Chocolate chips

Chocolate chips are high in sucrose because they are chocolate in small pieces, and the recipe does not change. This is the axis where chocolate is genuinely a problem - on the fructose axis it is not, because sucrose splits into equal halves. Here nothing splits it.

Chocolate chips are scattered rather than eaten as a bar, which usually keeps the dose small - but baking chips are milk chocolate more often than dark, so the lactose comes along without being announced. Check which kind before assuming.

Chocolate chips carry the cocoa's nickel, but they are scattered rather than eaten as a bar. A handful in a cookie dough is a different dose from the tablet the same chocolate would have made.

Chocolate chips are formulated with less cocoa butter and more sugar than a bar, so per gram they carry less oxalate than the dark chocolate they resemble. They are also baked into things, which spreads a handful across a whole batch.

Chocolate chips are formulated to hold their shape in an oven, which usually means less cocoa butter and more milk solids and sugar than a bar of the same colour. A 'dark' chip is often closer to a milk chocolate in composition than its colour suggests.

Chocolate chips contain little histamine, and they are on elimination lists for the other reason: cocoa is a classic liberator, prompting release of the body's own stores. What a chip is made of is the brand's decision, not the word's: chips come in milk, semi-sweet and dark, so the cocoa percentage on the packet says how much cocoa you are eating - the shape says nothing. 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 chips carry no gluten of their own and are made to survive an oven, and the same industrial lines that coat and shape them handle biscuit and wafer products - which makes shared-line contamination the main route here rather than any ingredient. Certified versions exist and say so.

Chocolate chips are chocolate in small pieces, scattered rather than eaten as a bar. Sucrose-sweetened like the rest, so no fructose in excess, and used by the handful.

Chocolate chips carry the small amine load of cocoa. Chocolate was on the old MAOI restriction lists and came off them: the assays that measured it found tyramine at levels an ordinary portion does not reach. Dark chocolate carries more cocoa and so a little more.

Chocolate chips are usually made with a lower cocoa percentage than eating chocolate, and used in small quantities - both keep their salicylate at the bottom of the chocolate range.