Posted on 08/28/2024 6:08:43 AM PDT by Red Badger
Imagine picking up a nice juicy apple - but instead of biting into it you keep the seeds and throw the rest away.
That's what chocolate producers have traditionally done with the cocoa fruit - used the beans and disposed of the rest.
But now food scientists in Switzerland have come up with a way to make chocolate using the entire cocoa fruit rather than just the beans - and without using sugar.
The chocolate, developed at Zurich’s prestigious Federal Institute of Technology by scientist Kim Mishra and his team includes the cocoa fruit pulp, the juice, and the husk, or endocarp.
The process has already attracted the attention of sustainable food companies. They say traditional chocolate production, using only the beans, involves leaving the rest of the cocoa fruit – the size of a pumpkin and full of nutritious value - to rot in the fields.
The key to the new chocolate lies in its very sweet juice, which tastes, Mr Mishra explains, "very fruity, a bit like pineapple".
This juice, which is 14% sugar, is distilled down to form a highly concentrated syrup, combined with the pulp and then, taking sustainability to new levels, mixed with the dried husk, or endocarp, to form a very sweet cocoa gel.
The gel, when added to the cocoa beans to make chocolate, eliminates the need for sugar.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
“God really is miraculous.”
and man is very stupid.
Yeah that’s it
modern science comes to chocolate
Not really. It apparently took us a while to get the full force of the things He has given us, but the fact that the food was already complete finally was discovered.
Scary. And we don't need the BBC or "sustainable food companies" to improve on the chocolate bar.
No, that died in a recent plane crash.
Sure, why leave the fruit to rot but how many toxic chemicals will be in this new chocolate?
“I would expect the husk to have the most lead and cadmium.”
So that’s what the Cadmium Bunny uses to make the Easter chocolates?
LOL. That is hilarious.
That is a corporate suicide mission.
Food companies have been reducing the amount of sugar in chocolate for three decades.
I finally gave up on Hershey giant almond bars a year ago.
First, they changed the chocolate recipe for the giant bar, then reduced the total sugar, then reduced the almonds, and then raised the price several times.
Next, I will give up on Nature Valley Oats and Honey granola bars. Several reductions in honey. Several price increases since Covid.
Full disclosure - I am a life long runner. My body tries to convert everything I eat to sugar, anyway.
But, Hershey and Nature Valley have taken all the enjoyment and satiety out of actually eating sugar.
Nothing says you can’t make your own..............
https://minimalistbaker.com/healthy-5-ingredient-granola-bars/
Hopefully they are removing the arsenic from the apple seeds.
I have never cooked. Zero interest. Zero motivation.
It is very frustrating when companies that make exceptional products - like food and clothing - consciously decide to reduce quality and raise the price.
If you rely on someone else to make your food, then at some point they will stop.
Making granola bars isn’t exactly ‘cooking’.
It’s basically buying all the ingredients you like, putting them all in a bowl, mixing them together and spreading them out of a cookie sheet or baking pan, let harden then cut to size you want.
AND IT’S WAAAAY CHEAPER!
Just like making Rice Krispy Treats.............
That sounds like a lot of extra processing. How will all that affect climate change? /s
Doesn’t seem like a bad idea. If the fruit part of the cacao plant has 14% sugar by weight that’s a brix of 14 sugar cane has a brix range of 15 to 23 for comparison. They are not distilling like alcohol sugar doesn’t distill via vapors. They are reducing the liquids squeezed out of the pulp like you would reduce a sauce on the stove you simmer it at 180 degrees or so and drive the water vapor off. Reducing the volume by half would up the brix to 28 plenty sweet taking it to 1/4 would quadruple that brix and would rival sugar based molasses in sweetness all for just the trouble if squeezing the pulp and some kettles to simmer it in. In Switzerland there is two sources of sugar, sugar beets grown in Europe using large amounts of fertilizers and mechanized agriculture. The other source is Brazil which is known to clear cut rainforest to plant sugarcane crops. Turning a waste product into what is effectively sugar syrup while improving the economics of the farmers who grow cacao is win win.
I would imagine they could use vacuum reduction as well...............
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