San Francisco (AFP)

How to innovate in chocolate without adding all kinds of flavors or ingredients? Using the cocoa fruit, and nothing else. World cocoa leader Barry Callebaut on Friday introduced a new way to make chocolate to meet the challenges of an industry seeking to renew itself.

"Chocolate is made from cocoa beans, which are the seeds of a fruit, but why use only pips and discard the rest of the fruit? It makes no sense from an ecological or economic point of view ", explains Antoine de Saint-Affrique, boss of the Swiss group.

Currently, most chocolate manufacturers, both industrial and artisanal, buy only cacao beans from plantations, and all the rest - 70% of the fruit - is discarded. As if we were only eating the seeds of an orange.

For his new chocolate, and other food products (including beverages), Barry Callebaut will use almost all the pod, including the pulp, through a processing process that takes place within two hours after harvest. No added sugar, the sweetness comes from naturally sweetened juice.

The result is a whole fruit chocolate ("WholeFruit chocolate") that tastes like chocolate, with 90% fiber and 25% more protein than standard products, and 40% less sugar.

- French Palace -

Barry Callebaut supplies cocoa and chocolate preparations to major food groups such as Nestlé, Hershey's, Mondelez and Unilever, as well as to pastry professionals.

With this innovation, the company more than a century hopes to address the young adults, who, according to her, seek "pleasures healthy and honest", good in terms of taste but also respectful of the environment.

"The French market loves chocolates of character, rich in cocoa, with notes of fruit, so it's a chocolate that corresponds very well with the French palate", analyzes Martin Diez, chef at Barry Callebaut, while delicately depositing powder dragon fruit on crunchy chocolate stars with whole fruit.

He believes that this new variety is just as likely to appeal to Americans, the palace however deemed sweeter, especially because "they love products enriched with protein and nutrients."

Californians will also be the first to taste chocolate "whole", in the form of snacks marketed by the US group Mondelez.

"It seemed natural to us to launch a fundamental innovation in San Francisco, the city of innovation," says Antoine de Saint-Affrique.

The Swiss group, which generates almost 7 billion Swiss francs in annual sales, has decided to strengthen its position on higher value-added products, while chocolate consumption is stagnating in developed markets (Europe and the United States). North America).

- Pod juice -

The new range presented Friday will include two categories, a dark chocolate called "Bold" ("daring"), made 100% from the fruit of the cacao, very rich, and the "Velvety" ("velvety"), a milk chocolate , lighter in the mouth.

They will be sold to artisans around the world from May 2020, but by then 30 chefs will be able to discover them and create new confections.

Last year, Barry Callebaut had already innovated with a pink chocolate, made from the so-called "ruby" bean, supposed to become the fourth category of chocolate (black, milk, white and pink).

His Nestlé customer had covered KitKat, his flagship brand of chocolate wafers, first for Japanese and South Korean consumers.

"With + Ruby +, they asked the question: + Why should the chocolate always be brown? + This time they ask: + why use only the cocoa bean? Why ignore the pulp? +", Comments Clay Gordon, consultant and expert in the chocolate industry, between two sips of cocktails based on juice pod.

A fundamental question when the industry has to be concerned about environmental protection as well as the epidemic of obesity.

A sign that there is no time to waste, the food giant Nestlé itself released in July a 70% dark chocolate entirely made from the fruit of the cacao tree.

But chocolate "whole" is not ready to replace the chocolate from beans, which Barry Callebaut sells 2 million tons per year.

"This new product is more expensive, because you have to capture the various elements of the fruit when it is fresh, at the harvest," says Antoine de Saint-Affrique. "It requires a very different logistics and a much more complicated transformation, which is why we start it first with the craftsmen".

© 2019 AFP