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Scientific innovation is taking chocolate into a more sustainable and healthier sphere; in sync with today’s wellness culture and the fight against climate change. In this sense, a group of scientists recently discovered a new way of making chocolate with these properties, without the need to alter its original taste.
In a new report published in the May issue of Nature Food, the team from the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich University details how they reimagined the chocolate-making process to give it a more nutritious result using pieces of the cocoa plant that are usually discarded during production.
According to the article, the team developed a method to ‘reuse the pectin-rich and often discarded endocarp of the cocoa pod’, turning it into a gel by using ‘cocoa pulp juice concentrate to replace traditional sugar from sugar beet’. This, in turn, resulted in a chocolate that has a higher fibre content than the average European dark chocolate (15 grams versus 12 grams) and less saturated fat (23 grams versus 33 grams).
And for those who are wondering if the taste is still sweet, the answer is yes, it is comparable to traditional chocolate, after a series of tests and experiments with experts who analysed and tested it with different amounts of sugar.
Sustainable progress
Finally, this new chocolate is also influenced by its sustainable component. The team conducted a life-cycle analysis of chocolate, and showed that if this form of chocolate were to be produced on a large scale, it could reduce land use and have a significant climate impact compared to the production of classic dark chocolate.
The aim is for this chocolate to end up in grocery shops around the world, even if this means starting to reshape the way cocoa is grown, making this patent-launched chocolate a desired reality in the near future.
