Milk chocolate

Milk chocolate is high in sucrose because sugar is usually the first ingredient, ahead of the cocoa. 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.

Milk chocolate carries a FODMAP that dark chocolate does not: lactose, from the milk solids. That is the D of the acronym arriving through a food nobody files under dairy, and it is why the same two squares behave differently depending on which bar they came from.

Milk chocolate: milk powder is the source here — roughly 5-9 g per 100 g. Portions are small, so a square or two often passes where a glass of milk would not.

Milk chocolate is moderate for one arithmetical reason: it contains less cocoa. Milk and sugar make up the difference and neither carries nickel, so the level tracks the percentage on the wrapper.

Milk chocolate is lower on this axis for two reasons at once: less cocoa, and the milk brings calcium that binds part of the oxalate before it can be absorbed. It is the rare case where the less virtuous version of a food is the easier one.

Milk chocolate contains little histamine, and is on elimination lists for the other reason: cocoa is a classic liberator, prompting release of the body's own stores. Milk and sugar dilute the cocoa, which is why this sits below dark chocolate. 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. Pastore looked for dopamine, serotonin, tyramine, histamine and 2-phenylethylamine in chocolate. It is a method paper: it reports what was detected and how repeatably, and publishes no concentration for any chocolate.

Milk chocolate carries the same malt-extract gluten risk as dark and one more reason to check: malt is used far more often in milk chocolate, where it rounds the flavour, and 'malted milk' is a whole product category built on it.

Milk chocolate carries more sugar than dark, and lactose besides - but it is still sucrose, splitting evenly. Sweetness and fructose excess are different questions.

Milk chocolate carries 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.

Less cocoa than dark chocolate means less salicylate — the milk and sugar dilute the only ingredient that carries it.