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AssigneeMars, Incorporated
InventorsMary E. Myers, Chigozie V. Nwosu, Eric J. Whitacre, John F. Hammerstone, Jr.
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The invention provides food products, including confectioneries and chocolates, having conserved concentrations of polyphenols, and in particular cocoa polyphenols. The method of this invention avoids the significant and detrimental losses of polyphenols that occur during conventional manufacture by controlling the handling of ingredients in batching processing to provide a product having a significant amount of the cocoa polyphenol concentration present in the raw materials conserved in the finished product. Additionally, the production steps of milling/refining and conching may also be controlled and modified to provide the confectioneries of the present invention having conserved concentrations of cocoa polyphenols relative to the concentration of the polyphenols present in the starting ingredients. The cocoa polyphenol ingredient may be a cocoa ingredient, an extract of a cocoa ingredient (beans, liquor, or powder, etc.) or may be a synthesized derivative thereof, or may be a synthesized polyphenol compound or mixture of polyphenol compounds or derivative thereof.
A process for conserving cocoa polyphenols during the processing of one or more cocoa ingredient(s) containing cocoa polyphenols including cocoa procyanidins into a product comprising (i) carbohydrate ingredient(s) (ii) milk ingredient(s), (iii) carbohydrate ingredient(s) and milk ingredient(s) ad (iv) the polyphenol-containing cocoa ingredient(s) which are selected from the group consisting of chocolate liquor, partially defatted cocoa solids, fully defatted cocoa solids, cocoa extract, synthetic cocoa procyanidins, and mixtures thereof, which process comprises the steps of:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.