Cocoa Butter Equivalents: The Solution Towards the Shortage of Cocoa Butter
Cocoa Butter
Cocoa butter (CB), which is a natural source of fat mainly extracted from cocoa beans of cocoa tree (Theobroma cacao) through hard pressing [1]. It is traditionally utilized as major ingredient for chocolate and candies production as well as cosmetics additive due to the continuous phase contributed by CB to ensure the even distribution of basic components. CB is in solid form at room condition and it melts instantaneously at approximately 30 °C to 32 °C. This extraordinary characteristic ensures the production of stable confectionery product that melts and leaves a soft texture immediately at body temperature without resulting in an unwanted waxy texture [2, 3]. The three main fatty acids of CB are palmitic (P), stearic (S), and oleic (O) acids. All the unsaturated oleic acids are esterified at the sn-2 position of the glycerol backbone leading to the triacyclglycerols (TAGs) of CB mainly composed of 1,3-dipalmitoyl-2-oleoyl-glycerol (POP), 1-palmitoyl-2-oleoyl-3-stearoyl-glycerol (POS) and 1,3-distearoyl-2-oleoyl-glycerol (SOS) [4]. These TAGs contributed to the melting characteristics and solid fat content of the chocolate, providing them a unique texture, smell, and taste [3]. According to Wang et al. [1], the most valuable TAGs in CB is the SOS which is the key component for the CB flavor. Moreover, polymorphism refers to in which a substance is able to crystallize into a number of crystal structures. Thus, all fats including CB are polymorphic [5]. When CB crystallizes, it will have a complex polymorphic form, known as γ, α, β', and β in increasing stability and melting point arrangement [1]. According to Talbot [5], the most stable polymorph (β) is most suitable for chocolates and coatings melts at around 36 °C and it have relatively smaller crystals sizes, resulting in the soft texture upon melting. On the other hand, the second most stable polymorph (β') is normally used for confectionery fillings and compound chocolates [6]. For the production of chocolate, tempering or pre-crystallization process on CB is required to induce the formation of stable ?crystal nuclei with better thermodynamic stability [4].
Why Cocoa Butter Alternatives?
Due to the rapid global economic growth in recent years, the demand for CB-based products has been emerging. According to Future Market Insights [7], from 2016 to 2020, the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of the global CB market increase at a steady rate of 2.9%. They further projected that the market value of CB will rise from US$ 6.7 billion in 2021 to US$ 9.8 billion in 2031 with a CAGR of 3.8%. This showed the promising global demand of CB in the market. However, there are limited source of CB as cocoa tree, the main source of CB can only be cultivated in the tropical area. Aside from the region-limited cultivation, other factors such as limited plant area, infectious plant disease, natural disasters as well as climate change bring negative effect on the production volume of cocoa beans and eventually leads to the deficiency of CB. Due to the imbalance of CB global supply and demand, the price of CB has been increasing annually [1, 8]. Since then, CB alternatives (CBAs) remained a hot topic and they have been widely explored to replace or substitute the current CB as to satisfy the demand and price surge [2].
CBAs are classified into three main categories which are CB equivalents (CBEs), CB replacers (CBRs), and CB substitutes (CBSs) [2]. Among the three classifications, the more affordable CBRs and CBSs are identified as incompatible to CB resulting in softening effect [9]. Aside from the two, CBEs have been reported as more compatible to CB [10]. Hence, this work emphasized on the appealing potential and development of CBEs production to substitute or replace CB, mainly in the chocolate production sector.?
What are Cocoa Butter Equivalents?
CBEs are mainly plant-based oil that have similar physical and chemical properties as CB [9]. The similar properties of CB and CBEs owe to the identical major fatty acids which are palmitic, stearic, and oleic acid as shown in Table 2. Other than similar fatty acids profile, CBEs are also designated to have identical glyceride composition with CB as shown in Table 3. Due to these similarities, CBEs are compatible with CB and they can be mixed in any amount without altering the final products’ melting, consistency, as well as processing characteristics. CBEs are further classified into two subgroups which are CB extenders (CBExs) and CB improvers (CBIs). It is reported that CBExs is less appealing in recent years while CBIs are similar to CBEs. CBIs is commonly used to improve the soft CB due to having higher level of solid triglycerides. Most of the CBEs are produced from blending different plant-based non-lauric oils and fats such as palm oil, palm oil fractions, shea, mango kernels fat etc. [11]. In the year of 2000, the European Union (EU) had implemented and allowed the alternatives fats usage up to 5% of the total fat content. This results in a positive surge of CBEs utilization globally whereby currently, they are widely used in many countries with usage exceeding 5% or even full replacement of CB [12].
