Have Swiss scientists made a chocolate breakthrough?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn47zg3xgxxo

by cmsefton • 2 years ago

61 79 2 years ago

bbc.co.uk

debacle2• 2 years ago

For those who don't want to read, they distill the cacao juice, mix it with the pureed husk, and then use that instead of sugar in the chocolate. The process is more expensive than using sugar itself, which is the cheapest part of chocolate production.

Then there's some romantic pontificating that this will somehow alleviate West Africa from modern day colonialism/child slavery or lower the price of chocolate.

So no, Swiss scientists have not made a chocolate breakthrough.

Buy your chocolate from companies that don't use child slavery, even if it's more expensive.

yunwal• 2 years ago

Just curious, what are those companies? Is fair trade a good indicator or just marketing?

xnx2• 2 years ago

There may be others, but this brand has made it their focus: https://tonyschocolonely.com/us/en/our-mission

mkesper• 2 years ago

Have a look here, table should be understandable without knowing german: https://makechocolatefair.org/nachhaltigkeitssiegel-fuer-sch...

As suspected, UTZ guarantees are weakest by far.

LtWorf2• 2 years ago

Buy your chocolate from companies that don't use child slavery, even if it's more expensive.

What if they use child slavery but pretend not to and just charge more? Plenty of those cases got revealed.

nervousvarun• 2 years ago

Know this article was concerned with fair labor, but heavy metals are also a concern with chocolate (at least for North America).

https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/heavy-metals-fou...

XzetaU8• 2 years ago

Indeed, heavy metals in chocolate is a real issue

a more recent CR test here: https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/a-third-o...

and one from Bryan Johnson (anti-aging tech millionaire): https://youtu.be/RzWWOQMLttE

Rinzler894• 2 years ago

Buy your chocolate from companies that don't use child slavery, even if it's more expensive.

Which are those? Because most of those "made from Fairtrade/ethically sourced cocoa" labels you see on most chocolate bars are worth exactly dogshit.

Moru2• 2 years ago

This one is a serious one [0]. It's a small local chocolate producer that has close contacts with other small cacao producers and buys directly from them.

[0] https://nordicchocolate.se/chokladbutik/

Oh, and the flavour and texture is great. Lindt has nothing on these ones :-)

okr• 2 years ago

Just curious, how to identify the companies, that use child slavery? Is there a logo on the packaging? How does it look like?

Vinnl3• 2 years ago

It's fairly hard to do, but the ones that make an effort will generally at least have the Fair Trade logo. (UTZ is an weak industry-initiated alternative that does not cut it, as I understand it.)

not_math• 2 years ago

There's a John Oliver episode about the chocolate industry, you can check it out on YouTube.

Of course there's no logo saying the chocolate is made with child slavery, I hope you didn't mean to be snarky here.

There are initiatives to try to alleviate the problem, the only example I have in mind right now is Tony's Chocolonely (which explains the problem and their solution on their website) but I'm sure others could come up with other initiatives.

The trends from top companies of chocolate is that they try to do as little as possible to alleviate the problem of child slavery in chocolate production.

tomComb2• 2 years ago

Yes, looking for fair trade labelled products is important, and I also believe it is important to look for the International Fairtrade Certification Mark ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fairtrade_Certif...

As with any such program, if it is implementing effectively then some companies will chafe at the requirements and try to develop their own fair trade program more to their liking.

yourusername• 2 years ago

It's all of them. Tony Chocolonely's whole image is to be as fairtrade as possible and even they admit that they can not guarantee no forced labour was used in their production chain.

jgeada• 2 years ago

The logo for "child labor was used in the manufacture of this chocolate" looks exactly like the Nestle logo

Lendal• 2 years ago

You left out why sugar is the cheapest part.

Subsidies.

sophiacamille• 2 years ago

Isn't sugar just relatively cheap to produce and can be locally grown in Europe?

NoMoreNicksLeft4• 2 years ago

or lower the price of chocolate.

