Cadbury Lite vs. Cadbury Dairy Milk

Posted by in Chocolate Reviews on March 29 2007 | Leave A Comment

Several years ago, a few ‘lower fat’ chocolate bars were let loose in Australia, but most of them (i.e. ‘Flyte’) never really took off (pun intended). However, two types are still around, but remain very low key: Mars Lite (which essentially turns a 60g bar into 40g – hey presto, it’s lower in fat) and Cadbury ‘Lite’ with ‘Lower Carb’ as the main feature.

Naturally, anything called ‘Lite’ as a deliberate mis-spelling is not legally bound to be lower fat, lower sugar, lower salt, lower anything. It can be compared to labelling a bucket of nuclear waste ‘Sayfe Enuff for U’. Also, the bar is flatter and slimmer than the regular 250g Dairy Milk block, so it is designed to make you think it is lighter, healthier, better. Yeah, right, plus being triple the price per kilogram compared to the good old, reliable, always-there-for-you dairy milk might lure a few suckers in, thinking that they’re paying for higher quality.

With this rather negative frame of mind, I nervously snapped off a couple of squares and slowly chewed. It was pretty good actually. If it was a blindfold test I’d still be able to detect that it was ‘Cadbury something’ but know that it wasn’t quite as creamy and melt-in-the mouth as dairy milk. Almost a kind of cheaper, Easter Egg-style chocolate or the stuff swept up from the floor and then re-melted to cover over marshmallows or broken crunchie pieces (also known cynically to me as ‘Chocettes’).

Then it was time – after inhaling the rest of the 75g bar – to flip over the wrapper and look at the ingredients.

Cadbury LiteCadbury Lite – per 100g:

  • 1690 kilojoules
  • 29.7g fat
  • 7g of carbs of which 5.5g are sugars
  • Ingredients: isomalt, polydextrose, full cream milk powder, cocoa butter, cocoa mass….

What on earth is isomalt and polydextrose and what were they doing being the two main ingredients? In addition, having powdered milk coming in at number three on the list of ingredients would most certainly indicate that this recipe wouldn’t have the standard ‘Glass and A Half of Full Cream Dairy Milk in Every 200g Block’ quality we’ve all long come to expect from Cadbury.

Then it was on to the never-say-die, your-friend-till-the-end, perennially-faithful even though you may wander through the fields of unfaithfulness via Lindt, Nestle, Baci and Haighs – the stayer of them all – Cadbury Dairy Milk.

Dairy MilkCadbury Dairy Milk per 100g:

  • 2200 kg energy (hmm, these were called ‘kilojoules’ in the Lite bar)
  • 29.5g fat
  • 57.2g carbohydrates of which 55.8% are sugars
  • Ingredients: full cream milk, sugar, cocoa butter, cocoa mass, milk solids, emulsifiers….

Alrighty then. So at least I could understand what I was eating – a good old honest serve of milk, sugar and cocoa butter with only about 0.2g more of fat than the ‘lite’ version. This had a much better taste but with more ‘carbs’ and made me realise that the ‘lite’ version wasn’t a patch on the original – it was just being a pale imitation for the carbophobes still amongst us.

What’s wrong with carbs anyway? Hasn’t the anti-carb coalition-of-the-willing since admitted that there were no Carbs of Mass Destruction in our Dietary World, and that it was fats and sugars that were the main threats to our lives as we knew it? Well, I hope so – I’d much rather eat cocoa butter and sugar than isomalt and polydextrose.

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Comments On This Post

  1. Heh, the carbs are from the milk. Those of us low-carbing it stick to Lindt 70% bars 😉

  2. Elisa

    I love chocolate!

  3. rod strang

    im sorry dairy milk is just too milky for me,its a big no no, i honestly could not eat another chocolate lump such as this, i would rather smother my genitals in fishpaste and dangle them in a pool of pirahnas than eat another chocolate poop like this

  4. WOULD SOMEONE TELL ME HO MANY GRAMS OF SUGAR IS IN A REGULAR BAR OF DAIRY MILK!!!!!!

    pwease???

  5. chocodude

    umm i thinks it like 29.7 or something?

