Why the chocolate we’re eating isn’t really chocolate anymore

Penguin and Club bars are no longer legally chocolate – and they’re not the only ones. Hannah Twiggs investigates how soaring cocoa prices, shrinking portions and quiet recipe changes have turned Britain’s sweetest treats into something else entirely

Proof that nostalgia has a sweet tooth – the Penguin bar looks the same, even if what’s inside isn’t (www.milkandmore.co.uk)

In Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Violet Beauregarde chews a stick of gum that tastes like tomato soup, roast beef and blueberry pie. It’s a miracle of flavour engineering – until it turns her into a blueberry. Pleasure without substance always has consequences.

Now, the same thing is happening in Britain’s chocolate aisle. Two of the nation’s best-loved chocolate biscuits – Penguin and Club – are no longer legally chocolate. Their coatings contain so little cocoa that they’ve been quietly downgraded to “chocolate flavour”. The slogan that once promised “a lot of chocolate on your biscuit” has been rewritten to “a lot of biscuit in your break”.

The change, according to McVitie’s owner Pladis, was made to “minimise the impact of rising costs on consumers”. Its new coating swaps cocoa butter for palm and shea oils. Under UK law, a product must contain at least 20 per cent cocoa solids or cocoa butter to be described as chocolate – which feels like a suspiciously low, well, bar. You wouldn’t get away with selling a chicken breast that was 80 per cent filler, although, give it time and someone probably will.

They’re not alone. KitKat white and McVitie’s white digestives can no longer be labelled “white chocolate” either, while Wagon Wheels have long been sold as “chocolate flavour”.

For the past few years, Britain’s chocolate aisle has been the frontline of “shrinkflation” – the place you feel the squeeze most acutely. Christmas tubs are lighter, bars smaller, selection boxes dearer. Quality Street tubs have shrunk by 8.3 per cent, down from 600g to 550g, while the number of chocolates inside has fallen from around 63 to 57. Prices in Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons have climbed 16.7 per cent, from £6 to £7. Cadbury Roses tins are 6.7 per cent lighter but 17.9 per cent dearer, and Terry’s Chocolate Orange has dropped from 157g to 145g, while rising a third in price to £2 at Tesco. Even the large Toblerone has been trimmed from 360g to 340g, now selling for up to £7.

At this pace, by Christmas 2050, you’ll be handing over upwards of a tenner for a festive rattle – contents: air.

We’ve grown used to this kind of arithmetic. Shrinkflation has been the soundtrack to every festive season since the cost of living crisis began. But this year, the equation’s shifted again: prices are still up, packets are still lighter, but what’s inside them isn’t even chocolate anymore. And most of us haven’t noticed.

Cocoa has become one of the most volatile commodities on Earth. In April 2025, prices on the London Cocoa Futures market hit £10,265 a tonne, up from £2,205 the year before – a 365 per cent rise, according to Which?. Over the same period, there was a 15.4 per cent annual rise in chocolate prices by August 2025, even as overall food inflation cooled.

At the same time, Britons spent £5.9bn on chocolate in the year to August, up 10 per cent, yet actually bought 2 per cent less of it… If it was even chocolate at all. That paradox – paying more, getting less – has become the story of the British economy. But now there’s a third act: paying the same for something fundamentally different to what it says on the tin.

This isn’t simply about profit margins. Cocoa really is running out. Three consecutive years of extreme weather have devastated harvests in Ghana and the Ivory Coast, which together produce around two-thirds of the world’s supply. Drought, flooding and fungal disease have slashed Ghana’s output by about 30 per cent, while the Ivory Coast recorded its lowest in nearly a decade.

Worldwide Gourmet Foods, which supplies confectionery and bakery producers, says cocoa butter and powder prices have “more than doubled”, forcing manufacturers to use compound coatings – blends of palm kernel, coconut and shea oils that mimic chocolate’s gloss and snap for less.

Violet Beauregarde in ‘Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory’ – the original warning about flavour without substance (Paramount)

Cocoa trees are delicate: they grow only 20 degrees of the equator, thrive on humidity and are highly vulnerable to disease. The International Cocoa Organisation warns that without replanting and better disease control, shortages could persist for years.

This is what economists call a “non-price adjustment”: instead of charging more, companies alter the product itself. It’s happening across supermarket aisles, but chocolate perhaps shows it best. You think you’re buying the same bar, but the cocoa has been cut, the fats replaced, the flavour engineered to trick your taste buds into nostalgia.

Pladis insists its sensory testing shows “the same great taste as the originals”. Nestlé says its recipes balance “quality, affordability and sustainability”. Both statements are technically true. But the result is a confectionery aisle that no longer reflects inflation alone – it reflects scarcity.

For decades, the chocolate has been a barometer of the cost of living. Now, it’s a warning sign of something deeper: a food system under pressure from a changing climate.

Yet the real loss isn’t just cultural or economic. It’s chemical. What’s replacing cocoa isn’t just cheaper – it’s worse for us.

Cocoa butter, despite being high in saturated fat, is mostly stearic acid, which is neutral for cholesterol. Palm kernel and hydrogenated vegetable oils, by contrast, are heavier in lauric and myristic acids, which raise LDL (“bad”) cholesterol.

Once proudly ‘a lot of chocolate on your biscuit’, now just ‘a lot of biscuit in your break’ (Ubucle/Wiki Commons)

A 2020 review in the Journal of Lipids found that replacing cocoa butter with vegetable fats “alters the fatty-acid composition and could increase a product’s atherogenic potential” – in other words, its tendency to raise cholesterol and contribute to artery-clogging plaque. Cocoa solids also contain antioxidant flavanols linked to cardiovascular and cognitive health, compounds lost when the cocoa is cut.

In short, the bars may look and taste familiar, but nutritionally, they’re emptier.

So why don’t we notice? Because we don’t want to. Taste memory is powerful – we expect a Penguin to taste like the Penguin of our childhood, and our brains do the rest. Psychologists call it “sensory expectation”: the brand triggers a memory, and the memory fills in the flavour.

Chocolate, after all, isn’t just food. It’s a treat, a ritual, a small promise of normality. Amid a cost of living crisis, that familiarity matters more than ever. As long as the wrapper looks the same, most of us won’t question what’s inside.

But the shift from “a lot of chocolate on your biscuit” to “a lot of biscuit in your break” still feels symbolic. A quiet admission that we’ve learnt to settle for less.

The cocoa crisis is a preview of what’s coming for other indulgences: coffee, vanilla, almonds, even wine. Like cocoa, these crops depend on stable climates that no longer exist. Cocoa just reached its breaking point first.

For manufacturers, reformulation isn’t just a money-grabbing exercise. It’s survival. For consumers, it’s a glimpse into a future where familiar flavours are re-engineered from cheaper crops. And where imitation gradually becomes normal.

Willy Wonka once dreamed of a sweet that could last forever – an Everlasting Gobstopper, infinite and unchanged. Today’s chocolate isn’t far off: designed to taste the same, no matter what’s inside. But flavour, like truth, can only be stretched so far.

We’ve become a nation of Violet Beauregardes, chewing on the memory of chocolate, not the real thing. And if we keep doing it, we might just turn blue ourselves.