Does the legendary chocolate brand cater to plant-based consumers? Here’s a look at whether Lindt’s dark chocolate is vegan or not.
Ah, Lindt. Who doesn’t love a good old truffle wrapped in colourful toffee-like packaging and marketed by a chocolatier who also happens to be a sex symbol?
Oh and then there are the Lindt Excellence bars, with varying percentages of cocoa and some well-matched flavours. But while the milk and white chocolates have, you know, milk, is the Lindt dark chocolate vegan?
It should be a simple question, but there’s a lot more to it. While dark chocolate bars are a favoured chocolate product for vegans, they aren’t always plant-based.
Why all dark chocolate is not vegan
Even if it’s 70% cocoa, dark chocolate isn’t necessarily dairy-free. We’re not talking about chocolate bars filled with salted caramel — even plain or sea salted dark chocolate can have dairy products in it.
Dark chocolate will typically contain cocoa mass (the chocolate itself), cocoa butter (which is plant-based), sugar (depending on how dark it is), and soy lecithin (an emulsifier). So far so good, but many of these bars contain milk in different forms: milk fat, skimmed milk powder, or just milk itself.
Therefore, a perfectly good bar of high-quality dark chocolate from the counter may not be vegan-friendly. So always check the ingredient list to be sure. As with many products, the shorter the ingredient list here, usually the better for vegans.
Is Lindt dark chocolate vegan?
So, with that in mind, does the dark chocolate made by Lindt also contain milk, or is it suitable to eat for plant-based chocolate fanatics?
Well, yes and no. While Lindt does do vegan chocolates, many of its dark chocolates do contain the aforementioned milk products. All of the Lindt Excellence milk chocolates contain dairy, and all of the Lindor range contains milk, but here are the non-vegan dark chocolate bars the company manufacturers in the UK (all of them contain anhydrous milk fat, unless specified):
Lindt Excellence 78% Cocoa
Lindt Excellence Cherry Intense
Lindt Excellence Roasted Hazelnut
Lindt Excellence Mint Intense
Lindt Excellence Chilli
Lindt Excellence Raspberry Intense
Lindt Excellence Orange Intense
Lindt Excellence Honeycomb
Lindt Excellence Coconut Intense
Lindt Excellence Lime Intense
Lindt Excellence Sea Salt
Lindt Excellence Caramel & Sea Salt (also contains lactose and skimmed milk powder)
Lindt Excellence Cranberry, Almond & Hazelnut
Lindt Excellence Orange & Almond 70% Cocoa (contains lactose)
Lindt Les Grandes Hazelnut
Lindt Nuxor with Dark Chocolate (also contains whole milk powder)
Lindt Creation Dark Pistachio Delight (also contains whole and skimmed milk powders and milk protein)
Lindt Lindor Dark 60% Truffles (also contains whole and skimmed milk powders and lactose)
Lindt Dark No Added Sugar (contains whole milk powder)
Basically, anything that’s flavoured has milk fat in it. As for the vegan dark chocolate bars produced by Lindt, they’re only part of the Excellence range. Here are the vegan Lindt chocolate bars you can eat in the UK:
Lindt Excellence 70% Cocoa
Lindt Excellence 85% Cocoa
Lindt Excellence 90% Cocoa
Lindt Excellence 99% Cocoa/Cacao
Lindt Excellence Caramel & Sea Salt 70% Cocoa
Lindt Excellence Raspberry & Hazelnut 70% Cocoa
Lindt Cooking 70% Cocoa
Lindt Cooking 51% Cocoa
Other vegan Lindt products
Apart from these, Lindt also recently released vegan milk chocolate bars as part of its Hello range in three flavours: cookie, hazelnut, and salted caramel. Rolled out in November, the brand announced it was to only be available in Germany, but it has now made its way into the UK thanks to The Conscious Candy Company, which became the first British retailer to sell the vegan chocolates.
