When we pick up chocolate whose packaging states that it comes from some distant location, we often wonder if that’s true, and we wish we could trace the chocolate origin. Now, thanks to the American Chemical Society (ACS), we can explore the chemical background of the chocolate bar.
Follow this link for the ACS results: https://www.morressier.com/article/chemical-signatures-uplcms-cocoa-provenance-determination/5e73d6ce139645f83c229f69.
This exciting research project is made from chemists at Towson University in Maryland. The project is led by chemist Shannon Stitzel and researchers at Towson, who have developed a method for analyzing the chemical “fingerprint” of a chocolate bar. They believe that one day it will even be possible to use the technique to determine precisely from which farm the cocoa beans come.
Shannon Stitzel is an associate professor at Towson, and she teaches analytical chemistry, which has a heavy focus on lab work. She tries to design labs that teach essential techniques while being appealing to students. Food is an excellent hook for the students.
Shannon Stitzel started with basic store-bought single-origin dark chocolate bars from a few different countries. She then made a lab setup that combines a unique sample preparation method with a pattern recognition-based data analysis system. The method uses a technique called liquid chromatography to divide the cocoa liquor compounds from different chocolate samples, together with mass spectrometry, to be able to identify the samples’ chemical signatures. These chemical signatures reflect things like the various amounts of compounds like caffeine, theobromine, and catechins.
The lab setup worked well, and that’s when they started looking for more single-origin samples and started looking into the literature on provenance determination. Shannon obtained cocoa samples from many locations around the world and has been working with undergraduate research students to develop this method.”
The researchers are expecting things to get more accurate in the future. The team would like to obtain samples from different regions within a country to see if they can pinpoint locations to one area. The professor is also interested in finding if there are chemical signatures in the cocoa samples that correspond to the genetics of the cocoa plant and flavor of the cocoa itself. Shannon Stitzel said that she understands that it is difficult to predict from genetics alone whether the cocoa produced will taste good. It would be exciting to see if the team combines genetics with chemical signatures to contribute to a better prediction of the cocoa flavor profile.
