Chocolate goes probiotic

Barry Callebaut claims to have developed the world’s first probiotic chocolate produced on industrial scale.

The chocolate manufacturer worked closely with probiotics producer the Lallemand group to create the functional chocolate using Lallemand’s Probiocap technology.

Thanks to modifications to the chocolate-making process, Barry Callebaut has produced a chocolate enriched with probiotic microorganisms that help restore the balance of intestinal flora.

The firm claimed chocolate ensures the survival of up to four times as many beneficial probiotic bacteria as those contained in milk-based substrates.

“Ensuring sufficient distribution of probiotic microorganisms in chocolate on an industrial scale is no easy task,” said Barry Callebaut’s chief innovation officer Hans Vriens. “High temperatures and pressures can have a negative influence on cell-counts of the integrated probiotic strains.

“We therefore developed a production system that guarantees a homogeneous blend of the probiotics in the chocolate, within a restricted temperature range and we have succeeded in developing a special process which guarantees the survival of probiotics in the chocolate matrix.”

Bruno Delattre, business director at Lallemand’s functional foods unit Lal’food explained: “The patented Probiocap technology involves applying a protective shield around probiotic bacteria, ensuring their survival in the digestive tract and thus optimal activity in the gut, their site of action.

“Probiocap also provides an answer to several known stability issues of probiotics in non-dairy applications. It thus enhances the resistance of probiotics to heat, compression and high gastric acidity.

“We are very pleased that the results of this cooperative project have been so successful. Probiotic chocolate is just one application in a range of many made possible by micro-encapsulation technology,” he added.

The product will launch at the Food Ingredients Europe 2007 trade fair in London this week.