We Tried Every Supermarket Chocolate Spread: Here's Our Honest Ranking

Last updated: June 2026

If you are hunting for the best supermarket chocolate spread, you have probably stood in the aisle for longer than feels reasonable, turning jars over, squinting at sugar lines, and wondering whether any of them are actually any good. We have done the squinting for you. We bought a jar of every own-brand chocolate spread on UK supermarket shelves, plus the lower-sugar contenders that sit next to them, and tried the lot on toast over a fortnight of breakfasts.

This is not a clean-eating lecture. It is a parent-tested ranking of what tastes good, what hides a worrying amount of sugar, what is decent value, and what is actually worth putting on your kids' toast on a Tuesday morning. The best supermarket chocolate spread, it turns out, is rarely the one with the loudest packaging.

How we ranked them

We bought every own-brand UK supermarket chocolate spread we could find — Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda, Morrisons, Waitrose, Aldi, Lidl and the Asda budget tier — plus the branded lower-sugar options that supermarkets stock alongside them. Each jar was scored on four things.

Sugar per 100g. The single number that matters most for kids. The NHS recommends no more than 19g of free sugars a day for four to six-year-olds, and 24g for seven to ten-year-olds. A heaped tablespoon of a standard chocolate spread can wipe out half of that in one slice of toast. We checked every label.

Ingredient quality. What is the spread actually made of? How much hazelnut, how much cocoa, how much oil, and which oils? Palm oil, rapeseed, coconut — they all behave differently and they all tell you something about how the product is built. We also looked at how many ingredients we did not recognise.

Taste. A chocolate spread can be the cleanest jar on the shelf and still taste like cardboard. We tried each one on the same white sliced loaf, no toppings, no judgement. Two adults, two children, four-week-running scorecard. Kids were not told which was which.

Value. Price per 100g, accurate at time of writing across the relevant supermarket websites. Spreads move around on price more than most groceries, so treat this as a snapshot, not a forever ranking.

[IMAGE: Flat lay of every UK supermarket chocolate spread tested, lined up on a kitchen counter with labels facing forward.]

The quick verdict — top to bottom

If you want the headline before the homework, here is how the supermarket chocolate spread shelf actually shakes out.

If you want the long version — and the reasoning behind the order — keep reading. The middle of the table is closer than the numbers suggest, and the bottom of the table is worse than the labels make obvious.

The lower-sugar trio at the top

Three spreads pulled clear of the field. None of them is technically a supermarket own-brand, but they all live on the supermarket shelf and they all do something interesting with sugar — which is the thing that defines the rest of the category.

1. JimJams Hazelnut Chocolate Spread

JimJams keeps winning these rankings for one reason: it has about a sixth of the sugar of every other spread on the shelf. According to the brand, JimJams contains around 8.7g of naturally occurring sugar per 100g and adds no refined sugar, sweetening instead with maltitol — a sugar alcohol derived from corn or wheat. JimJams confirms this in its own FAQ, where it also notes that maltitol can cause digestive discomfort in large amounts, which is the standard caveat for sugar alcohols.

Taste-wise, JimJams is sweeter than you would expect for the sugar number, which is the maltitol doing its job. It is a touch thinner than Nutella and the cocoa flavour is less rounded — but on a piece of toast at 7.42am, both adults and kids ate it without comment. That is the bar. It is also available in a 1kg "School Compliant" nut-free tub, which we cover in our complete guide to nut-free spreads in the UK.

2. Sweet Freedom Choc Pot

Sweet Freedom's Choc Pot is the only spread in the ranking that gets its sweetness from fruit. The ingredient list reads carob and apple extract, cocoa, creamed coconut, cocoa butter, rapeseed oil, natural flavours, sea salt — and that is the whole list. No palm oil, no emulsifiers, no maltitol, vegan. The sugar number (around 22g per 100g) is still not low, but it is a fraction of the standard category and almost all of it comes from fruit and is not added as cane sugar.

The taste is different — more cocoa, less hazelnut, slightly looser. Both kids in our house liked it once, were unsure the second time, and have settled into eating it without protest. The 250g pot is small for the price, which is the obvious trade-off. Sweet Freedom also launched a nut-free Hazelnot variant in 2025, sold exclusively at Asda, which is worth knowing about if your house has a nut allergy.

