Swiss Company Promises Chocolate Revolution

July 16, 2009 — -- Chocolate is just as much a part of Switzerland as the Alps. Now, global market leader Barry Callebaut has developed the product that competitors have been hopelessly puzzling over for 60 years -- chocolate that doesn't melt and is low in calories.

Serious mountain climbers know the problem all too well: Packing chocolate in your rucksack only ends in frustration when you reach the summit. If you're walking in freezing cold temperatures, the chocolate bar becomes a rock-hard block that's impossible to bite into without breaking your teeth. But, then again, if the sun is beating down, it won't take long before the chocolate melts into a gooey mess. In the worst-case scenario, you reach the mountain top, finally at your destination, and it's completely liquified.

And even if the temperature is just right, there's still the problem of weight gain. As most of us have finally realized, chocolate is not one of the staple foods of the skinny minnie.

But one Swiss chocolate manufacturer thinks it has a solution that could make these problems a thing of the past. Barry Callebaut, whose annual output of over 1.1 million tons of cocoa and chocolate products makes it the world's largest producer of chocolate, has developed a type of chocolate with completely new properties. According to the company's head developer, Hans Vriens, the chocolate has up to 90 percent fewer calories than regular chocolate.

What's more, high temperatures can't touch it -- unless, by chance, they soar higher than 55 degrees Celsius (131 degrees Fahrenheit). Depending on its composition, traditional chocolate starts to melt at around 30 degrees Celsius. And that's the inspiration behind the tentative name its developers have given the new product: "Vulcano."