UK officials issue urgent warning over Dubai-style chocolate bars

Social media is as much about selling you a pristine fantasy of high-society living as it is about telling your nan what you had for lunch. On there, Dubai’s a glossy, uber-wealthy mecca for showing off exorbitant wealth and luxuries of which most mere mortals can only dream.

There is one Dubai-adjacent luxury that’s pretty easy to come by, however, and it’s taken TikTok by storm: Dubai-style chocolate.

If you haven’t seen it for yourself, it’s a bar of chocolate with a pistachio filling. Sounds simple, but this little taste of the high life is so popular that it’s being imported for sale by some retailers, and others are releasing their own dupes of the stuff to satisfy demand.

The green-centred chocolate is very much in vogue (Smith Collection/Gado / Contributor/Getty Images)

However, with the flurry of imported options that weren’t originally intended for sale in the UK, they don’t necessarily meet our standards for ingredients listing and restricted additives.

In the UK, all sold foods must feature warning labels about potential allergens along with a full ingredients list. The Food Standards Agency (FSA) has warned of a number of Dubai-style chocolate products that don’t meet these requirements, along with noted that they may contain ingredients that aren’t cleared for use in the UK.

Professor Robin May, Chief Scientific Advisor to the FSA, said most food is safe, but Dubai-style chocolate products in particular ‘don’t meet our standards and could be a food safety risk, especially for consumers with allergies’.

Pistachios are, for example, a nut, and so incorrect labelling poses a clear risk to nut allergy sufferers if they aren’t made fully aware of what Dubai-style chocolate contains. Other allergens may be present, too.

Where these products crops up, the FSA is working closely with local authorities to ensure follow-ups are carried out and that action is taken where appropriate. It’s also sharing its concerns with retailers to encourage these products’ removal from sale.

The FSA added that it’s working to uncover the scale of the problem whilst also working with allergy charities to raise awareness of the potential risks.

There are 14 regulated allergens under UK law, including: celery, cereals containing gluten , crustaceans, eggs, fish, lupin, milk, molluscs, mustard, peanuts, sesame, soybeans, sulphur dioxide and sulphites, and tree nuts

Any imported foods intended for sale to UK customers must display their full ingredients along with highlighting the presence of any of those regulated allergens.

The labels must also be in English, along with including the product’s weight in grams, a use-by date, and the name and address of whichever company produced the information.

Demand for Dubai-style chocolate is high (Smith Collection/Gado / Contributor/Getty Images)

"The vast majority of food in the UK is safe, but some imported Dubai-style chocolate products don’t meet our standards and could be a food safety risk, especially for consumers with allergies,” said Professor May.

"If you are looking to buy Dubai-style chocolate, we advise sticking with trusted retailers, like the ones you’d use for your weekly shop, as products are more likely to be made for UK consumers and so are safe to eat."