Cargill scientists work to develop a cocoa-free chocolate alternative
MINNEAPOLIS — Chocolate is by far the most popular Valentine's Day treat, but you might find it's getting more difficult to find sweet deals for your sweetheart.
Prices are up nearly 20% because the cost of cocoa has more than doubled in the past year. Some say it's time to find an alternative to chocolate, and the search has ties to a Minnesota-based business.
Americans take down 12 lbs of chocolate a year, building up a delectable $22 billion market in the U.S. alone.
More than half of the world's cocoa beans grow in West Africa. On top of concerns about fair labor practices in the industry, climate change is also threatening the business.
Drought and deforestation, as well as plant disease, are killing off cacao trees. It's pushing companies to come up with alternatives.
"There was something that tasted enough in a certain direction that was like, well, maybe we have something here." said Adam Maxwell, CEO of Voyage Foods.
Maxwell is a food scientist working to solve this puzzle: a chocolate with less impact on the environment.
"The ingredients would really just be grape seeds, sunflower flour, sugar, fats and natural flavors," he said.
Maxwell says it's a plant-based alternative that's allergen free. Another alternative is nut-free hazel and peanut butters.
Minnesota-based Cargill is helping them bring it to the world market.
"It's 90% lower water use, 90% lower land use, and 67% lower carbon footprints," said Anne Mertens-Hoyng, the category leader for Chocolate Confectionery & Ice Cream at Cargill Corporation. "We see that maybe in future, there won't be enough cocoa available. So we wanted to find solutions that go beyond the cocoa and still taste like the chocolate and the filling products that we know and love."
The cocoa alternative looks like chocolate, and it melts in your hand like chocolate. But does it taste like chocolate?
The texture certainly passes the test. The flavor? That's more subjective.
You won't be able to find the product on a shelf yet, but in the future it could be in just about anything.
"We can do it in pralines," said Mertens-Hoyng, "We can do it in ice cream coating, chocolate chip cookies, chocolate-coated cookies everywhere, where you see chocolate."
It's a guilty pleasure that's fit for the future. If you want to consider the environment when buying chocolate, here's a scorecard that ranks chocolate companies.
