25th September 2026
Shortages of cocoa beans invariably leads to higher prices for the beans and that usually means even higher prices increase for chocolate.
Whilst chocolate is made from cocoa beans, other ingredients come too. The cocoa beans themselves, after fermenting and drying, roasting and crushing, are finally ground to separate the oily part of the bean from the mass. The former is the coco butter and the later the cocoa solid or powder. These two are then recombined along with sugar, sometimes milk and various flavourings.
One way in which manufacturers can reduce costs is by replacing some of the cocoa butter with palm oil. Palm oil is cheap to buy (although its cost in terms of damage to the environment is high) and it easily replicates the melt-in-the-mouth texture of cocoa butter. It is also a more tolerant ingredient and makes the ‘tempering’ of the chocolate easier.
However using palm oil rather than cocoa butter doesn’t reward the cocoa farmer.
For those of us who can afford to do so, we can be selective in choosing which chocolate we eat. Ethical Consumer regularly updates its rating of different chocolate manufacturers.
Cocoa and chocolate terms defined – https://www.global-organics.com/2019/11/22/chocolate-and-cocoa-terms-defined/
