No Caffeine in Chocolate?
I try very, very hard to make sure that I don’t mislead people and that I have a good understand of the truth of things. Imagine my surprise when I read this article that suggests that there is no caffeine in chocolate. At least at the moment, Wikipedia disagrees, though I’m not sure what to think. Having done more research about caffeine than the average person, I’ve shared my knowledge with many people, but now I am unsure what to say about this particular factoid.
I guess this isn’t a really big deal, but it makes me ponder again just how we know things. We have to rely on indirect evidence a great deal of the time, and sometimes that indirect evidence can be wrong.
September 25th, 2007 at 2:00 pm
I’m a chocolate maker and so I know a bit about chocolate. Chocolate does in fact contain caffeine. This has been known since at least the early 1900’s. Furthermore, the chemical analysis has been able to determine the difference between theobromine (also in chocolate) and caffeine since about the same time period. (There is more theobromine in chocolate than caffeine by about three times on average.)
I imagine that much of the confusion rests with the fact that we are dealing with a natural crop and so the levels of various substances will vary depending on variety, soil and climate conditions.
We have an article on our website that deals with the whole caffeine issue. You can find it here: http://www.amanochocolate.com/articles/caffeineinchocolate.html
Hopefully, this helps clarify some of this issue,
-Art
Amano Artisan Chocolate
http://www.amanochocolate.com