Novel recipe

Swiss researchers develop healthier chocolate

Scientists from Zurich have developed a more sustainable and somewhat healthier chocolate.

(Bild: stock.adobe.com/[e-mail])

Researchers from Zurich have developed a more sustainable and also somewhat healthier chocolate. In addition to the cocoa beans, they used additional valuable ingredients from the cocoa fruit, which have hardly been used to date and now serve in part as sweeteners.

"Our process uses only cocoa pod components in the chocolate," reports the team led by Kim Mishra from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH) in the journal "Nature Food", which refers to the chocolate as cocoa fruit chocolate.

"It has a similar sweet taste to conventional chocolate and at the same time offers better nutritional value with more fiber and a lower saturated fat content." In addition, production "on a large scale can reduce land consumption and global warming potential compared to the average European dark chocolate production".

Cocoa bean only a small part of the fruit
As the cocoa bean (pictured below) only makes up a very small part of the fruit, the land area required and therefore the greenhouse gas emissions from the conversion of original tropical vegetation per bean are usually high.

(Bild: stock.adobe.com/Tebha Workspace)

"Therefore, increased utilization of other parts of the cocoa pod, such as the pulp and the cocoa shell, could not only contribute to income diversification for farmers, but also reduce the major environmental impacts during the cultivation phase," the researchers write.

The elongated cocoa fruit - also known as the cocoa pod - has a hard outer layer. If you cut open the fruit, you can see the shell and the cocoa beans lined up inside, each surrounded by light-colored pulp.

Cocoa jelly replaces granulated sugar
In the new process, the cocoa beans from Ghana were roasted, shelled, ground and sterilized as usual, resulting in the cocoa mass. The ETH team then used the inner part of the cocoa fruit shell and processed it into a powder.

(Bild: ETH Zürich/KimMishra)

This was then mixed with some of the pulp to create a sweet jelly. This replaced the granulated sugar normally added to the new chocolate. Despite the additional processing, according to the authors, this chocolate recipe is on average more environmentally friendly than the conventional one.

Less fatty acids, more fiber
According to the ETH, the cocoa fruit chocolate has a slightly higher fiber content than an average European dark chocolate thanks to the cocoa jelly used as a sweetener - 15 grams compared to 12 grams per 100 grams. It also contains only 23 grams of saturated fatty acids compared to 33 grams in an average European dark chocolate.

According to the scientists, the small farmers could use the new chocolate to market other components of the fruit and thus generate additional income. Only the outer skin of the fruit remains, which, according to ETH, is traditionally mainly used as fuel or composted.

It will be some time before the chocolate can be bought. After all, ETH has applied for a patent for the recipe for the cocoa fruit chocolate.