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Chocolate doesn't have caffeine according to this Snopes thread. Wikipedia stated that chocolate has it:

[Cocoa solids] also contain alkaloids such as theobromine, phenethylamine and caffeine.

Does a 30g (1 oz.) chocolate bar have a significant amount of caffeine, e.g. as much as an 23cl (8 oz.) cup of coffee?

Sklivvz
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  • I note that Wikipedia doesn't claim that chocolate has *that much* caffeine. – Oddthinking Jul 20 '14 at 04:46
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    Your "e.g. as much as an 8 oz. cup of coffee?" is a ridiculously high level to put "significant" at. I think anyone who has consumed both chocolate and coffee can tell you that a 1oz chocolate bar contains nothing like the amount of caffeine in an 8oz cup of coffee. – David Richerby Jul 20 '14 at 09:25
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    **Use metric units, people, especially when they are misleading like in this case** – Sklivvz Jul 20 '14 at 13:20
  • @David Richerby: yours is a bit of non sequitur... even if one could accurately measure levels of caffeine by eating something (which is debatable, depends on your sensitivity to caffeine), I don't see how that would affect the fact that an arbitrarily chosen level of caffeine is "significant" or not. To be honest, the "content of a cup of coffee" seems like a reasonable thing to use when comparing caffein levels, although the type of coffee should also be specified as caffein content varies. – nico Jul 20 '14 at 14:30
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    @nico "Significant" normally means "noticeable" or at least "more than trace amounts". In contrast, a cup of coffee is about the most caffeinated thing I can think of in which the caffeine is naturally present, rather than added as an ingredient. It's like asking, "Can domestic cats run at significant speeds, e.g., as fast as a cheetah." – David Richerby Jul 20 '14 at 16:17
  • @DavidRicherby: "noticeable" is not very well defined. "[Significant](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_significance)" has a very precise meaning in statistics instead. So "significantly higher than a cup of coffee" is perfectly fine. – nico Jul 20 '14 at 16:21

1 Answers1

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Depends on the type of chocolate.

According to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), a bar of dark chocolate (i.e. 162 grams, or about 6 oz) contains almost as much caffeine as a cup of coffee (resp. 70mg v.s. 95mg).

So yes, chocolate does contain a significant amount of caffeine (but just not as much as coffee. You are more likely to ingest more caffeine by drinking coffee, simply because you drink more cups of coffee than you eat chocolate bars.)

Notice that this holds only for dark chocolate; white chocolate does not contain caffeine.

EDIT: Notice how, if you click "full report" it lists theobromine separately. Coffee does not contain theobromine, chocolate does (about 10x the amount of caffeine it contains).

Sources:

Jori
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  • Those mind-reading bots strike again ;) +1 - Good answer. – Jiminy Cricket. Jul 20 '14 at 00:32
  • Note: This is referring to a much larger-sized chocolate "bar" than the OP. It also doesn't address the substance of the claim in the [page](http://www.xocoatl.org/caffeine.htm) referenced by Snopes, that even some references are wrong, and that direct experiments show it is not the case. – Oddthinking Jul 20 '14 at 05:04
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    The articles Jori links to look much more serious than the link in the Snopes forum. [This article](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2621.1980.tb02603.x/abstract) from the Journal of Food Science says that analysis shows chocolate does contain some caffeine, although much less than theobromine. – Mr Lister Jul 20 '14 at 06:52
  • @Oddthinking The size of bar mentioned in the question is sensible but the suggestion that "significant amount of caffeine" means a 1oz bar containing as much caffeine as an 8oz coffee is not a reasonable definition of "significant". – David Richerby Jul 20 '14 at 09:27
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    @DavidRicherby Significant here means that you are likely to notice the effects if you eat a reasonable amount of chocolate, not 1 oz, (where I live these bars don't even exist lol) most bars are 200 grams here, so they will contain 86mg of caffeine, about a cup of coffee, or a liter of cola. – Jori Jul 20 '14 at 10:02
  • @Jori I'd say that 1-2oz (30-60g) is a reasonable serving of chocolate, even if the bar is bigger. But, yes, something other than "contains 8x as much caffeine weight for weight than coffee" is a decent definition of "significant". – David Richerby Jul 20 '14 at 10:09
  • @DavidRicherby it's not 8x more because mass ounces are not the same as liquid ounces. in fact 8 Imperial fluid ounces = 22.7304594 centilitres and 1 Ounce is 28.3495 grams. so it's *less than 1:1* – Sklivvz Jul 20 '14 at 13:22
  • @Sklivvz An American fluid ounce is 29.6ml (they often call them "English units" but, in fact, they don't use the English Imperial system). A fluid ounce of coffee weighs about the same as a fluid ounce of water, which is about 30g. It *is* 1:1. Indeed, they often say "A pint's a pound, the world around." The "the world around" part is false because, for example, an Imperial pint is 20 fl.oz. but an American pint is 16 fl.oz. But, in American customary units, a pint of water *does* weigh a pound. – David Richerby Jul 20 '14 at 14:10
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    White chocolate is not chocolate in the sense that cocoa solids are not an ingredient (only cocoa butter). The caffeine is derived exclusively from the cocoa solids, and different kinds of chocolate have different proportions of this ingredient. (Unsweetened and dark chocolate having the highest.) – Jacob Budin Jul 20 '14 at 14:47
  • Your supporting links are all broken. – James Oct 13 '15 at 18:28
  • @James Really? Not for me! Where are you located? – Jori Oct 13 '15 at 21:34
  • Let me clarify--the links go somewhere, just not to the pages you cite. The first link goes to a page about Skittles candy, and the last one goes to a page about pound cake. – James Oct 13 '15 at 21:53
  • @James I see. I'll try to fix it. – Jori Oct 14 '15 at 10:01