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January 22, 2005

Hot cocoa mix ()

by fluffy at 5:41 PM
On the side of a box of hot chocolate mix:
99.9% caffeine free
Does this mean that a 35-gram packet of cocoa mix is made up of 0.1% caffeine? Because if so, 350 35mg of caffeine is actually rather a lot...

Comments

#4319 01/23/2005 05:55 am Cool
What brand? Sounds right up my ally.
#4320 01/23/2005 08:54 am
Nestlé.

I'm pretty sure they meant that they'd removed 99.9% of the caffeine which naturally occurs in chocolate, though. Smile
#4322 01/23/2005 09:08 am
I think you missed a decimal place, that'd be 35mg, wouldn't it?
#4325 01/23/2005 09:40 am
You're right. Though 35mg is still rather a lot of caffeine; more than a cup of tea anyway.
#4339 01/25/2005 07:33 am Do they refer to volume or weight?
And did they round up or down or even truncate? 99.94% may have gotten rounded to 99.9%. 99.99% may have gotten truncated to 99.9%. Or maybe the precision simply isn't there, giving a significant possible deviance.

According to the caffeine faq, 1oz of baker's chocolate (a reasonable amount for a cup of hot cocoa if you're making it the old fashioned way) has 25mg of caffeine. That said, they give an estimate of 5mg of caffeine for an envelope of hot cocoa mix.