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How to Produce Cocoa Butter Equivalents?
Commercially, CBEs are obtained from fractionation or blending of the POP-rich fat sources with the SOS-rich fats. They are commonly produced through the blending of palm oil mid-fraction (POMF) with high POP level with the stearin from the stearic acid-rich tropical butter from sal, shea, kokum etc. [2, 13]. The preparation process comparison of typical fat used for CBEs production are shown in Table 1 [14]. POMF can be obtained through the dry fractionation, a thermo-mechanical separation process to separate high melting fractions from the lower ones. As reported by Hassim et al. [15], blending method is a natural method free from chemical addition, thus, trial and error process is required to obtained the optimum recipe for the blending of CBEs. Some examples of the successful CBEs production through the blending of POMF with fractioned sunflower oil [16], ?mango kernel fat [17], as well as the blending of three palm fractions [18] has been reported by Bootello et al., Sonwai et al., and Hassim et al. respectively.
Table 1. The comparison of the preparation process of typical fat used for CBEs production [14].
*P: Palmitic acid; O: Oleic acid; S: Stearic acid; A: Arachidic acid
Other than the simple blending of fractionated oils to produce CBEs, chemical or enzymatic interesterification of lipids can be another option. Interesterification alters the position of the starting triglycerides on the glycerol backbones of the fatty acids. Among them, the enzymatic interesterification (EIE) process, which are acidolysis and ester-ester exchange, stands out due to its eco-friendliness whereby no chemicals were added to the process, lower operating temperature, and higher selectivity [5, 15, 19]. Acidolysis is a reversible reaction involving a TAG and free fatty acid (normally stearic acid for CBEs production) whereby upon acidolysis, the free fatty acid will replace the fatty acid in the TAG. Similar to acidolysis, ester-ester exchange involves the reversible reaction of fatty acids exchange between two esters (TAG). The difference of the two reactions is that ester-ester exchange does not generate any by-product in an ideal case while acidolysis will have an extra free fatty acid to be further removed through stripping followed by multi-step fractionation [20]. Both the general enzymatic reaction routes for acidolysis and ester-ester exchange are shown in Figure 1. Mohamed [21] and Soekopitojo et al. [22] had reported successful production of CBEs through acidolysis of palm fatty acid distillate and POMF using lipase and ester-ester exchange of POMF fat blends with fully hydrogenated soybean oil using lipozyme respectively.
Figure 1. General enzymatic reaction route for (a) Acidolysis and (b) Ester-ester exchange.
Source: Xu [20]
Comparison between Cocoa Butter and its Equivalents
Physical and Chemical Properties
As shown in Table 2, both CB and CBEs have comparable fatty acid composition with slight deviation when comparing the major fatty acids which are the palmitic, stearic, and oleic acid.?Besides, the main TAGs composition of CBEs resembled the CB TAGs, which are the POP, POS, and SOS as listed in Table 3. It is observed that all the values of CBEs are within the range of the CB values. This further proving that CBEs have similar chemical properties as the fatty acid profiles and TAGs composition of CB resembles the CBEs.
Table 3. Triacylglycerol (TAG) composition of cocoa butter (CB) and cocoa butter equivalents (CBEs) [2, 13].
From Table 4, it can be observed that the melting point of CBEs is similar to CB close to body temperature proving that CBEs has similar physical properties with CB, which is desirable. Besides, as reported by Bahari and Akoh [13], CBEs has slightly higher temperature stability as compared to CB whereby CB starts to melt at approximately 31 °C, which is 2 °C lower than CBEs. Moreover, the iodine value and saponification value of the CBEs is also comparable to CB’s showing that the saturation level and the amount of medium chain fatty acids in both CB and CBEs resembled each other. However, the higher acid value observed in CBEs owe to the possible formation of hydrolytic rancidity from palm oil [23]. ?The similar physiochemical properties of CBEs to CB shows that CBEs can be a good alternative for the production of CB-containing products.
Table 4. Comparison of the physiochemical properties of cocoa butter (CB) and cocoa butter equivalents (CBEs) [13, 23].
