Chocolate

Chocolate is a food item which provides a small amount of nutrition, filling a colonist's hunger meter by 10% per unit consumed. Unlike most other foods, it also grants a bonus to Recreation of 10% per unit. Contrary to the description, the chocolate requires no further processing and is directly harvested from the cocoa tree.

Acquisition

Chocolate can be acquired by planting cocoa trees after Cocoa is researched. The trees have a base Harvest Yield of 20 chocolate per harvest every 16 days, modified by the Plant Harvest Yield of the grower. Harvesting consumes the trees and they must be resown every harvest. Unlike in reality, no further processing is needed to create chocolate.

Chocolate can also be purchased from bulk goods traders, or occasionally arrive in cargo pods.

Summary

When eaten, chocolate provides 10% recreation of the Gluttonous type. It is worth 0.1 nutrition per unit, as opposed to 0.05 nutrition from most types of raw food. It cannot give food poisoning.

Unlike most other foods, it does not spoil. While it will still deteriorate if left outside and/or unroofed, it will not spoil even if left unrefrigerated.

Colonists will eat no more than 4 units of chocolate at a time. Manually directing troubled colonists to eat it when necessary is advised.

Analysis

Both chocolate and insect jelly can be used as a source of recreation in caravans. In a caravan, recreation is otherwise limited to some social activity when stopped and drug use. It could also be used in emergencies, where colonists need to do work but are recreation-starved.

Insect jelly and chocolate are the only nonperishable foods that high-ranking conceited nobles are willing to eat. They can act as a sort of "lavish survival meal". (Beer is technically nonperishable, but you can only drink so much before blacking out or getting addicted)

Compared to insect jelly

As a food item, insect jelly only provides 8% Gluttonous recreation and 0.5 nutrition per unit, both less than chocolate. It also has a 2% chance of food poisoning, unavoidable without the strong stomach gene. As a pure recreation item, chocolate is superior.

Insect jelly has 1/3 the weight per unit, meaning it's lighter. Overall, jelly has 66.7% the weight per nutrition and 26.7% weight per recreation %. The lighter weight may be useful in longer caravan trips, though with sufficient pack animals you may have enough carrying capacity for chocolate. Finally, insect jelly is more valuable - in the event that you need to sell things to a faction base, then jelly is superior.

However, the biggest difference between chocolate and jelly is means of acquisition. Chocolate requires both Tree Sowing and Cocoa to be researched. However, once researched, it can be grown at will, so long as growing conditions are met. Meanwhile, insect jelly requires an infestation. This first requires that an overhead mountain tile is available, and then you'll have to fight and/or farm the infestation in the first place. But larger infestations can result in massive quantities of jelly.

Ultimately, which option is preferable will depend on the circumstances of each individual colony, as well as player preference. A colony in a mountain will accumulate lots of insect jelly, but find it harder to grow cocoa trees. A colony in a flat map is unlikely to face an infestation, but can grow chocolate.