Nestle finds new way to use cocoa leftovers to sweeten chocolate

[antoncohen]

Cacao pulp is delicious. It is interesting that we use the bitter seeds from the fruit, and mostly throw out the tasty pulp. If you are in San Francisco you can get cacao fruit smoothies from Dandelion Chocolate. I hope the pulp starts showing up in more food products instead of going to waste.

[technothrasher]

Traditionally the pulp is left on the beans during fermentation to impart flavor, and is basically used up in the process. It's mostly American style chocolate that removes the pulp before fermentation and throws it away, in order to... reduce flavor, I guess?

[felipemnoa]

>>I hope the pulp starts showing up in more food products instead of going to waste.

I'd be surprised if it is truly wasted. Most likely it servers some other useful purpose. Fertilizer or fuel are two uses I can think of.

[jeanlucas]

Good side: nice, new ways to use that waste. Bad side: Nestlé.

[atlasunshrugged]

Serious question, why is it bad that it's Nestle?

[55555]

Have they really been throwing it away? The white 'fruit' is delicious... If you ever see a cocoa tree, try it. It's like a fruit that tastes like chocolate.

[scotty79]

Nestle found a way to add sugar to chocolate without saying it added sugar to chocolate and even charge a premium for it.

[toper-centage]

It's not sugar! It's cocoa pulp Syrup!

[twic]

See also cascara, the dried fruit left over from producing coffee beans:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_cherry_tea

[floatingatoll]

Will this be required to be listed as “added sugars”?

(That it’s a component of cocoa beans doesn’t necessarily mean it’s permitted in chocolate as an unlisted component.)

[yial]

It would also be nice instead of just focusing on sugar, nestle focused on not using child labor in their cocoa sourcing process.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/business/hershe...

[vernie]

Wow, what a poignant paywall.

[mdorazio]

As expected, this is pretty misleading.

“The food company is using a patented technique to turn the white pulp that covers cocoa beans into a powder that naturally contains sugar.”

They’re not adding any processed sugar, so they can make the “no added sugar” claim. They’re still adding sugar via another method.

[fitzroy]

Similar to cured meat with "no added nitrates” but a bunch of added celery powder (which is high in nitrates).

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/the-uncured-ba...

[kbenson]

> They’re not adding any processed sugar, so they can make the “no added sugar” claim. They’re still adding sugar via another method.

To me the "no added sugar" pretty clearly encapsulates and is understood to be in-line with what is going on here. The most common place I can think of seeing that phrase in on packaging for fruit juice drinks, and I think it's pretty clearly understood that they still have plenty of sugar, and the only thing it really denotes is whether the product is more "natural" (in a marketing sense).

[Finnucane]

Yeah, it's unclear from the article what the product is actually going to be composed of. 70% dark chocolate means basically 70% cocao and 30% sugar. Is it still going to be 30% sugar? It might not be cane sugar, but it'll still be sugar.

[pkaye]

Those who want no added sugar can always get the 100% dark chocolate.

[p1necone]

Reminds me of people adding date paste to health foods instead of sugar. Date paste is only sweet because it contains heaps of sugar...

[dTal]

"Patented technique" sounds pretty damn processed to me.

Just replace "cocoa beans" with "sugar cane" and read it again.

[Dylan16807]

> They’re not adding any processed sugar, so they can make the “no added sugar” claim. They’re still adding sugar via another method.

This sugar is very much processed. The difference is that they changed the recipe to stop removing this sugar.

I wouldn't call it 'added sugar'; it's like using whole milk directly instead of reducing it to 1% milk.

[INTPenis]

Since it's coming from under the rind of the cocoa bean, wouldn't it be fructose then?

[dang]

Ok, we've changed the title to mostly the subtitle.

[tekproxy]

I remember in chemistry we learned the difference between ordinary, reagent grade sucrose and the fancy, organic, fair trade, whole wheat, gluten free sucrose. The fancy stuff was way better for you.

[eesmith]

How can sucrose be "whole wheat"? And why would reagent grade sucrose have gluten in it? Sucrose usually comes from gluten-free sources, like sugar beets and cane, yes?