Is Chocolate Gluten-Free?

Many new celiac patients, families, and friends ask, “is chocolate gluten free?” This question frequently comes up during the holidays when sooooo many people are enjoying chocolate. The answer is yes! You don’t have to have “gluten free” chocolate to be able to enjoy chocolate.

All chocolate comes from the cacao tree. The history of this food is ancient, as are the techniques and customs. For a really great review of how chocolate is refined, I highly suggest the book, “The Chocolate Bible”, by Christian Teubner. (I’ll put a link to it after this article).

The problem associated with chocolate for celiac patients is the additional recipe ingredients for processed foods, such as wheat flour, food starch, barley malt, and other ingredients that will make a celiac patient ill. For example, this list from the Hershey website contains a list of ingredients that would indicate gluten:

WHEAT

Common label terms or ingredients on HERSHEY’S products that indicate the presence of WHEAT protein:

• Cookies
• Enriched flour
• Flour
• Hydrogenated starch
• Wafer
• Wheat flour hydrolysate

Common label terms or ingredients on HERSHEY’S products that may indicate the presence of WHEAT protein:

• Malt
• Modified food starch

Some common and popular chocolate bar examples:

• Nestle Crunch Bar – clearly labeled. Contains barley malt extract and traces of wheat gluten, which indicates it is not gluten free.
• Butterfingers – contains “confectioners corn flakes” – very confusing label. After some research, I found out that these ARE gluten free.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve hesitated to eat something and the response is “….it’s just chocolate.” Part of the reason for writing this blog is to help people understand that it’s not “just chocolate” for a person with celiac disease. If it’s chocolate with a gluten, it causes illness and damage to your body.

This website is building a list of gluten-free chocolate manufacturers and specific product brands. Please review this list. If you have been able to verify a chocolate product that is not on this list, please email me at admin@gluten-free-chocolate.com. I would like this website to be a comprehensive list of gluten-free chocolate ingredients and products. If you are a manufacturer, please send your updated list to the same address.

For more on “The Chocolate Bible” and other great gluten free cookbooks, click here. And the next time someone asks “is chocolate gluten free?”, you can give them the definitive answer – yes, yes, yes!