Alternative cacao foods such as chocolate made of perilla seeds and buckwheat will become popular

As climate change around the world makes the sustainability of major crops uncertain, the food industry is trying to find alternative ingredients. The same goes for cacao, whose price soared more than 40% last year alone.

Cacao, a raw material for chocolate, is considered a representative crop with a red signal on sustainability due to various problems such as worsening crop conditions, exploitation of child labor and heavy metal pollution. Previously, Mediterranean soybeans and plants such as Carob were used as substitutes, but they have not been fully established in the market because they are far from the actual flavor of cacao. In the meantime, Korean domestic startups are developing substitute materials for cacao, which have a similar flavor to real cacao.

cacao beans and cacao powder (Source: shutterstock)

On the 9th Jan 2024, a alternative cacao prototype tasted at HN Novatech, a startup specializing in alternative food materials located in Anyang city, Gyeonggi Province, was so flavorful that it was mistaken for real chocolate if I had not been informed in advance. It looks and tastes just like chocolate, but cacao accounts for only 2% of their alternative cacao.

Instead of cacao, it is a by-product such as scraps left over from perilla seeds and buckwheat shells. Only the ingredients that can reproduce the cacao flavor are extracted from these ingredients. They named it 'Ecao(Eco + Cacao)' in the sense of eco-friendly (Eco) alternative cacao raw materials. Currently, prototypes inevitably include 2% of cacao to mark such as 'cacao' and 'chocolate' according to food marking rules. HN Novatech explained even if they use 100% of Ecao, there is no difference flavor.

HN Novatech's prototype chocolate made from alternative cacao ingredients (Source: HN Novatech)

HN Novatech has named 'Component Imitation Technology (Ingremimetics)' to their own technology that extracts and combines only the desired ingredients to reproduce completely different ingredients. They said,"It's an innovative technology that distinguishes itself from a less feasible molecular analysis method or a chemical synthesis method that is not guarantee safety." The unit price of production is about 20% cheaper than cacao.

The reason why HN Novatech has developed an alternative cacao material is because of the request of a large US food company currently discussing collaboration. The biggest reason why global food companies want cacao alternative materials or crops is price. Cacao prices are on the rise day by day due to worsening crop conditions caused by climate change.


On the New York Futures Exchange in November last year, cacao prices for delivery in December of that year hit a new 44-year high of $3,786 per ton. Major cacao producers, which account for 75% of the world's cacao yields, including Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Cameroon and Nigeria, suffered the El Nino phenomenon due to the worsening crop, causing a shortage of cacao supply. Economist predict that climate change will continue this phenomenon in the future.

Another advantage of alternative cacao is that it is free from the problem of heavy metal contamination of chocolate. The Consumer Report surveyed 28 chocolate products on the market in 2022 and found warning levels of cadmium and lead in 23 products. The Consumer Report also expanded its scale to 48 products last year and conducted a reinvestigation, with 16 products still having problems with heavy metal content.

harvesting cacao beans (Source: shutterstock)

Regardless of brand awareness, fair trade, and organic products, dark chocolate with high cacao content also has a higher heavy metal content. This is because cacao itself is exposed to heavy metals from the contaminated soil and atmosphere of the production area.

HN Novatech said, "Alternative cacao products will become replacements to consumers who avoid heavy metal problems." and "Since there is no caffeine, they can be used to develop foods for those with limited caffeine intake such as infants and pregnant women."

producting a chocolate (Source: shutterstock)

HN Novatech plans to supply Ecao in the form of cacao mass, a raw material for chocolate, so that food companies can process them in various forms as needed. It will launch consumer products in the form of processed products under its own brand.

Kim Yang-hee, CEO of HN Novatech said, "The demand for alternative cacao raw materials is increasing around the world as there are growing concerns that cacao cultivation will not be sustainable in the future. The goal is to preoccupy the global alternative cacao raw material market with ECAO."

BY Kwon Taek-Kyeong (tk@itdonga.com)