Sometimes, I still get a craving for “junk food.” I mean, I knew it was not good for me (thus the name “junk”) but it was so yummy. When I had a bad day at work, I’d stop at a convenience store and buy my favourite – a Mars Bar. It’s a layer of nougat, with a layer of caramel on top, and all of this is deliciously coated with milk chocolate. I loved the Mars Bar. So when I had a craving for one recently, I decided to look at what exactly I had been putting in my body. What the heck are the Mars Bar ingredients?
The Top 3 Mars Bar Ingredients
So, the first listed ingredient is not only sugar, it’s four different sugars. There is regular sugar, then corn syrup, then lactose, and finally malted barley extract. We recently did an entire blog series on added sugars, and looked at the many risk factors of them. There are 31 grams of sugar in a Mars Bar. Now, the one thing I will say for a Mars Bar is that no one thinks it’s good for you. I mean, I never ate one and thought I was improving my health. But, exactly how bad can it be? Read on!
Next on the list is milk ingredients. So, why do they list milk this way? A milk ingredient is any component of milk that producers isolate or alter. But, it is not altered chemically. Its make up is the same as the original source. So this could include butter, buttermilk, milk – any combination of the original source. But, manufacturers list it this way so they can change it between batches – depending on the availability and cost of the product. You’re never quite sure what you are exactly getting.
The next ingredient – modified palm oil. This is a vegetable oil that manufacturers process so the fat is more solid at room temperature. This is where trans fats was popular – until nutrition experts waged a war on them. There is a lot of questions about whether these modified plant-based oils are better than trans fats, but so far they are more accepted.
The Cocoa Plant
The next three ingredients include parts of the cocoa plant – not surprising since it is a chocolate bar. So, let’s break down the process a little bit. The producer harvests the plant and roasts the beans. This separates the hull from the nibs. The nibs are then ground into a paste and processed to separate the fat from the solid parts. These nibs contain about 50% fat and 50% solids. There is fat extracted, which is the cocoa butter – which is the next ingredient in the list. It gives chocolate a smooth texture.
The next of the Mars Bar ingredients is cocoa mass. What the heck is that? It is also called cocoa liquor, which contains absolutely no alcohol, but you can see why a company that caters to children wouldn’t want that listed in their ingredients. Cocoa mass is the solids that come from the separating of the fats and solids in the nibs.
Finally on the cocoa list is cocoa powder. When the solids are further pressed and more fat taken from the mass, it turns to a cake. The cakes are then pressed and it becomes a powder.
The final Mars Bar Ingredients
Then we have salt. There is only 80 mg of salt in a Mars Bar, which isn’t a lot really. Health professionals recommend that people take in less than 2300 mg a day, so the total sodium count is about 3% of your daily intake.
Soy lecithin is next, and it is a food additive made from soy. However, most research agrees that there is so little actual soy in it, you should be fine even if you have a sensitivity to soy. Soy lecithin makes the chocolate easier to work with. This is also the purpose of the cocoa butter, but soy lecithin is a cheaper option.
Dried egg white is next on the list. I’m assuming (and you know what assuming does) this is a part of the nougat for a Mars Bar. The purpose of using dried egg white rather than real eggs is that this ingredient has a longer shelf life and it tends to blend well with other dry ingredients.
Last but not least of the Mars Bar ingredients is the artificial flavours. They are artificial, meaning they do not come from an actual food source. They are chemically the same as the food source, but manufacturers make them in a lab. For some reason, this is a cheaper option.
Do I Still Miss Mars Bars?
Well, yeah. Because no matter what crap is in them, the combination of Mars Bar ingredients taste good. But knowing the exact process of making them does make it easier to pass them up as I approach the cashier at a store. On the website, it says Mars Bars have a shelf life of 52 weeks, but they acknowledge that it can vary. What kind of actual food would last 52 weeks without freezing them? None.
I’m kind of picking on Mars Bars here because they were my favourite. But all chocolate bars are similar in their ingredients and processes. No matter what dietary lifestyle you choose, chocolate bars just aren’t a part of a healthy one. I choose not to take in that many chemicals and sugars in my diet. I’m not judging those who do – but I hope people will become informed of exactly what they are putting into their bodies.
Wendy
