Climate change threatens chocolate. This company invented a substitute

ChoViva, a cocoa-free chocolate alternative, is tested and processed by an employee at the testing lab of Planet A Foods. Sandra Singh for NPR hide caption

Climate change is affecting our food, and our food is affecting the climate. NPR is dedicating a week to stories and conversations about the search for solutions.

MUNICH — A few years ago, food scientist Sara Marquart came across a fact that stopped her in her tracks.

Marquart was paging through the book Never Out of Season, by ecologist Rob Dunn.

She read that more than half the global supply of cocoa beans comes from two African countries — Ivory Coast and Ghana — and that both countries, which lie just north of the equator, are facing more extreme weather events driven by climate change.

Sponsor Message

"You have a bit of a problem [in] that it's a very small region that all the cocoa is coming from, and secondly, you have a plant, cocoa, that is very susceptible to climate change," Marquart says.

Thijs van Klaveren, a bioprocess engineer at Planet A Foods, checks samples at the company's laboratory, which specializes in researching cocoa butter and fat alternatives. Sandra Singh for NPR hide caption

Just last year, both Ivory Coast and Ghana received record rainfall prior to the autumn cocoa harvest. That left fungal tree infections and rotting cocoa fruit, and the global supply of cocoa beans dwindled. Big chocolate manufacturers stockpiled beans, and the price for raw cocoa more than tripled in a single year.

This shortfall has set the stage for companies like Planet A Foods, which Marquart founded with her brother, Max Marquart. The company's scientists have been working on a chocolate substitute for the past three years.

Making a food that looks like chocolate, feels like chocolate and tastes like chocolate — but isn't chocolate — takes time.

Anna-Lena Krug, a food scientist at Planet A Foods, estimates that she and her colleagues tweaked the recipe "between 700 and 800 times," before arriving at what they call ChoViva, a chocolat