Faced with the explosion of prices, scientists created chocolate without cocoa

“Between 700 and 800.” That’s how many recipes Anna-Lena Krug and her team of German food scientists tested before arriving at a product that looked, felt and tasted like chocolate, but wasn’t. This alternative, which replaces the cocoa bean with oats and sunflower seeds, is called ChoViva. The American startup Planet A Foods is at the origin.

“The goal of ChoViva is not to completely replace chocolate”, Max Marquart tells NPRcommercial director of the company he co-founded with his sister Sara. Planet A Foods targets less the – more difficult to imitate – square of chocolate than chocolate as an ingredient in a product. Max Marquart cites, for example, chocolate bars, ice cream and breakfast cereals.

The Marquarts claim to be able to produce ChoViva at the same price as chocolate, and with considerably less carbon dioxide emissions since its ingredients are not transported by container ship from a few distant countries. “Cocoa beans generally only grow in the so-called cocoa belt, in certain countries around the equatornote Sara Marquart. They require a very specific climate. Oats, on the other hand, grow almost anywhere where it is neither too hot nor too humid.

Because chocolate is profoundly threatened by global warming, beyond contributing to it. More than half of cocoa beans come from Ivory Coast and Ghana. These two African countries located just above the equator are bearing the brunt of extreme weather phenomena accentuated by the climate crisis. “It’s a double problemdeplores Sara Marquart. First, cocoa beans only grow in a limited region. Segundo, the plant is very sensitive to global warming.”

All the taste comes from fermentation

As recently as the fall of 2023, Ivory Coast and Ghana suffered record torrential rains followed by endless droughts, inflicting fungal infections on trees. The cocoa fruits have rotted. Global production has collapsed. The price of the bean has increased sixfold. Result at the end of the chain: certain bars are sold twice as expensive as at the start of 2023. On average, the increase in chocolate prices in France is contained between 5 and 15% according to estimates.

Planet A Foods’ efforts are therefore timely. They had been working on cocoa-free chocolate for three years. Months of failure finally bore fruit in 2021, when a consumer test proved conclusive for the first time. An important first step which allows the young company to convince new investors as well as a first distributor in Germany.

To defend the possibility of chocolate without cocoa, the speech is well rehearsed. “If you have ever tasted a raw cocoa bean, you will realize that its aroma has almost nothing to do with the classic square of chocolate”says food scientist Anna-Lena Krug. In fact, chocolate gets its taste from the fermentation and roasting of the cocoa bean.

Anna-Lena Krug and her colleagues tried a hundred other ingredients, including apricot pits, olive pits, jackfruit seeds and potato peels before settling on oats and seeds. sunflower. Added among other things are milk and shea butter. As in a cocoa-based recipe, the brown mixture is then poured into a conch machine which standardizes it and releases the acids to obtain the texture and flavor of chocolate.

And Plant A Foods doesn’t plan to stop at ChoViva. The startup is working on an alternative to palm oil that it should market next year. Initiatives that join a more global movement of alternatives making it possible to save rare foodstuffs or to pollute less. Fermentation is once again at work in Germany, in the United Stateset in Singaporewhere companies have already developed beers brewed with wastewater.

Source: www.slate.fr