FatImaging

Projectname:
Imaging measurement of fat content and fat migration in chocolate and chocolate products

Workgroup: Chocolate technology

Research Partner and Scientific Guidance:

  1. Fraunhofer-Institut für Verfahrenstechnik und Verpackung IVV Freising, Thorsten Tybussek

Financing: IVLV
Duration: 2023

The migration of fats in chocolate is a widespread problem in filled chocolate products. Fat migration leads to an undesirable softening of the chocolate or to graying due to what is known as fat bloom.

Fat migration in chocolate can be determined analytically in the laboratory. A method to determine the fat migration in chocolate are gas chromatographic, calorimetric or NMR-based methods. These previously established methods are measurements that require a sample of the chocolate and do not look at the entire product. It is therefore not, or very difficult, to localize fat migration in a product.

One way of determining the fat migration in a product with spatial resolution is to measure the fat bloom formed by the fat migration. Fat bloom is usually measured by visual inspection or by image analysis. The chocolate samples are regularly photographed and compared at the beginning and during storage. However, this method is subject to significant limitations. Fat bloom formation is strongly dependent on temperature on the one hand and cannot be applied to white chocolate on the other.

As an alternative method for determining fat migration in chocolate, infrared spectroscopy using hyperspectral cameras will be used as part of the "FatImaging" project. The use of hyperspectral cameras in the infrared range combines the determination of the chemical composition of a sample with local information (chemical imaging). This enables a spatially resolved measurement of the fat content and thus a precise determination of the fat migration in chocolate. The aim of the project is to enable the determination of fat migration or the formation of fat bloom in chocolate in a short time and thus to determine the storage stability of chocolate products more quickly.