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 Despite what some people say, such candy does not taste better just
because the ingredients are organic, according to experts. The
manufacturing process plays a major part.
Andy Ciordia, owner of The Secret Chocolatier in Charlotte, North
Carolina, says consumers are most likely to notice that
mass-produced chocolates using a cacao solution taste flatter than
those made on a smaller scale and with natural ingredients.
Among the best-known organic brands are Dagoba from Hershey Co,
Green & Black's from Mondelez International Inc's Cadbury and
Newman's Own.
To be called "organic," a chocolate bar must consist only of
certified organic ingredients. That means pesticides and genetically
modified ingredients cannot be used.
Other chocolates, including the high-end and artisanal kind, may use
similar standards but simply lack the certification. Most of what
you find at fancy chocolatiers is not organic.
The certification costs money, which is one reason organic chocolate
costs more.
You can pay still more if you buy from the growing number of
bean-to-bar organic chocolate makers.
Acquiring beans from small co-ops and farms rather than the bulk
market and the time-intensive way to produce a chocolate bar results
in the big premium.
A typical 1.8-ounce bar made by Raaka Chocolate in Brooklyn, New
York, for example, retails for $7.99, or $4.44 an ounce.
At a Walmart store, though, you can find a 3.5-ounce organic Green &
Black's bar for 94 cents an ounce. Ounce for ounce, that is still
more expensive than what the chain charges for a premium Lindt bar,
which is not organic, at 71 cents or a giant bar of Hershey's
Special Dark for 29 cents.
But bean-to-bar chocolate is likely to have only two or three
ingredients, usually the beans and sugar, sometimes cocoa butter.
By contrast, a bar of Hershey Special Dark has sugar, chocolate,
cocoa butter, cocoa processed with alkali, milk fat, lactose, soy
lecithin, PGPR (emulsifier), vanillin, artificial flavor, milk.
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A MATTER OF PRINCIPLE
U.S. sales of organic chocolate and organic candy bars were up 16.5
percent in 2013, according to the latest Organic Trade Association
data.
That is quadruple the growth rate for the overall chocolate market,
says Curtis Vreeland, president of confectionery industry market
research firm Vreeland & Associates.
However, he notes, the organic side represents only about 1 percent
of the $20 billion U.S. chocolate market.
Perhaps that is because buying organic is more about principles than
product.
"The primary reason for purchasing organic chocolate is the social
and environmental motivation," says Carl Jorgensen, director of
global consumer strategy-wellness for the branding firm Daymon
Worldwide.
Amy Grey, 24, a writer for exercise bike retailer Spinning's website
in Venice, California, says eating organic chocolate makes sense.
"You wash your fruit and vegetables to get the pesticides off before
you eat them, but you can't really wash your chocolate to get rid of
those chemicals," Grey says. "Organic chocolate means no pesticides
and no harmful chemicals being put into your body."
(The author is a Reuters contributor. The opinions expressed are his
own.)
(Follow us @ReutersMoney or at http://www.reuters.com/finance/personal-finance
Editing by Lauren Young and Beth Pinsker)
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