With respect for people and the planet, this chocolate does not contain… cocoa

Barley and carob. This is the recipe for a brand new chocolate whose production process is based on fermentation to avoid the use of cocoa. The London company WNWN FoodLabs has been working on a committed concept to get around the problem of child workers in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, as well as deforestation caused by cocoa production.

Chocolate without cocoa, is it still chocolate? We are, of course, entitled to ask the question. In addition, the founders of the company WNWN FoodLabs (Win-Win, which means win-win in English) do not intend to play out the usurpers by mentioning “chocolate” on the packaging of their novelty, which the marketing of 18 May should begin, via the website Wnwnfoodlabs.com. In their online store, their recipe is called “Choc!”.

Why is it necessary to produce more respectable chocolate?

Ahrum Pak and Dr. However, Johnny Drain have indeed sought an alternative to traditional chocolate to no longer depend on cocoa production. Indeed, the two entrepreneurs have different grievances regarding the sector: the lack of respect for people, but also for the planet. To design their product, the bosses started from an observation: 75% of the world’s cocoa production comes from the Ivory Coast and Ghana. According to data from WNWN FoodLabs, a million children are said to be involved in cocoa production. As for the environment, the British start-up points to the deforestation caused by the sector. Ivory Coast has lost 94% of its forest areas in 60 years, a third of which is due to cocoa production…

These various critiques had already been formulated by Mighty Earth, an American association whose actions in favor of forest and climate protection are having an impact around the world, including France. In a damning report for the cocoa sector published in 2017, the NGO specified that this culture was responsible for the disappearance of nearly 118,000 hectares of forest in the Ivory Coast between 2001 and 2014† According to Mighty Earth, this production chain employs five to six million people worldwide, most of whom live below the poverty line in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. According to the data in this report, 2.1 million children on the West African coast work in the sector…

Carob: a well-known ingredient in the food industry

As a result, this completely new type of chocolate does not contain a gram of cocoa. Instead: barley and the fruits of the carob tree, carob. The food industry already uses this food in pod form to thicken or stabilize a culinary preparation. According to the specialized media The spoon which reveals the information, it is a fermentation process in the spirit of the work of an oenologist or a baker, which makes it possible to obtain a brown paste. This can be mixed with other grains before pouring into molds, such as lambda chocolate.

One question remains, however: if it can claim the same antioxidant properties as chocolate thanks to the presence of polyphenols in carob, can this alternative cocoa deliver as much pleasure when you bite into it?

(ETX Daily Up)

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