Ritter Sport is told its new no-sugar bar is not chocolate

The German chocolate manufacturer Ritter Sport is embroiled in a row with food law regulators after being told it cannot call its latest creation a chocolate bar because it contains no sugar. The company, which has been producing chocolate at its factory near Stuttgart for more than 100 years, has been told the new bar contravenes Germany’s strict cocoa regulations. The so-called Kakao-Verordnung deems that anything labelled as chocolate must contain cocoa mass, cocoa powder, cocoa butter and sugar. But Ritter’s new bar, called Cacao y Nada (cocoa and nothing) is 100% cocoa, sourced from its own plantation in Nicaragua. It is sweetened with cocoa juice, which is naturally found in the pulp of the cocoa bean.