In the US, I can't even really buy chocolate anymore. About 3 or 4 years ago, it suddenly changed flavor... now it tastes like brown-colored wax to me. It was sudden and noticeable, and if I looked through old posts I could narrow it down to a particular month. This was across the board for all things Nestle and Hershey. Maybe if I got some snobby Eurochocolate, but I wouldn't know where. And sometimes I just like (or want to like) the candy bars I'd get as a kid. It's not the only food that's undergone one of these "now with 10% less sawdust" scenarios, Kraft mac'n'cheese comes to mind.

the_real_cher• 2 years ago

Did you try whole foods?

Thats where my hippy parents get their chocolate and I mean that in a positive way.

1986• 2 years ago

Changed suddenly 3-4 years ago... long COVID?

freeone3000• 2 years ago

Did you happen to get infected with COVID-19 during that period?

jncfhnb• 2 years ago

It’s not snobby to buy food that isn’t produced by the largest, most evil food corps in the world.

It has relatively little to do with Europe either.

Go for Tony’s imo.

Maken• 2 years ago

3-4 years ago was the COVID epidemic. Are you sure you are not suffering loss of smell?

pengaru• 2 years ago

Skimpflation has impacted many things.

debacle2• 2 years ago

A Hershey bar is like a dollar. You can find good chocolate bars for $2-3 and there's no real difference between a $7 chocolate bar and a $20 chocolate bar (unless you're buying it right at the chocolatier).

The cost of "upgrading" your chocolate to good or even great will run you about $100 a year. Worth it, in my books.

kbolino• 2 years ago

Multiple varieties of "snobby Eurochocolate" are sold prominently in the candy and/or snack aisles of my podunk town's Walmart and grocery store. I've never had any trouble getting it, and with domestic candy prices having gone through the roof since the pandemic, the price difference isn't as much as you might think.

jl6• 2 years ago

“Waxy” is the normal taste for chocolate produced using vegetable oil instead of cocoa butter or otherwise skimping on the dairy content (one of the main reasons why cheap US chocolate is so awful), but I don’t think that’s new in the last 3-4 years.

WorldMaker4• 2 years ago

I don't think it is necessarily "romantic pontificating". They've effectively found (or more likely "refound" given there were probably indigenous recipes like this for centuries) that you can "cider" the chocolate fruit and like apple cidering the most effective (industrial) application of this process will be close to the source of the fruit rather than at an industrial junction of commerce such as Switzerland with access to shipments of both cheap industrial sugar and expensively labored cocoa beans.

Even if the cocoa fruit sugars are more expensive in the markets of Switzerland than other sugars, the cheapest source of sugar at the cocoa plantation itself is still going to be the "leftover"/"waste" fruit. If the recipe these Swiss scientists have come up with is good enough, producers could start to build "whole chocolate" directly near the plantations and better compete in that market directly rather than in the cocoa bean "ingredient" market. That would lower the price of chocolate (more suppliers, shorter supply chains with fewer middlemen).

If there's "romantic pontification" in the article it's as much or more the multiple reassurances that Swiss chocolate would remain relevantly competitive (and not just an expensive reminder of a bygone era) to such a massive increase of suppliers with access to existing "waste" products, should it happen.

ETA: And/or such a process might open up a much larger market for shipping the whole fruit, not just the beans, and moving the expensive labor parts closer to the industrial hubs. That would also obviously alleviate labor problems at the edges (plantations), incentivize reducing/eliminating labor with industrial tools that wasn't as incentivized before, and might also bring production costs down overall (for cheaper, more sustainable chocolate).

Majromax• 2 years ago

Even if the cocoa fruit sugars are more expensive in the markets of Switzerland than other sugars, the cheapest source of sugar at the cocoa plantation itself is still going to be the "leftover"/"waste" fruit.

Not necessarily. Chocolate abhors moisture, so sugars derived from the fruit and pulp will need to be extensively dehydrated. Over some range of energy and capital costs versus refined sugar cost, it may still be more expensive to have "whole fruit" processing on-site than to import refined sugar for processing.

If the recipe these Swiss scientists have come up with is good enough, producers could start to build "whole chocolate" directly near the plantations and better compete in that market directly rather than in the cocoa bean "ingredient" market.

Is the expense of sugar really what makes the rest of the production chain (roasting, grinding, and final processing) infeasible on-site?

