<p>Every food product must have an ingredients list. Everyone knows this.</p>
<p>But not everyone knows that the ingredients are listed by weight, from the largest to the smallest. The first item is the most abundant.</p>
<p>For example, white chocolate isn’t quite chocolate, even though it has the shape of a chocolate bar. Its typical ingredients are: sugar, cocoa butter, cocoa mass, dry milk, etc. In contrast, dark chocolate has the following ingredients: cocoa mass, sugar, cocoa butter.</p>
<p>This means that white chocolate contains the most sugar, while dark chocolate contains the most cocoa mass. “Cocoa butter” is fat.</p>
<p>Sometimes, clever wording is used to mislead consumers. For instance, Milka chocolate tries to deceive consumers by placing “milk chocolate” at the top of the ingredients list, and then listing the actual ingredients in parentheses. It’s essential to pay attention to those parentheses first; it’s always a form of deception.</p>