Theonistas Unite!

Chocolate University

Thanks for everyone that has signed up for Chocolate University!!!

This Thursday's meeting (The Chemistry of Chocolate) is "maxxed out"!! The response has been overwhelming. Thank you for supporting us and we look forward to supporting your appetite for knowledge!!

We look forward to meeting everyone attending. We will have an Organic Chemistry Expert on hand as well.....so bring your hardest questions!! This lecture will be held in the store as we are rapidly running out of space!

In the meantime if you are wondering what you missed at Chocolate University we hope to reprise the series soon with new content and new speakers (as well as the best of Dr Chocolate!)

If you want to get a taste of the Science of Chocolate in the meantime you can get a nibble from another talented Englishman who does a great job of presenting the Science of Good Food, Heston Blumenthal (OBE). He is an exceedingly talented Brit and does a damn fine job of blending Science and Fine Food.

Theo Chocolate University

Theo Chocolate University

An in depth look at the science and magic of fine chocolate making! 

 

If you have taken the Factory Tour (that’s “Chocolate 101”) and are interested in the Science and Technical aspects of Chocolate this will be a unique opportunity. These will be technical presentations and we will provide some unusual samples that you don’t normally get access to on the tours. Bring your thinking caps!

Chocolate 201
Antioxidants and the Health Benefits of Dark Chocolate
The consumption of high cacao content chocolate has been associated with positive health benefits ascribed to flavanol antioxidants. Recent reports have implied that not all varieties of Dark Chocolate are created equal. We investigate the differences between varieties of Dark Chocolate and why these differences might exist. We investigate antioxidants in the diet, how they are measured and review the clinical data associated with the consumption of chocolate.

April 17^th 6 pm-8 pm

Chocolate 202
Cacao origins, Cacao genetics and the fermentation process
Three major varietals of TheobromaCacao (the Cocoa tree) are recognized in chocolate making: Criollo, Forastero and Trinitario. Analysis of the DNA of Cacao suggests that there are actually more than 14,000 varieties, implying that the genetic diversity is very high, although the majority of Chocolate is blended to improve consistency.  In many ways varietal and vintage trends in chocolate making resemble trends in the winemaking industry. We investigate the genetics and diversity of Cacao and discuss how the origin, genetics and fermentation process influence the flavor of Chocolate.

May 1, 6 pm –8pm

Chocolate 203
The Chemistry of Chocolate Making
Recent advances in analytical techniques have provided insight into the molecular composition of chocolate. The chemistry of chocolate changes significantly during the fermentation, roasting, milling and conching processes of chocolate making. We review the steps of industrial chocolate making in detail and investigate how modern analytical techniques have provided a unique insight into the 400 or so molecules that make up the exquisite and complex flavors in chocolate.

May 15, 6 pm-8 pm

Hosted by Dr Chocolate

Each session is $25.00. If you sign up for all three the cost is $60.00. Your must be 21 years of age or older. Reservations are required since space will be limited to a small group so please call 206-632-5100 to hold your spot. Each session will be held at the Theo Chocolate Factory, 3400 Phinney Avenue North and includes chocolate tastings.

Antioxidants in Chocolate

Antioxidants in dark chocolate are a big deal......so we decided to measure the antioxidant levels in our Theo bars ourselves using a fluorescent oxygen radical adsorbance capacity assay....

This technique involves measuring the inhibition of quenching activity of peroxyl radicals on fluorescein dye. Fluorescein is very sensitive to oxidation. We can measure the antioxidants in chocolate by measuring the time it takes for the dye to be destroyed in an oxidizing environment. The longer the fluorescence signal persists the more antioxidants are present. All of this can be measured on a kinetic fluorescent plate reader.

Recent reports have highlighted that certain types of Dark Chocolate have little or no flavanoid antioxidant activity left. This is because certain manufacturers treat their chocolate with alkaline chemicals to darken the chocolate or dilute the chocolate with cheap sweeteners and fillers. Needlesss to say doing bad things to chocolate doesn't end up tasting good, nor is it very healthy.....

We don't believe in torturing chocolate at Theo. It seems like such a waste!

The right way to make chocolate is to use the requisite amount of Cacao with just a touch of sugar and no additives. Nothing else...zip...nada.....just Cacao and sugar......

So below are the results of our first run at an ORAC assay. Not surprisingly there is plenty of activity left in Theo bars. Interestingly we see a little more activity in the Ghanaian chocolate which is consistent with this scientific study.

What is dark chocolate made of?

