FEB 23- BUILDING BETTER CHOCOLATES EVENT RECAP

On Feb 23rd Sensapure Flavors hosted the “Building Better Chocolates” training event for Sensapure customers. Nutrition brands and manufactures sent their product development teams to Salt Lake City for the morning to learn about the art and science of creating better tasting chocolate products.

Why Chocolate? (Because it’s chocolate!)

For decades, the top two selling flavors of all protein supplements have been chocolate and vanilla. And let’s face it… chocolate is just more fun. From decadent fudge flavors, to bright and sharp dark chocolates, there are as many ways to fall in love with chocolate as there are different uses for the tasty flavor

Some key words people used to describe their favorite chocolates were smooth, creamy, rich, and complex. With this information we are able to see how much mouthfeel impacts overall chocolate preference. We can use this information when formulating to include creamers, fats, and gums to recreate a similar consumer experience.

It’s all about the growth of Plant Proteins

Years ago, a protein shake meant one thing. A whey protein, artificially sweetened, creamy milk chocolate shake. And getting the flavor system right on a product with plenty of Sucralose and milk solids wasn’t all that tough. After all, it was essentially a powdered chocolate milkshake. But times have changed. The desire to swap out artificial sweeteners for non-sugar natural alternatives, and ditch the whey protein for either plant based or collagen sources makes the development of great tasting protein supplements a little more difficult.

With year-over-year growth exceeding 30% for plant-based protein, meal replacements, and powdered supplements, the need to find ways to deliver great tasting chocolate products has never been higher.

We started with craft chocolate

The day began with a chocolate tasting presented by the same folks who host Chocolate Fest every year in Salt Lake City… Caputo’s European Fine Foods. Adri Pachelli, head of education and all things chocolate at Caputo’s lead the tasting with a review of cacao history, cultivation, processing, fermentation techniques, roasting secrets, milling specs, and of course a deep dive into how crushed cacao becomes craft chocolate.

The Science of Chocolate

With our new found vocabulary and educated chocolate taste buds, we let Doug Gledhill, one of Sensapure’s certified flavor chemists walk us through how we can mimic the various component parts of chocolate flavors found in nature using either natural or artificial ingredients. “As a flavor chemist we need to know all about nature so we can recreate it in the lab,” said Gledhill. “Cocoa Powder alone can have over a thousand different naturally occurring chemicals.”

Let the Tasting Begin

The group of 30+ participants then tasted four different categories of products (whey / plant / collagen / natural sweeteners / gums and masking agents), evaluating each of the 12 products on sweetness levels, flavor attributes, and overall preference.

During this portion of the taste testing experience, Sensapure was able to demonstrate some key changes that lead to the overall improvement of the product. Using the Sensapure Tasting App, we were able to record the unbiased feedback in our audience’s preference on the samples before and after Sensapure solutions were applied.

Chemicals- Smell, Taste, Structure

There are Chemicals in everything we eat. All foods are made up of chemicals, whether they occur in nature or are made in a lab. That means everything we smell or taste is a response to chemicals.

Cinnamon is a spice that is used in both sweet and savory foods.

For example, the characteristic smell of cloves, comes from one chemical called eugenol. Cinnamon, which is just the dried inner-bark of specific trees, gets its aroma and flavor from the compound cinnamic aldehyde. In nature, vanillin comes from an orchid. The process of extracting this pure, natural chemical is extremely lengthy and expensive. The compound vanillin is responsible for the flavor and smell of vanilla. So scientists found a way to make a synthetic version of vanilla in a lab.

Both artificial and natural flavors contain chemicals

If both artificial and natural flavors contain chemicals, what’s the difference? The distinction between natural and artificial flavors is the source of chemicals. Natural flavors are created from anything that can be eaten.

According to the FDA, “Natural flavor is the essential oil, oleoresin, essence or extractive, protein hydrolysate, distillate, or any product of roasting, heating or enzymolysis, which contains the flavoring constituents derived from a spice, fruit or fruit juice, vegetable or vegetable juice, edible yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf or similar plant material, meat, seafood, poultry, eggs, dairy products, or fermentation products thereof, whose significant function in food is flavoring rather than nutritional.”

Artificial flavors come from anything that is inedible. For example, from petroleum that is processed to create chemicals of flavorings. For the FDA, the definition of an artificial flavor is any substance that does not meet the definition of a natural flavor

Artificial vs. Natural

Most times a chemical flavoring can be made from either natural or artificial sources — the resulting molecule is the same, but the route to making is different. So which are “safer” or “better” for you, artificial or natural flavors? The answer is probably not what you think.

Since the chemicals for natural flavors are derived from organic sources, they can carry a higher risk of contamination. It’s not that it is slowing down interest in natural flavors, it’s just the opposite. Demand for natural flavors in expected to continue to grow.

So if the demand for natural flavors is increasing, why use artificial flavors at all? Synthetic chemicals that make up artificial flavors generally cost less to produce than finding and extracting the chemicals from natural sources.

Contact our flavor chemists to get started with your flavor today.