SureChoc: Sugar reduced chocolate and chocolate chip cookies to meet consumer sensory, naturalness and cost expectation

Sugar reduction in foods remains challenging; it is not only the sweetness of sugar but also physiochemical properties and cost that have to be matched. A substantial portion of sweet snacks favoured by children contain chocolate, which contains around 50% sugar. Sugar reduction in chocolate and chocolate cookies using DouxMatok (DM) innovative sugar-based technology will enable products good in taste, healthier to consume, and permit a chain effect to thousands of chocolate containing products. This new project will substantially modify DM technology, alongside functional fibres and Givaudan flavour solutions, for use in chocolate where sugar provides sweetness, texture, mouthfeel, bulking and is a flavour precursor.  Our consortium stands out from other initiatives by aiming for 50% sugar reduction in chocolate where current solutions would need to use polyol technology which would not be clean label. Our solution will be clean label and provide added fibre.