  6. addicktedd_to0h_chocolate

    heyy ii love chocolate so0 much its so0 umm && im so0 fat coz ii eat chocolate 24/7 anywaiiz im goin to eat 4 big blocks of chocolate baii

  7. addicktedd_to0h_chocolate

    heyy its me again ii love this site it makes me crave for choclate xXxxxxxxXxxxxxXxxxxxXxxxXx

  8. river

    I used to buy cadburys but several years ago it began to taste a little different from the chocolate i had always loved. Perhaps sacrificing quality a bit to make more profit? Anyway, I rarely buy plain cadbury now, preferring the filled varieties, and mostly I now go to Haighs instead.

  9. i dont find cadburys as nice as it used to be it think there must be so much rubbish going into them now! its crazy, i now buy filled bars as there is less of the choclate in them.

  10. ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh yeyh for my birth day all i git is chocolate but like iiiiiiiiiiii looooooooooooooooove chocolate i have nearly gone mental over it
    keeeeeeeeeeeep eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeating it ittttttttttttts yuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmmy
    love me
    XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

  11. Roy

    Of course in your review you haven’t taken any account that this sort of chocolate might have a purpose. That being thos of us who are unfortunate to be Diabetic, not through any fault of our own.

    So chocolate that isn’t carb loaded is essential to us, unless you think we just shouldn’t have it full stop?

  12. Dom (Chocablog Staff)

    Roy – this kind of chocolate does have a purpose – a marketing purpose. And I’m not convinced it’s suitable for diabetics anyway. There’s little point in producing a “lite” version of a product if it doesn’t taste nice. You’d probably be better off finding a high quality very dark chocolate than filling your body with rubbish.

    Oh – and I’m editor of Chocablog and spent six years on a highly restrictive diet while I was on dialysis, where chocolate was completely forbidden-so I do have some experience of this kind of thing.

  13. sasti gowtham

    it is very tasty………

  14. Cadbury Lite Lower Carb

    Being on the low carb diet i use your lite chocolate in alot of receipes for my husbanb and myself.However lately I haven’t been able to purchases it from the super markets. Could you please let me know if the product will return to the shelves and when, and if not is there an alternative.

    Regards Margaret King.

  15. himna

    i love cadbury dairymilk.

  16. Carolyn

    Good write-up, I enjoyed your sense of humour. Listen, some people have health problems and they simply do not tolerate sugar well. Not only diabetics and those with hypoglycemia but people with fibromyalgia have been studied and they usually feel better on a low-carbohydrate diet. All of us in these categories appreciate that the food industry is trying to make good products that we can enjoy, especially chocolate!

    Please read up on the latest news: more and more studies are validating the low-carbohydrate diet as the best for our health, whether you have a health condition or not. Dr. Atkins was right! Good fats (olive oil, canola oil) are NOT the enemy, sugar is. Considering the weight and health problems that are running rampant all over the world, even in poorer countries, it is clear that people are eating too much, and eating the wrong kind of food (sugar and grains).

  17. This review really is not that help full and poorly researched – if you want to tell us not to eat scary isomalt and polydextrose,why not actually look them up and tell us what is so terrible about them rather than just advising that you like to eat foods you understand. Your carb rant is stupid, while some people do take it to far the fact is that more carbs equal potentially over eating and turning those carbs into fat. Im a chocoholic and while the light choc does not taste as good, its not that much of a downgrade and compared to other light chocolates on the market its fantastic. polydextrose is soluble fiber – which is good for you and keeps you feeling fuller for longer than regular chocolate. The whole report sounds entirely based on opinion. If your only research consists of eating some chocolate and you have no knowledge of dieting and the medical conditions that require block of chocolate like this then don’t even bother listing the ingredients as you clearly don’t know what they actually mean for your body. Isomalt is an ingredient in artificial sweetener – the largest danger from it is diarrhea if you overeat – and this is not because its poisoning you its just because the body treats it as fiber which when combined with the polydextrose (fiber) in this chocolate means that you should not eat more than 50g in one day 25g for children – there is controversy over the danger of artificial sweeteners – causing headaches and a very long list of other symptoms but there is little conclusive research to back this up and if you try it a react poorly simply stop eating it.

  18. shubham

    is there egg in cadbury dairy milk

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