Is this the end of the chocolate biscuit?

Chocolate or "chocolate-flavoured"?

Whether you like to dunk them in a cup of tea or enjoy them as a sweet treat in your lunch box, for lots of us chocolate biscuits can be tricky to turn down.

Chocolate digestives have been made by the company McVitie's here in the UK for around 100 years now - with 80 million packets sold each year.

Of course, there are lots of different types of biscuits and bars, but you might start seeing a certain flavour popping up a bit more often... chocolate!

So, that's treats which are labelled as "chocolate flavour" because the amount of cocoa they contain has been reduced because of the rising price of chocolate.

Read on to find out more...

Why will there be more "chocolate flavour" products?

For a product to be called a chocolate bar or biscuit there are certain rules in place when it comes to the amount of cocoa that must be in the product.

But with the price of cocoa going up, the manufacturers - so the people making the treats - need to find ways of changing their product to keep prices down for the customer.

McVitie's Club and Penguin bars can no longer be sold as chocolate biscuits because of a change to their ingredients.

The people that own the company say they are using a "chocolate flavour coating" rather a "chocolate coating", but say tests show they still have the "same great taste as the originals".

Why is the price of chocolate rising?

Chocolate is made from the cocoa plant and a lot of cocoa is grow in Ivory Coast and Ghana in West Africa.

As the weather gets hotter and drier in these countries, it becomes much more difficult to grow cocoa there.

Another issue is that there is a disease spreading on some of the farms which is causing the plants to rot.

Ultimately this means that there is less cocoa, so the price goes up and that means the price of chocolate goes up too.

The increase in price of cocoa is affecting manufacturers of lots of different bars and biscuits.

Other companies have also had to change the labelling of their products too, to try and stop the price increase going onto costumers buying the treats.

What do you think of "chocolate flavour" biscuits rather than chocolate biscuits? Let us know in the comments...