X-Rays Used to Make Better Chocolate

Do you hate that white dusty substance on chocolate? Food Industry surely does as it cause them millions in loss due to rejects and consumer complaints. That white substance on your delicious chocolate is called Fat Bloom. It makes the product look old even though it’s still safe to eat. This unattractive stuff is basically formed due to the presence of fats in chocolate.

Science’s got your back! A group of scientists from Nestlé, Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) and the Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH) came together to examine exactly what causes the process. Extremely powerful X-Rays are used to observe blooming process and finding methods to prevent it. DESY’s PETRA III, which is the brightest storage ring X-ray in the world is used. It’s 2.3 KM long particle accelerator specifically useful for examining very small samples. It enables them to observe the process undergoing blooming on the nanometer scale.

“This can happen when liquid chocolate cools down in an uncontrolled manner and unstable crystals form, for example, But even at room temperature, a quarter of the lipids contained in chocolate are already in a liquid state” Reinke said.

It is caused by the migration of liquid fats (such as cocoa butter) to the surface of the chocolate, where it crystallises. There is no permanent solution found yet but few workarounds exist, like storing the it under specific temperature (18ºC / 65ºF) and reducting porosity of the product.

This study will help industries to work out a permanent solution and we won’t have to face candies covered with white weird substance anymore.

Thank you American Chemical Society and CNET for providing us with this information.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia.