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Can Your Chocolate Bar Be Keeping You Awake?

February 5, 2014 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

chocolate-candies-bigstock-47997032Do you hit the chocolate at night, or maybe mid-afternoon? Does your chocolate nibbling follow a chocolate dessert from earlier in the day, or a hot chocolate, or some samples of chocolate candy? And perhaps all of that chocolate indulgence was washed down by a couple (or more) cups of coffee.

At bedtime, sleep is downright elusive.  You wonder why you’re wide awake since you’ve been on the go all day.

Here’s a thought – your sleeplessness might, in part, be due to all of the caffeine not just in your coffee (or tea) but in your chocolate, too.  There isn’t a huge amount of caffeine in chocolate, but perhaps enough – especially if you’re a chocoholic – to help tip the insomnia scales when it’s combined with a day’s worth of other caffeinated food and drinks.

Caffeine And Chocolate

We’ve all heard that some chocolate – the darker the better – might have some health benefits. But here are a few facts about chocolate and caffeine that most people don’t know:

Chocolate contains caffeine – not enough to give you a big time boost, but depending on the type of chocolate, enough to register — especially if you’re working your way through some of those oversized bars or you’re stuffing in a bunch of fun-sized bars or chocolate Easter eggs.

It would take about 14 regularly sized (1.5 ounce) bars of milk chocolate to give you the same amount of caffeine that you’d get from an 8 ounce cup of coffee. Along with that little caffeine buzz you’d also be shoving in about 3,000 calories and more than 300 grams of sugar.  If you’re looking for caffeine, coffee seems like a better bet at about two calories for an 8 ounce cup (black, no sugar).

Dark chocolate has a higher caffeine content than milk chocolate, but it would still take four regular sized bars to get the same amount that you’d find in one cup of black coffee.

Something To Think About

If you have trouble sleeping, along with avoiding coffee before bed, you might want to think about the amount of chocolate you’re eating.

Something else to think about: getting kids (and some adults) to sleep on Halloween, Easter, and other chocolate heavy holidays might have a whole lot to do with both the sugar and the amount of caffeine in all of the chocolate candy.

How Much Caffeine?

Caffeine In Chocolate

  • Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Bar, 1bar/1.55 oz:  9 mg caffeine
  • Hershey’s Special Dark Chocolate Bar, 1 bar/1.45 oz:  20 mg caffeine
  • Hershey’s Kisses, 9 pieces:  9 mg caffeine
  • Hershey’s Special Dark Kisses, 9 pieces:  20 mg caffeine
  • Scharffen Berger Milk 41% Cacao, ½ bar:  17 mg caffeine
  • Scharffen Berger Extra Dark 82% Cacao, ½ bar:  42 mg caffeine
  • Dagoba Milk Chocolate 37% Cacao, ½ bar:  9 mg caffeine
  • Dagoba Dark Chocolate 73% Cacao, ½ bar:  36 mg caffeine

Caffeine In Coffee:

  • Coffee, generic brewed, 8 oz: 133 mg caffeine (range: 102-200; 16 oz, 266 mg caffeine)
  • Dunkin’ Donuts regular coffee, 16 oz:  206 mg caffeine
  • Starbucks Brewed Coffee (Grande), 16 oz:  320 mg caffeine
  • Coffee, generic instant, 8 oz:  93 mg caffeine (range 27-173)
  • Espresso, generic, 1 oz:  40 mg caffeine (range 30-90)
  • Starbucks Espresso, solo, 1 oz:  75 mg caffeine
  • Coffee, generic decaffeinated, 8 oz:  5 mg caffeine (range 3-12)

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Filed Under: Calorie Tips, Healthy Eating, Food Facts, Food for Fun and Thought, Holidays, Snacking, Noshing, Tasting Tagged With: caffeine, caffeine in chocolate, caffeine in chocolate candy, caffeine in coffee, chocolate

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