Electric shocks reduce chocolate fat content

A group of physicists has devised a way to make chocolates healthier.  In the new study Rongjia Tao of Temple University and colleagues found they could reduce the fat content of chocolate using electric currents.

Before they were wrapped in foils, chocolates took the form of a liquid that flowed through factory pipes.

Cocoa butter, which typically made up to 40 per cent of a chocolate bar's volume, made the liquid chocolate flow smoothly. However, it also resulted in chocolates being high on fat content.

Circular cocoa solids in liquid chocolate could agglomerate and get jammed, even as the fat and oil content of the cocoa butter helped keep the chocolate moving.

The researchers, however, found a way to improve the flow of liquid chocolate through factory pipes without adding extra cocoa butter.

The process, which entails applying electricity to chocolate, cuts 10 to 20 per cent of fat in it.

The researchers inserted an electrified sieve into liquid chocolate, which gives electric shocks to the cocoa particles that pass through.

Cocoa solids get flattened in the process and cause them to behave like little bar magnets that line themselves up in a chainlike formation providing more room for the chocolate to flow and eliminating the need to add more cocoa butter.

To achieve low-fat chocolate without using low-calorie fat substitutes banned in Canada and western Europe, ''new technology based on new soft matter science is critically needed,'' write Dr Tao and his colleagues in the study. ''In this paper, we report that unconventional electrorheology (ER) provides a solution for this critical outstanding issue.'' The study was published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America and is titled ''Electrorheology leads to healthier and tastier chocolate''.

(See more: Chocolate that melts in your mouth, but not on your hips)