Economic Aspect
As mentioned in the previous section, the limited source of CB due to the difficulties in the cocoa tree cultivation has led to the shortage of CB supply. Despite the shortage of CB, it experienced a demand surge for various products. Therefore, this imbalance of supply and demand had led to the increasing price of CB globally. Due to this, the CBEs has been a rising star in the sense that an oil with similar chemical and physical properties to CB can be obtained at a lower price. The lower cost of CBEs owed to the cheaper raw materials as it is derived from a mixture of plant-based oil which can be obtained from a variety of plant sources such as palm oil. According to Fediol, the price of crude palm oil only consists of approximately 15% of the crude CB. They further mentioned that the price of CBEs ranged from approximately 30% cheaper than CB up to 10% more expensive than CB for CBEs with unique characteristics and qualities [24]. Even so, it is proven that the existence of CBEs in the market had successfully ‘stretched’ the CB supply as a cheaper alternative to cope with the high demand [25].
Health and Safety Aspect
In general, both lauric and hydrogenated fats has been used to replace CB which will further increase the levels of LDH cholesterol and induce arteriosclerosis which may leads to severe health effects upon consumption. Unlike those replacers, CBEs is a blend of POMF and stearic-rich tropical butter. It contains high amount of oleic and stearic acids that do not vary the levels of cholesterol in human blood, therefore, serving as a healthier CB alternatives [11]. Besides, the main sources of CBEs are natural plant-based fats and does not contain additional chemical compound that will bring negative effect to our health [11]. Moreover, from a study conducted by Quek et al. [26], the found that Sal fat (CBEs) shown no metabolic difference (blood glucose, insulin, and blood triglycerides level) on human body when compared to CB, proving that CBEs can be a potential alternatives of CB.
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What’s so appealing about CBEs Specifically in Chocolate Production?
It is mentioned that the usage of CBEs to substitute CB can improve the quality of chocolate produced in terms of stability, texture, and fat blooming effect [24]. The utilization of CBEs for chocolate production resulting in the improvement of chocolate products’ fat phase. It prevents the undesired fat migration from the filling to the surface of chocolate, also known as fat blooming, which is common in chocolate products during summer time or in tropical country. Aside from that, CBEs improved the hardness and ‘snap’ effect which defines a good quality chocolate, and this happens specifically in chocolate products with high milk content. Milk fats typically have soft texture and thus, the utilization of CBEs are able to correct this. CBEs in chocolate also helps maintaining the texture and ‘gloss’ effect which makes the chocolate seems more appealing to consumers [24].?
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Figure 2. Fat blooming in chocolate.
Source: Jaron [27]
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Conclusion and Future Recommendations
CB as a valuable and unique fats has experienced demand surge annually. However, the difficulties and limitations of cocoa tree cultivation has led to the supply shortage of CB. Thus, CBAs has been widely explored by various researchers. Among the three types of CBAs, CBEs which have higher compatibility with CB seems to be a potential alternative. CBEs can be produced from fractionation and blending of POMF with stearic-rich fats or through EIE. As presented, CBEs portrays similar physiochemical properties as CB which is favorable as an alternative. Besides, the raw materials of CBEs can be obtained at a lower price as compared to CB. In the meantime, CBEs does not cause any adverse health effects upon consumption and are safe for consumption as CB. Typically, in chocolate production, the utilization of CBEs instead of CB improved the stability and texture of chocolate produced.
Although CBEs possessed high potential as the alternatives for CB, the chemical composition including the fatty acids and TAGs of CBEs are yet to fully represents CB, thus limiting their usage as completely replacement of CB in the market. Besides, as mentioned in the previous section, the production cost for higher quality products with specific characteristics is higher for CBEs than CB. These reasons might contribute to the inability of CBEs to fully replace and meet the demand of CB in the market [11]. Thus, further research and exploration on the optimization of reaction conditions for CBEs production as well as to discover novel and natural fats mixture that resemble the CB so that they can cope with the high demand of CB. As mentioned previously, CBEs are generally produced through blending of different vegetable fats. In order to improve the current technologies regarding the production of CBAs, new sources of blended oils and fats should be explored, for example the bambangan kernel fat for cocoa butter equivalent production as reported by Norazlina et al. [2]. Aside from that, more comprehensive studies should be conducted to evaluate the nutritional composition and health effects, such as oxidative studies, of CBEs for human consumptions to enhance the potential of CBEs to substitute CB.?
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