Chocolate is one of the most common food products in our diet.  Many cultures serve hot cocoa like beverage or candy. However, the commercial cocoa and the artesanal cocoa have substantial differences that some persons could identify by their taste or feelings after consumption.  Some artesanal methods, remove the shell of the raw cocoa bean some keep part of the shells. Some methods toast the cocoa bean completely, some just keep them under a constant temperature. These differences were studied by extracting the organic compounds of cocoa at different parts of the process.  All products were analised by DART-mass spectrometry and portable Raman equipments. This studies focus on the amounts of caffeine in the leafs, pod, bean shells and clean beans.

Spectroscopic analysis of artesanal Cocoa products: Does the preparation really matter?

243rd National Meeting (2012)

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