Behind the sweet exterior of chocolatiering is a sector facing serious headaches. Cocoa prices reached record highs in the 2023/2024 season, as difficult weather conditions and the rapid spread of black pod disease caused huge yield reductions in Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana—the two biggest cocoa-supplying countries. Estimations published by the International Cocoa Organization expect the global sector to see a 14.2 percent reduction in yield this season because of it.

This 14.2 percent reduction translates to a shortage of around 462,000 tonnes and the lowest cocoa stocks in 22 years. It could mean a future characterized by even higher prices, topping the highs of almost $12,000/tonne, seen in the first half of 2024. Cocoa farming is already a tricky trade. Without action from the big producers, it might become impossible.

Thankfully a team at ETH Zurich think they have found a solution.

Traditional chocolate recipes combine fermented cocoa beans with refined sugar—usually made from sugar beets—to create the confectionary’s characteristic rich, sweet flavor. However, the Swiss team, led by emeritus ETH professor Erich Windhab, looked beyond the bean to see what might be possible when you consider the much larger cocoa pod as a whole. Photograph: Gustavo Ramirez/ Getty Images

“Surrounding the beans is the pulp, which yields a very sweet juice, and the endocarp, which yields fibrous powder that can turn that juice into a gel,” explains Kim Mishra, main author of the Nature Food study. “That sweetening gel is then used in place of refined sugar from sugar beets, and you have a new chocolate.”

Mishra makes it sound simple, but it was a difficult process to perfect, requiring almost three years of work alongside the dedicated research that formed three masters’ theses. Too much of the sweetened gel and the chocolate would clump; too little and the product lacked taste.

Collaborating with efforts to perfect the process was sustainable cocoa producer Koa. “Taste is king,” says Anian Schreiber, Koa’s founder and managing director. “When something tastes good, you naturally want to share it with everyone and their grandmother.”

Researchers working on cocoa-fruit chocolate in a development lab at Felchlin – pictured during the Covid pandemic. Photograph: Kim Mishra

He’s right, too: a growing body of evidence suggests that consumers ultimately care more about taste than ethics, despite what they might want to believe. “If a product is too expensive or doesn’t deliver on flavor, then it doesn’t matter what other claims it has, ” explains Sukanya Nag, a food technologist and an innovation and strategy consultant at FutureBridge. “All the drivers to eat chocolate are the same as they have always been: personal rewards, treats and celebrations—big and small. As a result, storytelling and cocoa sourcing do play a role, but mostly due to their impact on the taste.”

So, does the new product pass the taste test? Mishra thinks so, explaining that although the flavor is different, it is still appealing: “There will definitely be a change in taste. The chocolate has the same melt, the same visuals and the same snap, but it has a different sweetness sensation. It has notes of dried fruit, and more acidity from the juice.”

Crucially, Mishra hopes that by using the entire cocoa pod, the sustainability of chocolate production will go hand in hand with a reduction in price for the first time.

This starts with driving supply through farmer revenue. If producers are looking to buy more of the cocoa pod, farmers have access to diversified income streams, bankrolling expansion prospects and attracting more farmers to a trade marred by poverty.

Then there’s the product itself. Chocolate made only using the cocoa pod could be considered 100 percent cocoa, meaning that high-percentage products could be produced with less beans, offering the sector a safety net in the face of shortages.

Mishra’s team may have competition however, as chocolate’s challenges have spurred a broader period of innovation.

Opting for an entirely opposite solution, California-based Voyage Foods has developed a chocolate entirely without cocoa, made from RSPO-certified palm and shea kernel oils, sunflower seed protein and grape seeds.

Cocoa-free chocolate might sound counterintuitive, but it seems to have found some success, and the company recently shared plans to open a 284,000 square-foot facility in Ohio. The announcement followed a deal with US food supplier Cargill in April, which saw Voyage become the company’s exclusive B2B global distributor for their nut-free spreads and cocoa-free chocolate.

This illustration shows how ETH Zurich utilize the entire cocoa fruit, compared with traditional methods. Illustration: Kim Mishra

Elsewhere, Mars is looking to get to the literal root of the problem by improving the resilience of the all-important cocoa plant. The food giant is working with the USDA and UC Davis to genome sequence pathogens for the diseases wreaking havoc on crop yields, including black pod disease. It hopes that by understanding the problems on a microscopic level, it can select resilient cacao trees and bypass the sector’s supply headaches altogether.

Nag points to other areas of development, which focus on improving the quality of new solutions. In particular, she suggests that pascalization may hold promise.

“Pascalization [also referred to as high-pressure processing—HPP] involves applying high levels of hydrostatic pressure to cocoa products to stabilize cocoa particles and prevent the separation of cocoa powder,” she explains.

“This technique preserves flavors and nutrients, extends shelf life, modifies texture, and ensures food safety in cocoa and chocolate products without relying on heat or chemical preservatives. While this method is still under research, it shows promise for enhancing the texture of chocolate products, particularly in alternative formulations.”

Regardless of the growing competition, Mishra is confident in the full pod potential. However, his team isn’t the first to consider it, and both Nestle and Lindt & Sprüngli have made tentative inroads into similar markets, with varying degrees of success.

After launching its all-cocoa product Incoa in 2019, Nestlé quietly retracted it from the market in 2023 after it received a disappointing reception from a select few European markets. The chocolate did not use the endocarp, and skipped the gel-making stage, but had promised similar positive outcomes for farmers. Elsewhere, Lindt & Sprüngli apparently found more appetite following the launch of its Cocoa Pure product in 2021; it continues to offer the limited edition 100 percent cocoa bar, also in partnership with Koa—but also only using the pulp.

The industry spirit appears to be open to new ideas, then, but would the public embrace this new chocolate, and will ETH Zurich’s unique chocolate-making method ever make it out of the lab?

“If I didn’t have a daytime job, I would probably start a company,” says Mishra. “But the true milestone for implementation that has to be achieved is for a chocolate company to take the risk of prototyping a product—an actual product, not a product done by scientists. We scientists are really bad at making culinary delights, typically. I think as soon as a bigger chocolate manufacturer deems it a worthy path to go down, change will begin.”