LOWERING THE BAR

Penguin and Club bars are no longer legally chocolate - and they're not the only ones. Hannah Twiggs investigates how quiet recipe tweaks have changed Britain's favourite treats

- Hannah Twiggs

In Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Violet Beauregarde chews a stick of gum that tastes like tomato soup, roast beef and blueberry pie. It's a miracle of flavour engineering - until it turns her into a blueberry. Pleasure without substance always has consequences.

Now, the same thing is happening in Britain’s chocolate aisle. Two of the nation’s best-loved chocolate biscuits - Penguin and Club - are no longer legally chocolate. Their coatings contain so little cocoa that they’ve been quietly downgraded to “chocolate flavour”. The slogan that once promised “a lot of chocolate on your biscuit” has been rewritten to “a lot of biscuit in your break”.

The change, according to McVitie’s owner Pladis, was made to “minimise the impact of rising costs on consumers”. Its new coating swaps cocoa butter for palm and shea oils. Under UK law, a product must contain at least 20 per cent cocoa solids or cocoa butter to be described as chocolate - which feels like a suspiciously low, well, bar. You wouldn’t get away with selling a chicken breast that was 80 per cent filler, although give it time and someone probably will.

They’re not alone. KitKat white and McVitie’s white digestives can no longer be labelled “white chocolate” either, while Wagon Wheels have long been sold as “chocolate flavour”.