3. Pip & Nut Chocolate Hazelnut Spread

Pip & Nut is the premium pick. It is built like a nut butter that happens to taste of chocolate — Californian almonds, hazelnuts, sunflower seeds, agave syrup, cocoa mass, coconut and shea oils, sea salt. No palm oil, no emulsifiers, no flavourings, around 23g of sugar per 100g.

It is the best-tasting spread in the test by a clear distance — proper nut flavour, real cocoa, the texture of a soft praline. The kids ate it. The adults ate more of it than they meant to. The price is the wrinkle — it costs roughly two to three times what an own-brand jar costs, gram for gram. If you only buy a chocolate spread once a month, that is fine. If your seven-year-old is going through a jar a fortnight, it gets expensive fast.

The big middle — supermarket own-brand chocolate spreads

And then we hit the middle of the shelf, which is where most of the country actually shops. Seven of the eight supermarket own-brand chocolate spreads we tested are functionally the same product. The first three ingredients are sugar, vegetable oil and 13% hazelnuts in almost every case. The sugar number lands somewhere between 53g and 57g per 100g across the board. There are real differences, but they are differences in the margins, not the headline.

Here is the standard own-brand formula — the one Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda, Morrisons, Aldi and Lidl all share, with small variations:

Sugar, rapeseed oil, hazelnuts (13%), palm oil, fat-reduced cocoa powder (7–9%), skimmed milk powder, whey powder (milk), emulsifier (lecithins), flavouring.

That is the spec sheet of a standard supermarket chocolate spread. Below, we walk through what the differences actually are — and which jar wins the race within the pack.

4. Waitrose Essential Hazelnut Chocolate Spread

Waitrose Essential has the cleanest ingredient list of any of the standard own-brand spreads. It drops the whey powder and uses sunflower lecithin instead of soya. The sugar number is the same as everyone else's (~55g) and the hazelnut content is the same 13% — but it is the shortest label in the supermarket own-brand category, and that counts for something if you are trying to keep the family pantry simpler. Taste is fine, unspectacular, slightly less sweet than the Tesco or Sainsbury's equivalent.

5. Morrisons Hazelnut & Chocolate Spread

Morrisons is the only one that adds inulin, a soluble fibre often used to bulk out the texture and modestly raise the fibre line on the label. It does not change the sugar content. The Morrisons jar uses soya lecithins rather than sunflower, so it is worth flagging for soya-sensitive households. Taste is on par with Sainsbury's and Tesco — somewhere between the two on sweetness.

6. Sainsbury's Hazelnut Chocolate Spread

Sainsbury's specifies RSPO-certified sustainable palm oil on its label, which matters if palm oil sourcing is on your radar. The formula is otherwise the bog-standard own-brand recipe — 13% hazelnuts, 7% cocoa, sugar as the first ingredient. Taste is reliably middle-of-the-pack — slightly sweeter than Waitrose, less rounded than Aldi.

7. Tesco Hazelnut Chocolate Spread

The Tesco jar is the supermarket chocolate spread most UK households have eaten at some point. Same 13% hazelnut spec, same sugar level, same emulsifier. There is nothing wrong with it and nothing particularly distinguishing about it. It is also widely available in a smaller 400g jar, which is helpful if you are not committed to powering through a kilo before the use-by date.

8. Asda Hazelnut Chocolate Spread 750g

Asda's standard hazelnut spread is the same formula as the rest, but the 750g jar is one of the best value-per-gram options in the entire test — usually undercutting the equivalent Tesco or Sainsbury's pack by a clear margin. If you have decided the standard own-brand is what your house wants, the Asda 750g is the smart way to buy it.

9. Aldi Nutoka Hazelnut Chocolate Spread

Aldi's Nutoka jar uses a slightly higher cocoa proportion (around 9% rather than the 7% you see at Tesco and Sainsbury's), which comes through as a faintly more bitter, more chocolatey flavour. The kids in our test liked it. It is also one of the cheapest standard jars on the shelf — a few pence less than Tesco and Sainsbury's, similar to Lidl's Choco Nussa. If price is the deciding factor and you want the standard formula, this is a strong pick.

10. Lidl Choco Nussa Chocolate Hazelnut Spread

Lidl's Choco Nussa is virtually identical to Aldi's Nutoka in spec — 13% hazelnuts, 7.5% cocoa, palm and rapeseed oils — with one difference: dried glucose syrup is on the ingredient list, which the others mostly omit. That is not catastrophic, but if you are watching for the kind of ultra-processing markers we describe in our parent's no-nonsense guide to ultra-processed food, it nudges this one slightly down the pack.

