The short answer
No full-size chocolate bar is low in saturated fat: the 16 we compared had between 4g and 12g per bar, a third to nearly all of a 13g daily limit. Look at saturated fat per bar, and pick smaller bars and bars where nuts replace some of the chocolate.
Lowest in saturated fat per bar in our table:
- Snickers (UK 48g bar): 4g
- Snickers (US 52.7g bar) and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups (2 cups, 42g): 4.5g
- Galaxy Ripple (33g, UK): 5.7g, the smallest bar in the table
Highest: Bounty at about 12g per pack, from coconut. Plain milk chocolate bars like Cadbury Dairy Milk and Hershey's had about 8g.
Label data only, not medical advice
This ranking compares what each bar's nutrition label says about saturated fat and sugar. It isn't a health rating of any brand, and no chocolate here lowers cholesterol. Recipes change, so check the label on the bar you buy. If your doctor or dietitian has given you specific limits, follow those.
16 chocolate bars ranked by saturated fat
Each bar is compared as it's sold: one standard single bar or pack. Sharing-size dark chocolate blocks are compared on a 25g portion (a few squares). Bands: Better 2g or less, Occasional over 2g up to 4.5g, Treat over 4.5g, about a third of the American Heart Association's 13g daily limit or more. No full-size bar made it into the Better band.
| Snickers | 4g | 31% | Occasional |
| Snickers | 4.5g | 35% | Occasional |
| Reese's Peanut Butter Cups | 4.5g | 35% | Occasional |
| Galaxy Ripple | 5.7g | 44% | Treat |
| Milky Way | 6g | 46% | Treat |
| KitKat 4 Finger | 6.1g | 47% | Treat |
| Green & Black's Organic 70% Dark | 6.3g | 48% | Treat |
| Lindt Excellence 85% Cocoa | 6.7g | 52% | Treat |
| Twix | 7g | 54% | Treat |
| Twix | 7g | 54% | Treat |
| Kit Kat 4-finger bar | 7g | 54% | Treat |
| Kinder Bueno | 7.4g | 57% | Treat |
| Green & Black's Organic 85% Intense Dark | 7.5g | 58% | Treat |
| Cadbury Dairy Milk | 7.9g | 61% | Treat |
| Hershey's Milk Chocolate | 8g | 62% | Treat |
| Bounty Milk | 12.1g | 93% | Treat |
Nutrition data from Open Food Facts, available under the Open Database License (ODbL). Product names link to each product's Open Food Facts page.
What the ranking shows
- Peanut bars come out lowest per bar. In Snickers and Reese's, peanuts and peanut butter replace some of the chocolate, and peanut fat is mostly unsaturated. They're still high in sugar: a US Snickers has 28g.
- Plain milk chocolate is in the middle of the pack. A 45g Cadbury Dairy Milk or 43g Hershey's bar has about 8g of saturated fat, mostly from cocoa butter and milk fat.
- Wafer and biscuit bars aren't lighter. Twix and Kit Kat have 6 to 7g per bar, because the chocolate coating and the biscuit both carry fat.
- Coconut pushes Bounty to the top. Coconut fat is mostly saturated, so one pack uses up over 90% of a day's limit.
- Size matters as much as the recipe. Galaxy Ripple is high in saturated fat per gram but small, so one bar has less than a Dairy Milk. Sort the table by "Sat fat per 100g" to compare recipes rather than bars.
What about dark chocolate?
Per gram, dark chocolate has the most saturated fat in the table: 25 to 30g per 100g, against 17 to 19g for milk chocolate, because it has more cocoa butter. So 25g of 70 to 85% dark chocolate has 6 to 7.5g. That doesn't make it the worst choice. About a third of cocoa butter's fat is stearic acid, which has little effect on LDL, and dark chocolate has far less sugar and more fibre. Most people are also satisfied with less. Our guide to chocolate and high cholesterol covers the research.
