Climate change prompted these scientists to reinvent chocolate

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MUNICH – A few years ago, food scientist Sarah Marquardt hit upon a reality that stopped her in her tracks.

Marquardt was flipping through the book Never out of seasonBy ecologist Rob Dunn.

He read that more than half of the world’s supply of cocoa beans comes from two African countries – Ivory Coast and Ghana – and both countries, just north of the equator, face extreme weather events caused by climate change.

“You have a bit of a problem [in] Marquardt says it’s a very small area where all the cacao comes from, and secondly, you have a plant, cacao, that’s very susceptible to climate change.

Just last year, both Ivory Coast and Ghana received record rainfall ahead of the fall cocoa harvest. which caused fungal infection of cocoa trees and rotten fruits, and the global supply of cocoa beans decreased. Major chocolate manufacturers stockpiled beans and the price of raw cacao more than tripled in a year.

That shortage has set the stage for companies like Planet A Foods, which Marquardt founded with his brother, Max Marquardt. The company’s scientists have been working on a chocolate substitute for the past three years.

Making food that looks like chocolate, looks like chocolate, and tastes like chocolate – but is not Chocolate – takes time.

Anna Lena Krug, a food scientist at Planet A Foods, estimates that she and her colleagues changed the recipe “between 700 and 800 times” before arriving at something called ChoViva, a chocolate substitute that uses cocoa beans. falls away

“If you’ve ever had the chance to try a raw cacao bean, you’ll notice that the aroma is almost indistinguishable from regular milk chocolate,” Krug says.

This is because the aroma of chocolate is formed during the fermentation and roasting of the cocoa bean. Krug and his colleagues tried fermenting and roasting over hundreds of other ingredients, including apricot kernels, olive kernels, jackfruit seeds, and potato skins, until they finally settled on oats and sunflower seeds.

“By using oats and sunflower seeds instead of cocoa beans, we had to make sure we were still producing the same aroma with this fermentation and roasting step,” Krug says.

At the company’s Munich factory, Krog mixes fermented and roasted oats and sunflower seeds with milk, shea butter and a few other ingredients, then pours the brown concoction into a machine called a cone machine. It heats the mixture, distributes the ingredients evenly, and slowly releases the acids to achieve the texture and flavor of chocolate.

After months of trial and error, Marquardt and his team sent their first version of ChoViva to taste testers in 2021.

“This is the first time in five months since the merger that we’ve had positive feedback from customers,” says Marquardt. “They’re like, ‘Wow, that’s amazing.’

That same year, Marquardt joined Y Combinator, a startup accelerator in the Bay Area known for funding companies like Airbnb, Coinbase and DoorDash. With the new funding and support, the company began signing deals with major German retailers.

Max Marquardt, who runs Planet A Foods’ business division, says ChoViva’s goal is not to completely replace chocolate. Instead, he hopes to replace chocolate in applications where chocolate is merely one ingredient in a larger product. He points to candies like M&M’s and Snickers bars, or even cereal or chocolate chip ice cream.

The Marquarts say they can produce ChoViva for the same price as chocolate, but with significantly less planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions because the ingredients in ChoViva — mainly oats and sunflower seeds — don’t need to be transported. And they don’t have a long quote. Just a few places

“Cocoa beans are trees that usually only grow in areas called the cacao belt around the equator, in just a few countries,” says Sarah Marquardt. “It’s a very specific climate. Whereas with oats, you can basically grow them anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere or the Southern Hemisphere that’s not too hot and not too wet.”

Using local oats and beans also means using far less water than is needed to maintain cacao trees, says Marquardt.

The success of ChoViva prompted Marquart to explore another potential product, one that aims to replace another substance known for its environmental impact: palm oil. He says the company plans to commercialize a palm oil alternative next year.