A European country has developed a method for making healthier chocolate.

Sugar is replaced with puree from cocoa pod pulp and husks

Healthier and more environmentally friendly chocolate could appear on store shelves after Swiss scientists and chocolatiers developed a recipe in which sugar is replaced with plant waste.

Photo: freepik.com

By grinding the pulp and husks of cacao pods, rather than just taking the beans, the scientists created a sweet, fibrous gel that could replace the sugar in chocolate, according to the report.

The researchers found that this «whole food» approach to making cacao beans produced a more nutritious product than regular chocolate and used less water.

«The cacao fruit is essentially a pumpkin, and right now we're only using the seeds,» explains Kim Mishra. «But there are so many other great things about this fruit.»

The researchers used the pulp and juice of the cocoa fruit to make a gel that can be added to chocolate instead of the traditionally used powdered sugar. As a general rule, “adding moisture to chocolate is completely useless because you are essentially ruining it.” Mishra points out that they violated one of the most sacred rules of chocolate making. He added that the findings could make chocolate healthier and more environmentally friendly, as well as give farmers a new source of income.

The study found that in laboratory conditions, the new method used 6 percent less land and water, but increased planet-warming emissions by 12 percent because it required an additional drying step that consumed large amounts of energy. But by scaling up the process and drying the pulp in the sun or using solar panels, they found that greenhouse gas emissions could be reduced.

Alejandro Marangoni, of the University of Guelph's food science department in Canada, said the study was a «pretty comprehensive» proposal that now needed to be tested in a pilot project.

Farmers in tropical countries often reap only a small share of the profits generated by the $100 billion chocolate industry. Since pulp processing must take place in the countries where the cocoa is grown, Marangoni said the biggest benefits would accrue there.

Chocolate — One of the most polluting foods a person can eat, it ranks on par with some meats in terms of greenhouse gas emissions per kilogram of product. Mishra and his colleagues decided to reduce the amount of waste in the production process and found that they could also make it healthier.

But for chocolate lovers, the bittersweet discovery is that the new product lacks the ability to finely «taste tuning» that the industry prizes for powdered sugar.

«The sweetness of the gel is comparable, but does not reach the same level. When preparing this chocolate, it is important to maintain a balance – if you add too much sweetening gel, your chocolate will not be suitable for processing; if you don't add enough, your chocolate won't be sweet enough,” — explains the technologist.

Despite this, he emphasized that the chocolate made in the laboratory was “essentially identical” to the chocolate produced in the laboratory. dark chocolate is similar in texture and taste to aromatic dark chocolate from South America.