Being Allergic to chocolate sounds like a cruel joke, like the perfect example of an April fool prank but it really does exist. That’s the bad news. The good news is that a true allergy to pure chocolate is very rare and that the bad reactions we may experience when eating chocolate are almost always to other ingredients to which we can find alternatives.

Symptoms from eating chocolate confectionary

Asthma, hives and all the other allergy symptoms can be triggered when eating chocolate in confectionary – both in sweets and cakes. As said above nearly all of this is to other ingredients such as nuts, wheat, soya, corn syrup and various food additives that food manufacturers use to help them prepare and preserve their products.

That leaves us lovers of chocolate with a detective job of finding out which ingredient we are truly allergic to. Finding a source of high quality pure chocolate is a good start because being able to enjoy pure chocolate and be symptoms free is a good incentive to find out what other ingredient is triggering the allergic reactions.

Is it the nuts? That should be pretty easy to check. If you know or suspect you are allergic to nuts as many are then simply avoiding nut chocolate should do the trick.

Is it the cockroaches? There are food regulations restricting the level of allowed body parts of pests of all sorts. This is a simple recognition that piles of food in a warehouse cannot be totally free of such contaminants. Chocolate being made from cocoa beans starts its life in a warehouse…

Whether this represents a significant allergen is a moot point but it is a significant yuck factor.

Is it the soya or the milk? Both of these are significant allergens in themselves so the symptoms we get could easily be from either and pure dark chocolate does not generally have either of these ingredients.

Finally let’s say a little about that sweet tooth we all have. Food companies know that adding sugar makes most food more tasty to most people. They also know that some people like to regulate their sugar intake. One way to sweeten food is to add corn syrup or high fructose corn syrup – it is cheap and gets the job done. It also adds to your waistline in a different way to ordinary sugar and is increasingly coming under fire from health and diet conscious Doctors.

Becoming a chocolate detective is well worth a little effort given the amount of pleasure that chocolate can give. Standard store bought chocolate is likely to be packed with allergenic ingredients so a shift to a pure chocolate product may well give you all the health and enjoyment of chocolate and none of the risks.