Cocoa bean roasting can preserve both chocolate health benefits, taste








The research's findings show that some health-boosting compounds in cocoa are increased by roasting; other are diminished. "It is more complicated than saying roasting reduces the health beneficial effects of cocoa," says lead researcher Joshua Lambert. Credit: Helena Yankovska/Unsplash



"Our results show that if you look at the individual polyphenolic content or the individual polyphenol compounds in cocoa, roasting causes some of them to go down while some of them go up," he said. "It is more complicated than saying that roasting leads to a decrease in phenolic content, and that by extension roasting reduces the health beneficial effects of cocoa."

The findings of the research, which were recently published on-line in Food Chemistry, will be of interest to chocolate makers, Lambert believes, because of an increasing demand for chocolate products offering enhanced health benefits. He cited as an example Mars company's CocoaVia cocoa-extract supplement that promises to deliver 375 mg of cocoa flavanols—antioxidants—in each serving to promote good health.

Beyond cocoa and chocolate, going forward Lambert predicted that more attention will be focused on how processing can affect the health beneficial effects of food.

"The effects of roasting and processing are complex and it's important to better understand what's going on in terms of the effect of the processing on the chemistry of the food," Lambert said. "We need to know how processing really affects the biological activity rather than to make an assumption that processing is always bad and that unprocessed or minimally-processed foods are always more healthful."

One case in point are studies that show that the human body is able to absorb lycopene better from tomato sauce than from raw tomatoes—cooking tomatoes improves the bioavailability of the antioxidant, he said.

Journal information: Food Chemistry

Provided by Pennsylvania State University