Chocolate-makers have started to experiment by introducing weird flavours such as cauliflower and recipes that pander to health concerns to keep the plain chocolate bar on everybody's must-eat list.

"It may be doom and gloom for everybody else, but for us all is well," said Gilles Marchal of luxury French chocolate-maker La Maison du Chocolate, speaking as the annual Paris chocolate show opened Wednesday.

"Chocolate is a comfort-food," he added. "There has been no drop in sales."

On the eating front, the Swiss are the world's top consumers, according to France's Chocolate-Makers Union, with a whopping 12.3 kilogrammes per person per year.

Germans mop up 11.2 per person, Britons 10.3 and Belgians 9.3. But while the Japanese adore dark chocolate, the Chinese hate it and in fact continue to turn up their noses at bars of pure chocolate, preferring confectionery instead.

At the yearly chocolate show, organiser Sylvie Douce said this year's trend was fair trade chocolate. "More and more consumers are aware of the problems facing cocoa producing nations," she said.

Traceability was a growing concern, Marchal added, with consumers "checking the products used, reading the labels and the origins, and interested in who is involved in the transformation process."

Chocolate-lovers too are now demanding high levels of cocoa, said Douce.

"A decade ago people couldn't swallow chocolate with 90 percent cocoa. Now they want less sugar and cream and more cocoa because they believe it's better for their health."