Milk chocolate could soon have same health benefits as dark WITHOUT affecting its taste
SCIENTISTS have found a way to make milk chocolate have the same health benefits as dark chocolate.
Milk can now be made as healthy as dark chocolate
Dark chocolate contains health-boosting antioxidants, but many people dislike the bitter flavour.
The taste of milk chocolate is more appealing, but it does not have the same healthy qualities as its darker cousin.
Now researchers have discovered a way to use peanut skin extracts to make milk chocolate that has even more nutritional benefits of dark chocolate without affecting the taste.
If applied to commercial products, peanut skin extracts would allow consumers to enjoy mild tasting products and have exposure to compounds that have proven health benefits
Nutrition experts from North Carolina State University in the US extracted phenolic compounds from peanut skins, a waste product of peanut production, and encapsulated them into maltodextrin powder which is an edible carbohydrate with a slightly sweet flavour that comes from starch-rich foods such as potatoes, rice or wheat.
The maltodextrin powder was then incorporated into the milk chocolate.
Belgian Confectioners Create World's Longest Chocolate Eclair
Consumer testing among 80 volunteers who compared samples of both milk chocolates with peanut extracts and without showed that the fortified chocolates were liked as well as the untreated milk chocolate.
Peanut skin can make milk chocolate have even more nutritional benefits than dark one
These tests also showed that the threshold for detecting the presence of the peanut skin extract was higher than that needed to fortify the milk chocolate to antioxidant levels comparable to dark chocolate.
Because peanut skins are a waste product of the blanching process of the peanut industry, the authors say that including these extracts would allow for a value-added use of the discarded skins.
Milk chocolate would be made healthy without affecting its taste
A test showed people enjoyed the peanut-skin fortified chocolate as much as the plain one
Lead author Lisa Dean said: “If applied to commercial products, peanut skin extracts would allow consumers to enjoy mild tasting products and have exposure to compounds that have proven health benefits.”
The study is published in the Journal of Food Science.