Food Brewer, a Swiss food technology start-up backed by Lindt, has launched a cocoa-free chocolate bar made from by-products of the yellow pea industry. The bar, Yodel Bites, is sold on all Swiss SBB trains with dining cars through the on-board caterer Elvetino, Green Queen reports.
The company first became known for cocoa grown from plant cells, and while it works through the regulatory approvals that requires, it has turned to other crops to imitate cocoa in chocolate and coffee products. It uses legumes and cocoa butter equivalents to replace chocolate's main components.
Yellow peas were chosen, the company says, because they grow all year round and in many regions, support healthy soils, are harvested efficiently, have a short and stable supply chain and depend little on climate. Food Brewer takes a part of the pea that is usually overlooked and ferments, roasts and processes it into nutty, roasted, chocolate-like flavours. Mixed with fats and sugar, it becomes a smooth liquor with the taste and texture of chocolate.
In Yodel Bites the pea ingredient is paired with carob, a legume long used as a chocolate substitute, along with palm and shea fats, sugar, whole milk powder, hazelnuts and sunflower lecithin. The company says the bar has 30% less sugar than ordinary milk chocolate. It was made with the private-label producer Stella Bernrain and is also sold in its shops and online.
Cocoa alternatives are drawing investment as climate change hits supply. The report notes that cocoa stocks fell to a ten-year low in 2024, when prices hit a record, and that extreme weather is destroying harvests in the main growing countries.
Food Brewer is still developing cell-based cocoa: cells taken from a cocoa bean are grown into a callus in a nutrient gel, moved into fermenters and, once enough biomass forms, harvested, dried and roasted. Last year it scaled the process to 6,000 litres and raised $5.6 million from investors including Lindt & Sprungli, Puratos's venture arm Sparkalis and the chocolate maker Felchlin. It is now seeking regulatory approval in the United States. Blind tastings by the Bern University of Applied Sciences found consumers reacted well to its cocoa-free chocolate.
The report was written by Anay Mridul for Green Queen.
Photo: Sanjay Acharya / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Source: Green Queen
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