Natural Brown Solutions to Offset Cocoa Reduction
From baked goods to cereals and ice cream, cocoa is a commonly used ingredient across a broad range of food applications. However, there is a lot of concern about the future of cocoa—it’s predicted to be as dark as the bean from which it originates. Threatened by global rising temperatures and drier weather conditions, the survival rate of cocoa plants continues to diminish. As a result, purchasing managers are experiencing dramatic swings in cocoa prices, hitting record highs. Cocoa prices are up over 150% in just the first quarter of 2024 thanks to a global bean shortage resulting from an unfortunate combination of crop disease and adverse weather.
In response to this uncertainty, food manufacturers are reducing cocoa content to their respective points of affordability. To offset colour loss and changes in taste profile, many product developers turn to brown colourants and chocolate flavours.
Correcting Colour Loss After Cocoa Reduction
From a shade standpoint, chocolate colours are not overly challenging. There’s a natural solution for just about every application where cocoa reduction could be a possibility. Solutions from Sensient’s Natural Brown portfolio would offset colour loss relatively easy in lighter brown shades in most baked and dry grocery goods, and industry innovations would close the gap on more of the complex applications like icings and cereals.
Let’s look at some examples on bringing cocoa alternatives to life…
For dark chocolate shades in baked good applications, a common caramel-free approach would be a working with Sensient’s Natural Brown portfolio with attractive brown shades from milk coffee shade to rich dark browns. Given the heat processing associated with baked goods and especially extrusion, heat and pH stable components are essential for these applications. Fusion Hazelnut Brown from the Natural Brown family, for example, is a great option for milk chocolate shades and provides cost-in-use advantages, as well as excellent heat, pH and light stability. Our technical experts are equally able to offer unique combinations of different natural colours, creating a wider spectrum of natural brown shades.
If cutting back on cocoa in compound coatings or frostings and icings is a possibility for you, formulating with natural colours is a little more complex. However, unique solutions are available. For example, when dealing with water-soluble natural colours, a natural dye will lead to an undesired outcome. There simply isn’t enough water in the application to hydrate the powder, so you run into specking issues. Traditionally, the way to overcome this issue is to increase the usage rate. However, this approach will quickly increase cost-in-use and adversely impact texture and taste.
In order to easily and homogenously distribute a colouring food or natural colour in coatings, icings, or frostings, oil-based dispersions are the ideal solution. With Sensient’s Advanced Dispersion Technology, the dispersions eliminate specking entirely and can hit any shade in the brown spectrum without using caramel colours.
Since an ice cream’s cocoa content provides majority of its colour, decreasing the cocoa matter would most likely change the overall appearance and colour uniformity. Developers can use Sensient’s Natural Browns or customized blends of natural blues, yellows and reds to either darken the base or enhance colour uniformity. Standard yellow carotenoids within a brown blend would require emulsification like Sensient’s Advanced Emulsion Technology (AET™) for optimal performance and stability, since they are inherently oil-soluble.
While we certainly hope science can help save the future of the world’s cocoa plants, food manufacturers have the option to lean on alternatives if necessary. If you are planning to partially or completely remove cocoa, the good news is there are natural colour options to offset any changes to your product’s overall appearance. If interested in trialing any of our natural brown solutions, you can request samples here.
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