Will healthy chocolate come to rule Halloween?

UF Health Podcasts

What if your kid’s Halloween candy was healthier and better for the environment? Swiss researchers may have made that fantasy more viable with their creation of “whole-fruit chocolate.”

We all know chocolate is a guilty pleasure. The chocolate that fills trick-or-treaters buckets is high in sugar and saturated fat and contributes to obesity and heart disease. Cocoa production also poses a threat to the environment as deforestation leads to increased greenhouse gas emissions.

But researchers found a way to address these concerns, repurposing parts of the cocoa pod that are typically thrown away. Instead of just using cocoa beans, they also used the cocoa pod husk and pulp to form a gel which they mixed with the cocoa mass to create chocolate.

They call their technique “whole-fruit chocolate.”

The researchers found that using the discarded ingredients provided significant nutritional benefits. The gel, which makes up 20% of the researchers’ proposed chocolate formula, provides comparable sweetness while it lets them do away with sugar beets used in conventional chocolate.

The formula also boasts higher dietary fiber and less saturated fat.

Taste-testers found little difference between the taste of whole-fruit chocolate and conventional chocolate.

Researchers also found that large-scale production of this healthier chocolate could reduce global warming by decreasing land use.

It may take time for whole-fruit chocolate to become an Oct. 31 staple.

But if it does, perhaps you won’t need to be as concerned for your kids’ health — or their teeth — when they bring home a bucket of this new candy.