For years, those embarking on new healthy eating plans have found their best intentions scuppered by a taste for chocolate. Now, it seems, they can shift the blame onto science.
A new study suggests that it is not a lack of willpower that makes people reach for the cacao but rather an irresistible mouthfeel, generated by the way chocolate coats the tongue.
Researchers at Britain’s University of Leeds, who have been investigating the process by which chocolate ‘melts’ in the mouth, found that each square released a fatty film that created a smooth sensation for the duration of the time it was being eaten. Now, they believe that discovery could lead to the creation of equally tasty but less calorific chocolate bars.
“We believe that a next generation of chocolate can be developed that offers the feel and sensation of high-fat chocolate yet is a healthier choice,” said Dr Siavash Soltanahmadi, the study’s lead researcher.
Soltanahmadi’s team used an unnamed brand of luxury dark chocolate and an artificial, 3D printed tongue to carry out their research. They found that the ‘tongue’, which was kept at a constant temperature and designed to mimic the movements of a human tongue, became coated in a fatty layer at a pace which was determined by the fat content of the chocolate. Only after that process was complete did the chocolate’s solid cocoa particles take over to influence the eating experience.
The findings, published this week in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, suggests that fat contained in the inner layers of a bar plays a very limited role in chocolate tasting and could thus be reduced or removed without limiting the pleasurable sensations associated with eating quality chocolate.
“Our research opens the possibility that manufacturers can intelligently design dark chocolate to reduce the overall fat content,” Soltanahmadi said. “We believe dark chocolate can be produced in a gradient-layered architecture with fat covering the surface of chocolates and particles to offer the sought after self-indulging experience without adding too much fat inside the body of the chocolate.”
The team is also now hopeful that their findings could also be applicable to a range of other unhealthy but ‘melt-in-the-mouth’ products, such as cheese or ice-cream, making low fat alternatives much more appealing.
The researchers suggested similar techniques could be applied to help design healthier versions of other foods that transform from a solid to a liquid in the mouth, such as ice-cream or cheese. The findings are published in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.