Chocolate

Chocolate as a plain word covers everything from a 90 per cent bar to a coating that is mostly sugar and vegetable fat, and what matters follows the cocoa solids rather than the number on the front, which counts cocoa butter too. Where no ingredient list is available, assume the higher end - and note that the milk in a milk chocolate does not lower the liberator effect, it only dilutes the cocoa that carries it. The Swiss list rates it 2 of 3 under “cocoa, cocoa powder (chocolate, etc.)” and marks it A for other biogenic amines and L for liberators of mast cell mediators. The letters are a presumed reason, not a measurement. Chocolate is one of the nut-containing products Yilmaz analysed alongside the twelve nuts themselves: those products ran 0.09 to 8.99 micrograms of serotonin per gram, depending on which nut was in them. It is a different amine from the one this axis is named for, and it is one more reason the word covers products that are not comparable.

Chocolate is high in nickel through its cocoa, and the figure moves with the cocoa percentage rather than with the brand. Reading the percentage tells you more here than reading the name. Flyvholm's review is where that ranking comes from: cocoa and chocolate sit among the very high contents, with soya beans, oatmeal, nuts and legumes. It publishes no figure for any single food, which is why this is a rank and not a milligram — and it puts average Danish dietary nickel at 150 micrograms a day, rising past 900 where the high items are eaten in quantity.

The cocoa is what carries the salicylate, so the level moves with the cocoa percentage rather than with the sugar or the milk.

Chocolate without a further word could be a 90 per cent bar or a coating that is mostly sugar and vegetable fat, and the oxalate follows the cocoa. Follow it with one correction: the oxalate is in the non-fat cocoa SOLIDS, while the percentage on the front counts the cocoa butter too, and butter carries none. The number is a reliable direction and a poor ratio. Where no percentage is given, the colour is the only clue and it is a rough one.

Chocolate is low in FODMAPs, which surprises people who have found chocolate hard to tolerate. Cocoa itself carries little. What does the damage in a bar is usually the milk - lactose, the D of the acronym - or the inulin added as fibre in a reduced-sugar version. It is worth reading which.

Chocolate as a plain word covers a bar that is a third milk powder and one that is none, and the lactose follows that entirely. White chocolate is the highest of the three types, milk chocolate next, dark the lowest - the cocoa percentage on the front is an inverse guide to the dairy inside.

Chocolate as a category spans everything from a 90% bar to a sugar-first confection, so the level here is an average of a very wide range. The cocoa percentage on the wrapper is the number that answers the question.

Chocolate is a weak entry and worth saying so: it sits on legacy MAOI lists, and modern reviews found its tyramine too low to matter at normal portions. What effect it has, if any, is attributed to phenylethylamine - a different amine entirely. It was dropped from the strict diet decades ago.