Choc Orange Bar

Brand: Sainsbury’s

Cost: 35p

Found at: Sainsbury’s

The packaging on this chocolate bar is highly suspect: “an alternative to milk chocolate.” There’s a lot of wiggle room in the word “alternative” when it comes to food – one might even say too much. It is also concerning that the bar itself is not described as “chocolate” but instead as “choc,” giving me flashbacks to the “flavored beverages” of my youth. It would be legally permissible for such vague wrapping to contain a chocolate-flavored brick made reused plastic bottles. It could be a chocolate-inspired culinary exploration of endangered red panda jerky. It could even be soylent green. I was concerned.

But, since I am by all accounts a trashy human being, it was only after eating the chocolate bar (and enjoying it immensely) that I checked the ingredients list. Fortunately, this is not plastic or panda or people: it’s just chocolate. As far as I can tell, the vague marketing was meant to convey that this is a gluten, wheat, and dairy-free chocolate alternative – not an alternative to chocolate. And I’m more than a little relieved, not so much because I now know that I am (relatively) ethically safe to eat this chocolate, but because even if this chocolate were unethical, I might still eat it anyway.

It’s really good.