How to choose a chocolate bar with less saturated fat
- Find the saturated fat line. In the US it's "Saturated Fat" on the Nutrition Facts panel. In the UK it's "of which saturates", given per 100g and usually per bar or portion.
- Check what counts as a serving. Twin packs like Twix, Kinder Bueno and Bounty sometimes list one finger as the portion, but most people eat the whole pack.
- Go smaller. A fun-size or mini bar has roughly a third to a half of the saturated fat of a full bar, which brings most of these under 2 to 3g.
- Be wary of coconut and "white" coatings. Coconut and extra milk fat push saturated fat up.
- Compare sugar too. Low saturated fat doesn't mean low sugar. Sort the table by sugar to see the trade-off.
Make your own instead
A dark chocolate fruit and nut bark lets you control the portion and fill it out with fruit and nuts, and a hot cocoa made with cocoa powder gives you the chocolate flavour with almost no fat. Both recipes are in our guide to chocolate and high cholesterol.
Check any bar before you buy it
Scan any product's barcode in Heart Tracker to see its saturated fat, then log it to see how a treat fits into your day alongside your cholesterol results.
Download Heart Tracker FreeHow we ranked them
We picked best-selling chocolate bars in the US and UK, plus two sharing-size dark chocolate blocks, and took each one's nutrition data from Open Food Facts, an open database built from product labels. To catch mistakes, we compared each product's current record with an earlier copy and left out any where the saturated fat, fat or sugar didn't match. That excluded the UK Mars bar, whose current record no longer matched a Mars bar's label (it listed 7.6g of fat per 100g, against 17g in the earlier record).
Single bars are compared at their pack weight. Dark chocolate blocks, which are meant to be shared, are compared on 25g. Percentages are of 13g, the American Heart Association's suggested daily limit for saturated fat on a 2,000 calorie diet. The NHS upper limit is 20g a day for women and 30g for men. US and UK versions of the same brand differ in size and recipe, so both are listed where we had data. The full dataset and the script that builds it are kept with this page and refreshed periodically.
Chocolate bars and cholesterol: quick answers
What is the best chocolate bar for high cholesterol?
No full-size chocolate bar is low in saturated fat. In our comparison of 16 bars, the lowest per bar were peanut bars: Snickers (4 to 4.5g) and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups (4.5g), because peanuts replace some of the chocolate. Plain milk chocolate bars had about 8g. A smaller bar or a fun-size version is the simplest way to cut the saturated fat.
Is dark chocolate better than milk chocolate for cholesterol?
Gram for gram, dark chocolate has more saturated fat than milk chocolate (25 to 30g per 100g against about 18g), because it contains more cocoa butter. About a third of cocoa butter's fat is stearic acid, which has little effect on LDL, and dark chocolate has less sugar and more fibre. Keep the portion small: 25g is a few squares.
Which chocolate bar has the most saturated fat?
In our table, Bounty, at about 12g of saturated fat per 57g pack, because coconut fat is mostly saturated. That's over 90% of the American Heart Association's 13g daily limit. Cadbury Dairy Milk and Hershey's Milk Chocolate had about 8g per bar.
How much chocolate can I eat with high cholesterol?
There's no set amount, but most standard bars use a third to two thirds of a 13g daily saturated fat limit. An occasional bar fits if the rest of your day is low in saturated fat. For a daily habit, a fun-size bar or one or two squares of dark chocolate keeps it to around 2 to 3g.
Does any chocolate lower cholesterol?
No chocolate bar in this comparison is a cholesterol-lowering food. Cocoa flavanols have been studied for heart health, but trials mostly used supplements or cocoa drinks, not chocolate bars, and the effects on LDL were small.
Sources
- Open Food Facts (product nutrition data, ODbL)
- American Heart Association: Saturated fat
- NHS: Fat, the facts
- Mensink RP. Effects of saturated fatty acids on serum lipids and lipoproteins: a systematic review and regression analysis. World Health Organization. 2016.
- Jia L, et al. Short-term effect of cocoa product consumption on lipid profile: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 2010.