As the phrase goes - Sugar and Spice and all things nice! In reality the chemistry of chocolate is unbelievably complex!! And that'€™s in a simple Dark Chocolate Bar with no inclusions or flavors! It has been a tricky problem to solve.

Luckily new generations of very hi-tech, very expensive mass spectrometers are unraveling the complexity of the mysterious dark substance we know and love as chocolate.

Scientists at the University of Muenster have unraveled the composition of Cacao Nibs and published their findings. Not only did they work out what was in Cacao, they also worked out what made the Cacao taste bitter-sweet. Tasty science!!

The short version of the Science (with the boring bits removed) looks a lot like this:

The different colors correspond to the primary flavors of Cacao. The outer ring shows the names of the molecules you can taste and the distance from the center indicates the concentration in Cacao nibs.

For example: Epicatechin, a potent antioxidant flavanol in Cacao has both astringent taste and is present a high concentration (approx 9000 micromol/kg).

If you want to get into this in excruciating detail you can read more of Dr Stark's original scientific article here.

How many types of chocolate are there?

Fellow Theonistas know that chocolate from different regions of the world can taste very different - like our Madagascar and Venezuela - worlds apart!

Just how many types of chocolate are there? Well…… analysis of the DNA of Theobroma Cacao (aka: Chocolate Tree) suggests that there are likely thousands and thousands of members of the Cacao family.

Using lots of computing power, the Science Geeks at Theo constructed the world’s first “family tree” of Theobroma Cacao. At left is a sneak peak of what the chocolate family tree looks like so far.

The Great Chocolate Debate

Chocolate Health Issues – good for your heart?

There are literally oodles of articles and technical articles out there describing the health benefits of chocolate on the cardiovascular system. One of the key articles worth checking out is written by Dr Hagen Schroeter. It ascribes the lion’s share of the effects to the antioxidant Epicatechin which is present at high concentrations in chocolate. Remember chocolate is made from fermented ground seeds of the Cacao tree i.e. fruit seeds…… so Chocolate certainly starts life with good intentions! How much “goodness” is left in chocolate really depends on how much the starting material is processed and diluted with sugar and other ingredients.

Theobromine in Chocolate

The principal alkaloid of the Cacao bean is theobromine, a close structural relative of caffeine. Theobromine differs from caffeine by only one methyl group and is a metabolite of caffeine (that means you can find this stuff in your liver after you drink a cup of coffee). It is one of the molecules that makes chocolate taste characteristically bitter.

Cacao contains between 1.5-3% theobromine and 0.2-0.4% caffeine (note that there is a small amount of caffeine in dark chocolate). Theobromine has a ten-fold less stimulating effect to humans than caffeine does so you won't get a "espresso rush" eating chocolate, although lots of sugar will provide a bit of oomph . For dogs however chocolate is a "no-no", 100-200 mg of theobromine per kg of a dogs body weight can cause cardiac and central nervous system distress since they cannot metabolize (i.e. get rid of it) as easily as humans can.

Antioxidants in Chocolate

Antioxidants are molecules that reduce oxidative damage to cells and bio-molecules. As we age or we are exposed to stress (e.g. burnt foods, too much sunlight, exposure to pollutants, bad movies etc.) our body is attacked by “free radicals” which lead to premature aging and disease. Consumption of antioxidant-rich foods is thought to be a good thing....

The antioxidant in Chocolate you should pay attention to is called (-)- Epicatechin. As a (very) rough estimate the maximal dosage of epicatechin in a large dark chocolate bar is about 2.8 grams (or 40 mg/kg for an average human). That is quite a lot. Under-processed chocolate and characteristically astringent chocolate containing very high cacao solid percentages (90-100%) could contain even higher levels (but the jury is still out on how and when and why). Having said that..... all dark chocolate is not created equal so the actual epicatechin content can vary a lot.

The antioxidant activity of chocolate is exceedingly high on a percentage dry weight basis even when compared with berries, beans and fruits. (Perhaps it is not really that surprising since pure dark chocolate is a ground fruit seed....... But....remember that chocolate has a significant fat content so whilst it may have potential health benefits it is not a panacea)

Back to the antioxidant levels..... dark chocolate and cacao powder have approximately 20% and 75% of the antioxidant activity per gram in comparison to the Acai berry (Euterpe oleracea), currently recognized as a most antioxidant rich natural foodstuff based on measurements in oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC) assays

DNA and Chocolate

What can the DNA of Chocolate tell us?

DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid) contains the genetic instructions for the development and function of all living organisms. The DNA of Theobroma cacao (the “Cacao tree”) consists of 390,000,000 letters ........that’s 8.7 times less information than the DNA of humans.

Just like wine, Cacao consists of many different varieties that differ by the genetic information encoded in their DNA. Different Cacao varieties have different flavor profiles. The "old-school" way of making chocolate relied on heavily blending to produce a consistent flavor from year to year and crop to crop so all of this natural diversity was never really appreciated....What a shame!

In fact thousands of varieties of Cacao exist but most have no common names and are commonly blended together in cheap chocolate to make it all taste the same. Yuk….

Luckily new trends on chocolate mean that it is getting easier to get hold of "single origin" chocolate and the flavor differences are HUGE!

 

Genetic fingerprinting (the same technique used by CSI to track down criminals by their DNA signature) can also be applied to type Cacao. The technique looks pretty cool and is proving pretty handy in the secret Chocolate Laboratory. The multicolored image to the left shows the results of a Theo Chocolate Laboratory Genetic Fingerprint of two relatives of Cacao. There are four "loci" analyzed in this experiment. From left to right the first is identical, the second is partially related, the third is unrelated and the fourth is very distinct.

The Great Chocolate Debate

Chocolate Health Issues-not all dark chocolate is created equal

The Brits have been at it again….. An Editorial in the esteemed British Medical Journal, the Lancet has wisely suggested that eating vast amounts of assorted dark chocolate might not be a good idea. They point out that a lot of dark chocolate has had the flavanoid antioxidants pounded out of them to make the chocolate less bitter tasting and that these processed types of confections would have absolutely no clinical benefit.

Seems fair enough really…. This is a bit like the difference between the nutritional benefit of a fresh vegetable versus the nutritional benefit of a frozen meal…..

Dark Chocolate in its purest form is a ground up fermented seed from the Cacao tree. Cacao seeds are vegetable matter and contain a significant percentage of flavanol antioxidants. The trouble is that certain manufacturers like to process the goodness out of the chocolate just to make a mild taste…….This is a great shame really because high quality dark chocolate really tastes rather good!

Think about it this way:

If we want to eat a healthy meal…. Do we boil our broccoli to mush and garnish it liberally with butter, cheese and salt or do we lightly steam the broccoli to preserve the vitamins? Cheese sauce may taste good but the broccoli can act as dispensation for unhealthy foods!

Adding a lot of dairy (cream, milk) or sugar makes the chocolate really easy to eat but there is absolutely no clinical benefit to a diet rich in milk and cream. Surprisingly milk and cream don’t really “kill” the uptake of antioxidants, but dairy products are hardly healthy in large doses. Therefore when looking for dark chocolate the rule is keep it simple! Look for a chocolate bar with a high percentage of Cacao with just a little sugar.

Cool hi-tech Chocolate Images..... from The Secret Chocolate Laboratory

A very unusual, sneak peek at Chocolate Nanotechnology....

It may look a moon crater but it is actually a microscope image of a tiny micro-bubble in our Theo Venezuela Darkest of Dark Chocolate bar! This image was taken on a special Electron Microscope designed for ultra high-resolution imaging of Organic materials such as Chocolate.

Note the scale on the bottom right hand side of the picture (40 microns).

A close up view shows even more detail (note scale of 10 microns - roughly the diameter of a red blood cell)

At this resolution we can start to see the amorphous structure of the chocolate. The Cocoa Butter coats the other particles in chocolate during the refining and conching process to produce an unusual morphology.

Chocolate taste and mouth-feel are a combination of the flavors from the ingredients in the chocolate AND the particle size of the ingredients. The Human palate is only sensitive down to 50 microns or so. Once the grain size of chocolate gets below 50 microns, changes in particle size of the food are perceived as changes in taste or mouth-feel. Smaller particles in chocolate produce a finer texture and if very finely ground produce a "clay-like" mouthfeel (common in certain styles of European Chocolate).

Thus high resolution chocolate images give a feel for what the chocolate may look like but also relate to how it tastes!!

What is dark chocolate made of?

So..... just how similar or different are two Theo bars from different origins??

Even a very simple ("old school") type of chemical analysis (Gas Chromatography) gives us a good sense of how Theo's Ivory Coast and Theo's Ghana bars might differ at the molecular level. The graph shows the chemical trace for Ghana in blue and Ivory Coast in Red. Where the traces overlap there is a high degree of similarity. Where the lines separate show where the molecular composition of Dark Chocolate differs.

Its just a start..... We'll keep you posted on progress in the Chocolate Laboratory.....