White chocolate contains no cocoa solids, so purists don't consider it real chocolate.

Chocolate gets its color and much of its characteristic flavor from cocoa solids, the ground, non-fat part of the cacao bean. White chocolate is made from cocoa butter, the pale fat extracted from the same bean, mixed with sugar and milk solids but no cocoa solids at all — which is why it’s ivory-colored rather than brown and tastes distinctly different from milk or dark chocolate.

Because it lacks cocoa solids, some food regulators and chocolatiers have argued it shouldn’t be labeled “chocolate” at all. In practice, most countries, including the United States and the European Union, do legally recognize white chocolate as a category of chocolate as long as it meets a minimum cocoa butter content, so the debate remains more a matter of culinary opinion than food law.