have a 72% or something cocoa one.
Brian[/quote]
I had a bite of the Whittaker Bittersweet Dark Chunks, but it’s much too sweet. Had to give the rest away. The number one ingredient is sugar. To market that as ‘dark’ is IMO irresponsible.
If you like sweet milk chocolate, then it’s fine of course.
Also had a bite of the peanut slab. Not bad – basic milk chocolate and peanuts. Like Snickers but without the nougat. Still too sweet for my tastes and my diet, though. 
I used to love the sweet stuff – Three Musketeers, Pepsi, Hershey’s chocolate. Hell, I used to eat sugar cubes. Thirteen years in Taiwan killed my appetite for that crap. Which is a good thing.
Yeah, for the price and despite the fact that Mars makes it, this one isn’t half bad. Not for choco-snobs as you say, but I’d reach for this one before most of the ones available at convenience stores, many of which are inedible. The 63% is also ok, and a good introduction to dark chocolate for anyone on a budget. Perhaps a bit sugary and boring, but ok.
At least these list cocoa mass first on the ingredients list (not sugar), although both have ‘milkfat’ listed too, which disqualifies them from a strict classification as dark chocolate.
Try the Dark Ghana. It’s darker.
Try the Dark Ghana. It’s darker.[/quote]I’ll try that. Like DB, I found the “Bittersweet Dark Chunks” very sweet and not bitter at all.
more on the chocolate bandwagon, and how not to get pushed onto it.
BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7159051.stm
Lancet: registration required, so I’ll copy it here for you…
The Lancet 2007; 370:2070
DOI:10.1016/S0140-6736(07)61873-X
Editorial
The devil in the dark chocolate
Norman Pogson
A truffle treatment for atherosclerosis is the stuff that chocolate manufacturers (and patients) dream of. But how close is such a scenario to reality? Last month, a study in Circulation showed that dark chocolate that is rich in flavanols induced coronary vasodilatation and improved coronary vascular function in 11 heart-transplant recipients compared with patients taking a cocoa-free control chocolate. Other studies have also suggested that dark chocolate has cardiovascular benefits. A recent small randomised trial showed that people who were prehypertensive or had early-stage hypertension could lower their blood pressure by eating small amounts of dark chocolate as part of their usual diet.
Great news if you happen to be a lover of dark chocolate. However, if your passion is white or milk chocolate, bad luck. Research has shown that this type of chocolate, which is often devoid of flavanols, offers no health benefit. But there is a catch for dark-chocolate fans too. Dark chocolate can be deceptive. When chocolate manufacturers make confectionary, the natural cocoa solids can be darkened and the flavanols, which are bitter, removed, so even a dark-looking chocolate can have no flavanol. Consumers are also kept in the dark about the flavanol content of chocolate because manufacturers rarely label their products with this information.
And, although flavanols, if they are present, seem to offer some health benefit, the devil in the dark chocolate is the fat, sugar, and calories it also contains. To gain any health benefit, those who eat a moderate amount of flavanol-rich dark chocolate will have to balance the calories by reducing their intake of other foods—a tricky job for even the most ardent calorie counter. So, with the holiday season upon us, it might be worth getting familiar with the calories in a bar of dark chocolate versus a mince pie and having a calculator at hand. Of course some would say that, in terms of food intake, the best and simplest health message would be to stay away from the chocolate and eat a healthy, balanced diet, low in sugar, salt, and fat, and full of fresh fruit and vegetables. We say: “Bah, humbug to that. Pass the chocolates.”
The Lancet
So for those paranoid types, be absolutely sure and buy a 99% cacao chocolate bar. Only a few companies make these bars. Lindt is among them.
[quote=“sjcma”]So for those paranoid types, be absolutely sure and buy a 99% cacao chocolate bar.[/quote]I don’t think that would work. Those things have more calories than regular chocolate bars.
Why not? The Lindt 99% bars have only 20% more calories than their 70% bars yet contain 41% more cocoa mass. Thus, to intake the same amount of flavanol, one would need to ingest a lesser amount of the 99% bar, which in turn will save the total amount of calories one gets from dark chocolate. If one can stand the bitterness, the 99% bar is the better overall solution.
Why not? The Lindt 99% bars have only 20% more calories than their 70% bars yet contain 41% more cocoa mass. Thus, to intake the same amount of flavanol, one would need to ingest a lesser amount of the 99% bar, which in turn will save the total amount of calories one gets from dark chocolate. If one can stand the bitterness, the 99% bar is the better overall solution.[/quote]I see what you mean. I thought you were talking about total calories, responding to this:
Sceptical. I eat loads of chocolate and I still got an ear infection last July. Tried inserting a Twix into the orifice, but it did nothing, and I woke up covered in ants. Should I have used dark chocolate?
Ok, so I’ve been hacking my bloody lungs out for a couple hours now (severe post-viral cough), and ODing on codeine and dextromethorphan hasn’t put a dent in it. I’m up late, considering going to the emergency room to get a steroid inhalant or an injection, and am Googling B. pertussis and so on to try to figure out what I’ve really got. Then I stumble across this in the Wiki entry on coughing:
So, seeing as how I have a third of a kilo of very dark (75%) chocolate sitting on my desk in front of me unopened… 
EDIT: 30g down, 270 to go. Seems to be working after only 5 minutes, which is unrealistically fast. Hmmm…