An improved method for the measurement of added vegetable fats in chocolate

Abstract

A method for identifying refined vegetable fats added to chocolate (cocoa butter equivalents, CBEs) was combined with established quantitative methods for determining the level of vegetable fat added to cocoa butter with the aim of providing improved precision. The identification of fats was based on the analysis of sterol and triterpene alcohol degradation products formed during the processing of the fat. The procedure was able to successfully discriminate between 95% of pairs of fats from a set (33) of CBE-type vegetable fats. Subsequent analysis of 80 mixtures of four CBEs with chocolate successfully identified, on cross-validation, 94% of the samples. Combining the qualitative procedure with established quantitative methodology, based on the analysis of triacylglycerols, improved the method precision from ± 2.1% to ± 0.3% (5% addition of CBE at 95% confidence). Identifying the fat analytically permits the use of quantitative methods for determining the level of added fat in chocolate that have improved precision in comparison with the measurement of an unidentified fat. This may obviate the need to use factory inspection as a means to identify the ingredients of a product and monitor compliance with proposed legislation.