11. Asda Just Essentials Chocolate Hazelnut Spread

Asda Just Essentials is the cheapest chocolate spread on the supermarket shelf, and the ingredient list shows you why. The hazelnut content is unspecified on the front of the jar and minor in the ingredients list — well below the 13% you get from every other own-brand. Maltodextrin appears as the third ingredient. Sugar is the first ingredient. Cocoa powder is down to 5%.

What you get is a spread that tastes more of sweet vegetable oil than of hazelnut or cocoa, with a slightly artificial finish. We can see why it exists — if a jar of chocolate spread is the difference between toast and no toast, no-one should be lectured for buying it. But of the supermarket chocolate spread options on offer, this is the one where you can taste the corners being cut. If budget is the constraint, the Aldi Nutoka or the Asda 750g standard jar are a better way to spend the same pound.

Where Nutella sits in all this

You will notice we have not ranked Nutella. That is because Nutella is its own category — the benchmark every other jar is measured against, and the one most UK kids meet first. According to Action on Sugar's 2017 sweet spreads survey, the leading brand and supermarket own-label chocolate spreads contain on average 56.3g of sugar per 100g — Nutella sits at the top of that average. The maths is brutal: two slices of bread with chocolate spread can deliver around 24g of sugar, which is the entire daily maximum free sugar intake for a seven to ten-year-old.

Nutella does not need a review from us. It is good. Kids like it. It is also one of the highest-sugar, palm-oil-heavy options on the shelf, and the only reason it does not rank lower on this list is that we restricted the field to supermarket own-brand jars. If you are choosing between Nutella and the standard own-brand spread next to it, the nutritional difference is small and the price difference is large. We compare it head-to-head against the main lower-sugar contenders in our Nutella vs JimJams vs Sweet Freedom comparison.

How to actually use this ranking

If you have got this far, the supermarket chocolate spread shelf is now a less confusing place. Here is how we would use the ranking ourselves.

For a lower-sugar weekday jar: JimJams is the obvious pick if your kids accept it (and most do, especially if they have not grown up on Nutella). Sweet Freedom Choc Pot is the next move if you want to skip the maltitol.

For a treat jar: Pip & Nut wins, every time. The price-per-gram is steeper, but it is the only one of the bunch that tastes like a deliberate product rather than a category exercise.

For everyday own-brand: The standard supermarket jars are functionally the same. Waitrose Essential has the cleanest label, Aldi Nutoka is the best value for the spec, and Asda's 750g is the best big-jar buy. If you are not fussy and want the cheapest acceptable jar, the Aldi or the Tesco 400g will do the job.

For a nut allergy household: Skip the entire ranking above and start with our complete guide to nut-free spreads in the UK. JimJams now does a nut-free 1kg tub, Sweet Freedom Hazelnot is nut-free by design, and a homemade sunflower seed chocolate spread is increasingly the easiest option.

The thing the supermarket shelf does not show

If you take a step back, the chocolate spread aisle has a structural problem. Eight out of ten jars on the shelf are the same product wearing different labels — about 55g of sugar per 100g, 13% hazelnuts, the rest oil, cocoa powder, milk solids and an emulsifier. The HFSS advertising restrictions that came into force in January 2026 acknowledge that this is a category mostly built on sugar.

The interesting end of the shelf is the lower-sugar end — and right now it is small. JimJams holds it on its own at the mass-market level. Sweet Freedom and Pip & Nut sit slightly above on price and slightly differently on sweetener. The space for a fresh, lower-sugar, no-palm-oil, ingredient-led chocolate spread for kids — with a sunflower seed nut-free variant for school lunchboxes — is wide open, which is part of the reason we are paying close attention to it.

It is also why we cover making your own at home, with five-ingredient recipes that beat the standard own-brand jar on every front except convenience. The shelf does not have a perfect option yet. The kitchen counter is starting to.

Related reading:

• The best healthy chocolate spreads for kids in the UK
• Nutella vs JimJams vs Sweet Freedom: which is actually healthiest
• What's really in your kids' chocolate spread: an ingredient breakdown
• Is chocolate spread healthy? What parents actually need to know
• Is your chocolate spread ultra-processed? How to check