It appears that more and more Europeans are putting "healthy chocolate" high on their shopping list- or at least their shopping lists- but can there be such a thing? According to data collated by the Zurich-based chocolate company Barry Callebaut, 27% of people in Belgium, Switzerland, France, Germany and the UK buy some sort of "functional" chocolate each month- meaning chocolate that claims to contain a health benefit of some sort.

The market research company Euromonitor reports that the market for "functional foods" has grown by an average of 15% each year over the past four years, and over a quarter of us want the "bad" food we eat to be good for us in some way. Types of so-called "healthy chocolate" include those which are pumped full of antioxidant polyphenols; others are good for teeth because they include derivatives from honey and pure sugar cane; and there's even pro-biotic chocolate to aid digestion and promote a healthy gut.

This craze, however, has not been entirely without stumbling blocks. In the USA, Mars was threatened with legal action by the Food and Drug Administration because it was promoting a "heart-healthy" chocolate that wasn't so healthy at all. Their new product, CocoVia, actually had such high levels of saturated fat that the claims that it provided "real heart health benefits" were inaccurate.

The European Union Commission is currently creating a list of approved health benefits that can be advertised. However, the medical journal The Lancet warned consumers away from functional foods, stating that manufacturers currently do not have to state the content or the amount of the "functional" ingredients. One example of this is that chocolate manufacturers that claim to produce antioxidising chocolate rarely let us know the real flavonol content. In fact, flavonol is extremely bitter and would ruin the good chocolate taste if too much was added, so we can never be sure how much flavonol really goes in.

Isn't it a better and more logical solution to choose foods that have a natural health benefit? It might be true that foods that haven't been deliberately tampered with in the first place will have a more potent effect. It's crazy to think that we would reach for a chocolate bar to improve the condition of our skin or to aid with our digestion!