Because of its presence in popular drinks, caffeine is doubtlessly the most widely consume of all behaviorally active drugs.
Because caffeine occurs naturally in cocoa beans, it is found in all chocolate products.
Because many people eat chocolate in large quantities it is clearly a dietary source of caffeine though a much smaller source than coffee or tea.
Cocoa butter, chocolate liquor and baking chocolate contain 0.21% of caffeine, while milk chocolate contains 0.02% of caffeine.
It was reported that a piece of chocolate cake on average contains 13.8 mg caffeine, nut fudge brownie 7.7 mg caffeine and half a cup of chocolate pudding 5.5 mg caffeine. 2/3 cup of chocolate ice cream contains 4.5 mg caffeine. (Morgan 1982 Reg. Toxic. Pharmacol. 2.296-307)
Caffeine in chocolate
The word chocolate is derived from the Aztecs names for the tree, and for the drink they prepared from the beans. These words live on in Mexican today as ‘choclatl’ for the drink and ‘cacauatl’ for the tree. Chocolate was first cultivated as a crop, by ancient Mesoamerican peoples. They used cacao beans to create a frothy chocolate drink flavored with spices.
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