Due to the large variety of chocolate food items, many high school students may disagree upon the best option for chocolate consumption in light of Valentine’s Day.
Junior Max Organek is a fan of dark chocolate, specifically when the level of cocoa is around 80%.
“[Dark chocolate] is not a pansy flavor like milk, and it’s got a bit more kick than any other form of chocolate,” said Organek.
Another fan of dark chocolate, junior Levi Lewis, likes it because he believes it to be really healthy for you, as well as its bitterness.
“[Dark chocolate]’s like bitter, but it’s a good bitter,” Lewis said.
The bitterness apparent in dark chocolate comes from the lack of sugar and increased concentration of cocoa content, typically ranging anywhere from 35% cocoa to 100% according to Alissa Fleck in an SFGate article.
According to freshman Maria Souchet, all kinds of chocolate are good. Including dark chocolate, mint dark chocolate, orange dark chocolate, caramel dark chocolate, but not white or milk chocolate.
“Milk chocolate is too sweet, white chocolate isn’t chocolate and it’s kind of gross, so I just like dark chocolate. And, it makes me think that I’m eating healthy when I’m really not,” Souchet said.
Freshman Mason Benner is a fan of milk chocolate. “[Milk chocolate] is not too sweet to the point that it is weird, and it melts in your mouth,” Benner said.
Another milk chocolate fan, freshman Connor Massey, likes it because it’s not too bitter or too sweet. “You get the right balance with [milk chocolate],” Massey said.
According to junior Aditya Bhandari, milk chocolate is his favorite because it is the “OG”.
White chocolate, which by definition is not actually chocolate, also has its fans.
Some people like white chocolate just because it is different.
“[White chocolate] is different. It’s better. I like it,” junior Logan Peterson said.
Junior Ella Stubbs at first said dark chocolate to be her favorite flavor of chocolate, but she changed her answer to white chocolate in order to “spice it up.”
“It’s different from the rest of them…It’s just different. It’s the most processed type of chocolate,” Stubbs said.
According to Bon Appétit, the difference between white chocolate and other types of chocolate is the absence of chocolate solids in its recipe.
When cocoa beans are processed into what is called a chocolate nib, they are then ground into a paste called chocolate liquor which then gets separated into cocoa solids and cocoa butter.
Cocoa solids provide the flavor in regular chocolate, but in white chocolate it uses cocoa butter which is fat, therefore not having the key ingredient that defines chocolate.