Nutritional balance of no-added-sugar chocolates

The nutritional balance of sugar-free chocolates was studied by Pérezgonzález in 2011¹. He found that a sample of chocolate bars, chocolate blocks and bonbons currently available in New Zealand shared a similar nutritional profile characterized as being low in protein, high in fat, high in saturated fat, low in fiber and low in sodium (Pérezgonzález, 2011b²). Sugar-free chocolates, however, differed from other chocolates in also being adequate (or low) in sugar and, consequently, low in carbohydrate⁴ (see profile in Illustration 2).

On average, no-added-sugar chocolates have a nutritional balance of BNI 82.73f, being particularly unbalanced towards excess of fat.

Illustration 1: Nutrition information (no-added-sugar chocolates)

BNI	82.73f	0.00

Food, 100g	2011	Ideal
Protein	5.9	27.9
Carbohydrate	51.1	76.6
Sugars	3.3	< 13.9
Fat	36.6	15.5
Saturated fat	23.8	< 6.2
Fiber	1.0	8.4
Sodium	0.028	< 0.557
Kcal	557.4	557.4
kJul	2332.2	2332.2

Illustration 2: Nutritional profile (no-added-sugar)

60%			*
55%			*
50%			*
45%			*
40%			*
35%		*	*
30%		*	*
25%		*	*
20%		*	*
15%		*	*
10%		*	*
5%	*	*	*	*
mid	p	c	f	fb
max		s	sf		na
5%			*
10%			*
15%			*
20%			*
25%			*
30%			*
35%			*
40%			*

ideal % = grey cells; actual % = asterisk (*)

International standards

No-added-sugar chocolates show small changes in their indexing across different international Recommended Dietary Intakes (RDIs) (see illustration 3). Overall, however, all nutritional indexes are high and relatively similar to each other, which indicates that the nutritional composition of no-added-sugar chocolates would be deemed highly unbalanced in different countries. Notwithstanding this, such nutritional unbalance is sensibly smaller than that of typical chocolates and sugary chocolates.

Illustration 3: Nutritional balance across different RDIs (no-added-sugar chocolates)

No-sugar-added chocolates	average	82.73	82.73	81.39	81.39	79.39

Product100g	Company	BNI	WHO	US/CAN	AUS/NZ	UK
Guylian No Sugar Added milk	Guylian	79.46	79.46	74.86	74.86	72.86
Guylian No Sugar Added dark	Guylian	85.68	85.68	80.21	80.21	78.21
Richfields No Added Sugar classic dark	Richfields	89.25	89.25	89.25	89.25	87.25

Correlations between indexes are also very high (although, given that there are only 3 chocolates in this subsample, only perfect correlations were statistically significant). Nonetheless, the pattern of correlations suggests that the nutritional balance reported by the BNI™ index matches that of other nutritional standards. (Said otherwise, that no-sugar-added chocolates tend to form a similar hierarchy when indexed using different international standards).