Researchers from Temple University have developed a new method of making chocolate with low fat content. For this they used the electric field imposed along the direction of flow of the liquid chocolate. The article was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
One of the major problems of obtaining a chocolate with a low fat diet is that reducing fat leads to increased viscosity and clogging the pipelines of the factory Assembly line. The researchers decided to circumvent this obstacle by using an electric field, which makes the cocoa solids to get together in short chains, spheroids and other streamlined shapes. The approach allows to reduce the viscosity of molten chocolate and to reduce the minimum amount of fat necessary to maintain normal flow rate.
Molten chocolate is a suspension of cocoa, sugar, milk, suspended in liquid cocoa butter. It is characterized by two main parameters: the maximum density at which fluidity disappears (maximally random jammed density), and intrinsic viscosity of the particles. The latter shows what is the contribution of substances in the composition of the solution, in General the viscosity.
The experiments showed that the electric field at 1600 Volts per centimeter reduces the viscosity of chocolate Mars by 43.5%, while significantly increased maximum density. All this allows to reduce the concentration of fat by 10 percent. Similar results were obtained for samples from other manufacturers, which demonstrates the wide applicability of the method. The researchers hope that their method will allow you to make low-fat chocolate, which will taste better and have less negative impact on the cardiovascular system.
