"Chocolate breakthrough" sounds like a euphemism for something unpleasant, but in this case it's good news: Swiss scientists report successfully making chocolate with the entire cocoa fruit rather than just the beans.
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.
This could improve the efficiency and economics of the process and enable sustainable production and decolonialize the industry. Yay!
Mr Mishra was partnered in his project by KOA, a Swiss start-up working in sustainable cocoa growing. Its co-founder, Anian Schreiber, believes using the entire cocoa fruit could solve many of the cocoa industry's problems, from the soaring price of cocoa beans to endemic poverty among cocoa farmers.
"'Instead of fighting over who gets how much of the cake, you make the cake bigger and make everybody benefit," he explains.
Right. There's been a chocolate breakthrough and it's definitely going to trickle down.
