We interrupt our regularly scheduled allergy-related articles to bring you this important announcement.
We know that many of our readers are chocolate aficionados. Thanks to the novel application of an age-old electrical engineering technique, two patents have been awarded to Temple University for a method of manufacturing chocolate with up to 20% lower fat content.
Today, the fat content of chocolate is relatively high – sometimes as high as 40% – in order to keep it flowing during the manufacturing process.
Physicists at Temple using Electrorheology concepts, applied an electric field to chocolate in order to decrease it’s viscosity, allowing it to flow more easily. This technique could enable manufacturers to lower the fat content while still allowing the chocolate to flow as it is being processed.
The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and was funded by Mars Chocolate.
Disclosure: The author is a chocolate lover, geek, and former electrical engineer.
- Electrorheology leads to healthier and tastier chocolate – Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Lower-fat chocolate is now possible thanks to electrical engineering – The Verge
