Is milk chocolate "fine" to feed dogs, while dark chocolate is toxic for them? No, that's not true: A professor told Lead Stories that both kinds of chocolate are toxic for dogs. Milk chocolate has less of the toxic compound in chocolate, theobromine, than dark chocolate but it does have it. The Food and Drug Administration does not recommend feeding any type of chocolate to dogs.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on Threads on September 1, 2024. It read:
Milk chocolate is fine for dogs, It's dark chocolate that is toxic.
This is what the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: Threads screenshot taken on Wed Sep 4 14:04:39 2024 UTC)
The post did not include any evidence for this claim.
Lead Stories contacted Karyn Bischoff, an associate professor at the College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell University. In two September 4, 2024, emails, she wrote that she does not recommend feeding chocolate to dogs. We have condensed the main points of both into one paragraph for brevity:
... both types of chocolate are technically toxic to dogs, but dark chocolate is MORE toxic than milk chocolate ... The toxic chemical in chocolate is called theobromine ... Theobromine is present in all forms of chocolate and the darker the chocolate, the higher the amount of actual chocolate in a product, and therefore the higher the concentration of theobromine. Unsweetened baker's chocolate and cocoa powders, which are the closest to pure chocolate, have the highest concentration of theobromine, dark chocolates a little less, milk chocolate even less, and white chocolate the least. Therefore, it takes very little unsweetened baker's chocolate or cocoa powder to cause poisoning in dogs, and a little more dark chocolate, but the theobromine is more dilute in milk chocolate and it will take a lot more milk chocolate ... The effects of theobromine on dogs are extreme nervous stimulation, which may cause tremors or seizures, and stimulation of the heart muscle.
She continued to say that all that considered, there are other ingredients in chocolate like xylitol, sugar and fat that can cause extreme intestinal issues and pancreatitis, so she doesn't recommend feeding chocolate to dogs in general. Lead Stories previously fact checked a claim that peanut butter with xylitol is toxic for dogs.
An article by the Food and Drug Administration echoes the statement that theobromine is toxic in dogs and can cause vomiting, diarrhea and in some cases, death.
More Lead Stories fact checks on claims concerning dogs are here.
