Chocolate is one of the foods with the greatest appeal to the general population. The attractive tastes and textures of chocolate and chocolate products delight the senses and make it a well-known comfort food. Cocoa seeds undergo natural fermentation before they are turned into a key ingredient for chocolate making namely cocoa fat and cocoa powder. The latter is indeed rich source of peptides and flavonoids, and produces the delectable taste and aroma of chocolate after roasting.  In spite of a large body of literature on the cocoa flavor, there are very few studies devoted to the role of proteins/peptides in the flavor development of cocoa or chocolate. Cocoa storage proteins, which makes up to 10-15 % (w/w) dry weight, is made up of four predominant proteins of apparent molecular weight 14.5-, 31- and 47-kDa  and 21-kDa representing 95 % (w/w) of total protein. We developed an in-vitro fermentation process of cocoa beans, mimicking the natural fermentation and identified a number short-chain peptides originating from storage proteins that are the key cocoa/chocolate flavor precursors. The presentation will cover the characterization of proteins and peptides and flavor precursors. Additionally, results from a recent study employing metabolomics approach to study the possible metabolic signatures linked to the regular intake of dark chocolate in healthy subjects will be presented. In summary, metabolic profiles of plasma and urine samples when combined with multivariate statistics show discrimination of subjects according to their chocolate liking as given by the scoring to the questionnaire on chocolate consumption. The class separation using plasma metabolic profiles was present even from samples collected before the chocolate intake, supporting most likely the occurrence of metabolic imprint or memory independent of the chocolate intake. Results indicate that subjects who do not like chocolate harbour statistically different lipoprotein profile in the postprandial phase.

Cocoa and chocolate: The science of delight

243rd National Meeting (2012)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.