6 chocolate brands sold in Australia that you should AVOID at all costs! (And What to Buy Instead)

6 Chocolate Brands Sold in Australia to AVOID At All Costs! (The Truth About Your Favourite Bars)

Is the chocolate you are eating even real chocolate anymore? After weeks of research into ingredient lists, cocoa percentages, and supply chains, this investigation exposes the shocking truth about Australia's chocolate industry. Some of the most popular brands have quietly replaced cocoa butter with cheap vegetable oils and palm fat. They use an emulsifier called PGPR that reduces cocoa butter by up to fifty percent. And a disturbing portion of the world's cocoa is still linked to child labour in West Africa.

Australians spend over three billion dollars on chocolate every single year. The average Aussie consumes nearly five kilograms annually. But most of that money flows directly to multinational corporations in America, Switzerland and Europe—while the chocolate your parents enjoyed simply does not exist anymore.

Brands examined include Cadbury Dairy Milk (acquired by American multinational Mondelez in 2010, recipe changed to include PGPR, iconic Claremont factory in Tasmania closed in 2015 with 450 workers losing their jobs), Nestlé chocolate bars like Kit Kat and Smarties (at the centre of child labour controversies for decades, sugar listed as first ingredient instead of cocoa), Mars, Snickers and M&Ms (a 2020 report found 1.56 million children engaged in child labour in cocoa production in Ghana and Ivory Coast—Mars pledged to eliminate this by 2005, a deadline pushed back repeatedly for over twenty years), Lindt (marketed as premium Swiss chocolate but includes vegetable fat in milk chocolate varieties and is produced at industrial scale, not by artisan chocolatiers), supermarket home brands (many classified as compound chocolate which replaces cocoa butter entirely with vegetable fats like palm oil), and any chocolate containing palm oil (the single biggest driver of deforestation in Indonesia and Malaysia, destroying an area equivalent to 300 football fields of rainforest every hour).

Learn why PGPR allows manufacturers to reduce expensive cocoa butter by up to fifty percent, why compound chocolate cannot legally be called "chocolate" under Australian Food Standards, and why palm oil creates that waxy mouthfeel that prevents chocolate from melting properly at body temperature.

Quality chocolate uses real cocoa butter, lists cocoa mass in the top two ingredients, and breaks with a clean audible snap. Support genuinely Australian chocolate makers like Haigh's Chocolates (Adelaide family-owned since 1915, bean-to-bar production, no palm oil or PGPR), Koko Black (founded Melbourne 2003, high quality couverture chocolate), Pana Chocolate (certified organic, palm oil free, Fair Trade certified), and local bean-to-bar makers like Bahen & Co, Monsieur Truffe, and Chocolate on Purpose.

Your purchasing power matters. Every time you choose Australian-made chocolate over multinational confectionery, you support local jobs, ethical supply chains, and actual chocolate—not vegetable oil with chocolate flavouring.

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DISCLAIMER: This video is educational content only, not intended to defame any brands. All information based on publicly available court records, published industry research, university studies, and consumer advocacy reports. AI-generated images used for illustration.