Newsweek – Good news: scientists might have found a way to make chocolate a bit healthier, a new study reports.
Chocolate is made from the cocoa fruit by extracting cocoa mass and cocoa butter but there are actually many ingredients in the cocoa fruit that go unused.
Researchers at Swiss university ETH Zurich set out to learn more about how they could fully utilize the fruit’s valuable ingredients and how chocolate could become healthier in the process.
To do this, the researchers worked alongside Swiss chocolate manufacturer Felchlin to develop a brand new recipe. Their findings are published in the journal Nature Food.
The chocolate that we all know and love uses just the beans of the cocoa fruit but the researchers wanted to know more about how they could use its flesh to make a new “cocoa-fruit chocolate” recipe. The main author of the study, Kim Mishra, likens the fruit to a honeydew melon.
“These fruits have similar structures,” she said in a statement. “Both have a hard outer shell that reveals the flesh of the fruit when cut open, as well as the cocoa beans or melon seeds and pulp in the interior.”
Using more of the fruit part gives the finished product a higher amount of fiber, the study reported. It also means the chocolate has less saturated fat.
“Fiber is valuable from a physiological perspective because it naturally regulates intestinal activity and prevents blood sugar levels from rising too rapidly when consuming chocolate,” Mishra said. “Saturated fat can also pose a health risk when too much is consumed …”