And/or such a process might open up a much larger market for shipping the whole fruit, not just the beans, and moving the expensive labor parts closer to the industrial hubs.

If you're contemplating shipping the whole fruit without processing, I think this would still be infeasible. The fruit is wet, which would vastly increase the shipping cost per kilogram of final chocolate. Shipping the raw fruit might also require a cold chain, depending on how likely it is to ferment or spoil en-route.

You can analogize this to bulk shipments of sugar, where as I understand it early-stage milling is done near the sugar cane/beet plantations to remove most of the moisture. The raw cane sugar is largely dry, and it can be cost-effectively transported to sugar refineries for further processing.

ghusto• 2 years ago

If you mess with my chocolate, I will _cut_ you.

On a less psychotic note; products have sprung up recently that use the fruit, which I applaud. To be honest, a year ago I didn't even know we weren't using the fruit, and it seems nuts that we weren't!

snovv_crash2• 2 years ago

If you're ever in Zürich, be sure to visit the Lindt and Sprungli chocolate museum. Book ahead for tickets. It's got the entire history of how it was turned from something more like coffee into a dessert over the course of a series of process improvements, many of which were patented by names you hear regularly today in the Swiss chocolate industry and beyond (Nestlé, Lindt, Cailler, Sprungli).

lanceflt• 2 years ago

This is just an ad for the Swiss chocolate industry. The only people quoted are being funded directly by chocolate manufacturers.

jfengel• 2 years ago

Of course it is. Nobody else is going to fund such research.

That's true in pretty much every industry. That's why papers have "conflicts" sections, so you know who's funding it, and can take that into account. That doesn't make it wrong. You just need to put it in context.

Retric• 2 years ago

A great deal of agricultural research is funded/carried out by governments who don’t have a vested interest in a particular outcome beyond general improvement.

A secure global food supply benefits the general public not just argo businesses. In essence everyone has a vested interest in farming.

yieldcrv• 2 years ago

no conflict = no interest

pipeline_peak• 2 years ago

Or did the Swiss miss

xg15• 2 years ago

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.

That's "without sugar" in the same way that PoE devices "don't need power". They use the sugar from the fruit rather than supplementing additional one, as is the usual procedure.

brookst• 2 years ago

Wouldn’t it be fructose instead of typical white sugar (sucrose)?

EDIT: nevermind me, apparently cocoa pods have sucrose as well.

filcuk• 2 years ago

They meant 'without added sugar' - it's obvious from context, but I don't know why there's emphasis on it. Maybe just for sensational headlines.

senectus1• 2 years ago

yeah but it will be marketed towards the consuming masses as "no added sugar" when it may in fact have more sugar in it than the previous method where sugar was added.

this world is exhausting at times.

umanwizard• 2 years ago

Zurich’s prestigious Federal Institute of Technology

In case anyone didn't recognize the name: it's more commonly known (at least in my experience) as "ETH Zürich"

sampo• 2 years ago

And ETH = Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule.

pohl• 2 years ago

...the rest of the cocoa fruit – the size of a pumpkin...

Is this accurate? I had no idea.

alanbernstein• 2 years ago

Well, the size of a very small pumpkin. It's not a good comparison, partly because pumpkins vary so widely in size. It does have a shape similar to an elongated pumpkin.

For volume, I'd say a pineapple is a better comparison.

ks2048• 2 years ago

I’d say that’s misleading. More like a very small, oblong pumpkin. (Can grab with one hand)

valarauko• 2 years ago

More like a papaya fruit.

spiderfarmer• 2 years ago

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.

Wouldn't this deliver the exact nutrients needed for cocoa bean production back to the soil? Of does this practice invite harmful bacteria and diseases?

fmajid• 2 years ago

This is not new. In the UK, premium grocery cooperative Waitrose had a bar made with sugar from the pulp:

https://www.waitrose.com/ecom/products/no1-whole-fruit-choco...

Unbefleckt• 2 years ago

I can't buy this anywhere in Europe as far as I can tell.

hulitu• 2 years ago

Have Swiss scientists made a chocolate breakthrough?

No. They just use more sugar.

Have Swiss scientists made a chocolate breakthrough?

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