Chocolate Bars

A chocolate bar is a confection in bar form comprising some or all of the following components: cocoa solids, cocoa butter, sugar, milk. The relative presence or absence of these components form the subclasses of dark chocolate, milk chocolate, and white chocolate. more...

In addition to these main ingredients, it may contain emulsifiers such as soy lecithin and flavors such as vanilla.

A candy bar (called a chocolate bar in British English, where the word candy refers specifically to sugar candy, and in Canadian English) is a form of confectionery usually packaged in a bar or log form, often coated with chocolate, and sized as a snack for one person. But within that term, a wide variety of products exist, ranging from solid chocolate bars to multiple layerings or mixtures of ingredients such as nuts, fruit, grains in various forms, coconut, marzipan, marshmallow, caramel, nougat, cookie, toffee, peanut/peanut butter, fondant, and fudge.

Certain brands of candy bars are made for nutritional supplementation purposes. These bars contain protein and various vitamins while still retaining a sweet taste. The PowerBar brand candy bars would fit into this category.

History

Up to and including the 19th century, candy of all sorts was typically sold by weight, loose, in small pieces that would be bagged as bought. The introduction of chocolate as something that could be eaten as is, rather than used to make beverages or desserts, resulted in the earliest bar forms, or tablets. At some point, chocolates came to mean any chocolate-covered candies, whether nuts, creams (fondant), caramels, or others. The candy bar evolved from all of these in the late-19th century as a way of packaging and selling candy more conveniently, for both buyer and seller. This "convenience" did not include price, of course, as the buyer had to pay for the packaging. It was considerably cheaper to buy candy loose, or in bulk.

Read more at Wikipedia.org