Cocoa is becoming increasingly expensive, but now Swiss researchers have found a way to utilize more of each cocoa bean. As a result, the chocolate becomes healthier.
Chocolate is produced by roasting the cocoa bean and then grinding it into a cocoa mass. The mass consists of cocoa fat and the actual cocoa, which is then mixed with sugar and milk depending on the type of chocolate the manufacturer wants to produce.
However, the price has skyrocketed over the past year, partly due to poor harvests in West Africa as a result of unfavorable weather, forest fires, and diseases spreading among cocoa plants.
Naturally Sweet
Now, researchers in one of the top chocolate-producing countries, Switzerland, have developed a new type of chocolate blend that can facilitate the supply of raw materials when it dwindles.
By utilizing the inner part of the shell and more of the fruit pulp, and then mixing these parts, they have obtained a gel-like mass that works well in chocolate production. This chocolate gel is also naturally sweet, which, according to the researchers, means that less sugar needs to be added to the final product.
After a series of tests where test subjects performed blind tests, they found that by making chocolate with 20 percent of the gel, they achieved a good consistency that also had a sweetness similar to regular dark chocolate.
The chocolate that was most popular among the test subjects also had 20 percent more fiber than an average dark chocolate and contained 30 percent less saturated fat.
More Sustainable
According to the researchers, who have published their results in Nature Food, this means that farmers can utilize and sell more parts of the beans.
"This way, we can also make cocoa more sustainable," says the study's lead author Kim Mishra, in a press comment.
However, before the new type of gel chocolate reaches the store shelves, a lot of work remains. The new production method requires cocoa farmers to acquire new types of equipment and adjust their production flows.
