Good News for Your Diet
By DEBORAH KYBURZ, ETH ZURICH
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| The illustration shows the utilization of the entire cocoa fruit. Credit: Kim Mishra |
ETH researchers have developed a type of chocolate that is more sustainable and nutritious than conventional varieties.
Cocoa-fruit chocolate uses cocoa fruit jelly
as a replacement for powdered sugar, reducing the sugar content and increasing
the product’s nutritional value.
This new chocolate recipe also has the
potential to diversify the income sources of small farmers.
The primary components of chocolate are cocoa
mass and cocoa butter, both of which are derived from the cocoa fruit. However,
there are many other useful ingredients in the cocoa fruit that are largely
underutilized in traditional chocolate recipes.
In a new Innosuisse project, researchers
from ETH Zurich are collaborating with
sustainability-focused chocolate start-up Koa, and Swiss chocolate manufacturer
Felchlin to create a new chocolate recipe that maximizes the use of the whole
cocoa plant. This new recipe is healthier, more sustainable, and increases the
profitability of cocoa cultivation.
Crafting the Perfect Chocolate Recipe
The cocoa fruit is very similar to the honeydew melon. “These fruits have similar structures. Both have a hard outer shell that reveals the flesh of the fruit when cut open, as well as the cocoa beans or melon seeds and pulp in the interior,” explains Kim Mishra, lead author of the team’s Nature Food publication.
While traditional chocolate production uses only the beans,
the new cocoa-fruit chocolate recipe incorporates the fruit’s flesh and parts
of its shell—the endocarp—into a powder mixed with pulp to create a cocoa gel.
This gel, which is naturally very sweet, serves as an excellent substitute for
the powdered sugar typically added to chocolate.
However, perfecting this recipe was challenging. The researchers had to balance the texture and sweetness of the chocolate carefully, ultimately determining that up to 20 percent of the cocoa gel could be used without creating a clumpy texture.
The experiments showed that chocolate may contain up to 20 percent gel, which equates to the sweetness of chocolate with 5 to 10 percent powdered sugar. In comparison, conventional dark chocolate can easily contain between 30 and 40 percent powdered sugar.
Sensory Testing and Health Benefits
To test the sensory experience of the new recipes, trained panelists from the Bern University of Applied Sciences taste-tested pieces of chocolate weighing 5 grams each, with some containing various amounts of powdered sugar and others containing the new variety sweetened with cocoa gel.
“This allowed us to empirically determine the
sweetness of our recipe as expressed in the equivalent amount of powdered
sugar,” says Mishra.
Chocolate made with cocoa gel as a sweetener
has more fiber and less fat than standard dark chocolate made with powdered
sugar. It has 15 grams of fiber per 100 grams, while average chocolate only has
12. Additionally, cocoa-gel chocolate only contains 23 grams of saturated fat,
whereas standard dark chocolate contains 33.
“Fibre is valuable from a physiological
perspective because it naturally regulates intestinal activity and prevents
blood sugar levels from rising too rapidly when consuming chocolate. Saturated
fat can also pose a health risk when too much is consumed. There’s a
relationship between increased consumption of saturated fats and increased risk
of cardiovascular diseases,” explains Mishra.
Economic and Sustainable Impacts
Small-scale farmers can diversify their product offerings and increase their income if other components of the cocoa fruit can be marketed for chocolate production instead of just the beans. If most of the fruit can be used to produce cocoa-fruit chocolate, only the shell remains, which is traditionally used as fuel or composting material.
“This
means that farmers can not only sell the beans, but also dry out the juice from
the pulp and the endocarp, grind it into powder, and sell that as well,” said
Mishra. “This would allow them to generate income from three value-creation
streams. And more value creation for the cocoa fruit makes it more
sustainable.”
Future Directions
However, cocoa-fruit chocolate will not be hitting grocery store shelves anytime soon. “Although we’ve shown that our chocolate is attractive and has a comparable sensory experience to normal chocolate, the entire value creation chain will need to be adapted, starting with the cocoa farmers, who will require drying facilities,” says Mishra.
“Cocoa-fruit chocolate can only be produced and sold on a large scale by chocolate producers once enough powder is produced by food processing companies.” The first step has been taken: ETH has filed a patent for its cocoa-fruit chocolate recipe.
The development of cocoa-fruit chocolate is a promising example of how
technology, nutrition, eco-compatibility, and income diversification for small
farmers can all work in tandem to improve the entire value-creation chain of
the cocoa plant.
Reference: “Valorization of cocoa pod side
streams improves nutritional and sustainability aspects of chocolate” by Kim
Mishra, Ashley Green, Johannes Burkard, Irina Gubler, Roberta Borradori, Lucas
Kohler, Johannes Meuli, Ursina Krähenmann, Jotam Bergfreund, Armin Siegrist,
Maria Schnyder, Alexander Mathys, Peter Fischer and Erich J. Windhab, 21 May
2024, Nature Food.
DOI: 10.1038/s43016-024-00967-2