The sweet treat with the highest number of calories in the edible universe

Battle of the chocolate bars

I once asked a question on my Facebook page: what’s the sweet treat with the highest number of calories you can buy from a supermarket? I offered a 6-month Substack premium subscription to the person who gave the right answer.

There were over 350 comments. Only one answer was correct…

✅ CALORIMETRY

Before I tell you the right answer, I would like to help you understand a few basic things related to calories in products.

• 1 gram of sugar = 4 calories.

• 1 gram of oil = 9 calories.

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• 100 grams of sugar = 400 calories.

• 10 grams of oil = 900 calories.

The most calorie-dense food (that is also edible) in the universe is oil, ranking at 900 calories per 100 grams.

I mentioned “edible” because 1 gram of Plutonium = ~20,000,000,000 calories.

No other food in a supermarket than oil can have more that 900 calories per 100 grams.

✅ MILK CHOCOLATE

The basic ingredients in chocolate are sugar, cocoa and cocoa butter. If you heat up the butter, it will become oil.

Meaning chocolate is in reality a mix of sugar and oil.

The more sugar a 100 gram bar of chocolate will contain, the less room you’ll have for oil.

For example, a staple favorite around the world: Toblerone chocolate. It’s renowned worldwide as containing 60% sugar.

So that mountain you see on the wrapping is actually “a mountain of sugar”.

In essence, “milk” chocolate is actually a product containing 50 grams of sugar (minimum) and a few grams of milk powder.

Such a chocolate product sells for around 8 RON (1.6 EUR) – considering it contains 60% sugar, that’s some overpriced sugar you’re paying for.

What I wanted to show you is this 100 gram chocolate bar contains:

• 60 grams of sugar

• only 29 grams of fat

• everything amounts to 529 calories.

I just checked the stats for Milka. It has the same composition, same number of calories, but it sells for 4 RON (0.8 EUR).

✅ DARK CHOCOLATE 90%

Dark chocolate 90% means basically 90% cocoa beans with a bit of added sugar and a bit of vanilla or soy lecithin.

Ingrediens: cocoa mass, cocoa butter, low fat cocoa powder, sugar, vanilla.

What I wanted to show was that this 100 gram bar of chocolate contains:

• 14 grams of sugar

• but 55 grams of fat

• everything amounts to 593 calories.

✅ SUGAR-FREE CHOCOLATE

Fancy sugar-free chocolate don’t have a lower calorie count than classic chocolate because they contain more cocoa butter (100% healthy but extremely rich in calories).

Text on the product is in Romanian, but you can surely recognize words such as “premium quality” or “green sugar”

A 100 gram, sugar-free chocolate bar contains:

• 11 grams of sugar

• 47 grams of fat

• everything amounts to 532 calories.

✅ BATTLE OF THE CHOCOLATE BARS

Let’s do the classification of the 100-gram chocolate bars the comments mentioned. I personally checked the official pages of the producers for the information on ingredients.

These are chocolates you can likely find in any supermarket in Europe (and probably other regions as well) so the classification remains relevant for most of you.

So let’s start revealing our finalists:

• With 529 calories – Toblerone milk chocolate;

• With 532 calories – Green Velvet sugar-free chocolate;

• With 539 calories – Nutella;

• With 566 calories – Kinder eggs;

• With 593 calories – dark chocolate 90%;

• With 621 calories – Raffaello (contains 50% oil);

• With 648 calories – Bio dark chocolate 92% from Vivani

• With 668 calories – Vegan dark chocolate 100% from Vivani;

AND THE WINNER…