Choviva: Chocolate replacement with less CO2 emissions | Hacker News Reader

Choviva: Chocolate replacement with less CO2 emissions

choviva.com

23 pointsbill3865 comments

This is classic deck-chair reorg, instead of actually helping the environment.

China outputs gigatons of coal smoke. The US ships goods by individual trucks that could travel by train for a fraction of the fuel usage. We dispose of millions of plastic, floating pieces of trash in our oceans.

But if we slightly decrease the carbon footprint of a Hershey's bar, we'll be OK.

I use a stainless steel straw, so I'm doing my part!

These types of arguments are so tiresome. As if the only thing anyone on the entire planet is trying to do is decrease the carbon footprint of a Hershey's bar. If we wait around for a the panacea of solutions, we'll be wiped out as a species well before that solution hits (sadly human extinction seems to be that panacea solution).

Instead, people do whatever they can where they can. I can choose to use a stainless steel straw, buy products with recyclable packaging not from single use plastics. I can choose to buy products from companies that spend time and effort to do what they can do to also have less of an environmental impact. It really doesn't bother me to put in that effort, and my effort damn sure has no affect on you. So pound sand for telling me what I can and cannot do because you disagree.

You personally cannot tell MAGA that climate change is not a hoax where they will suddenly listen. You cannot tell current POTUS that action needs to be taken when he's already undone legislation that would have been much more effecting than what type of straws people use. So you go ahead and drive yourself crazy and continue to belittle people that do whatever they can where they can, because you just come across at one of those people, and are promptly ignored

Try working out the math. I’m a little tired of your argument. You are wrong. We really do need to address the really big things.

Great. You go tell POTUS and US Congress exactly what your solution is, and come back to us when they have implemented your solution. No? Fine, you go out and preach to those that do not believe climate change is an issue, and then come back to us when you've convinced everyone.

You coming at everyone like we're all stupid is just not helping anyone. Instead, you're the petulant child that thinks everyone should do exactly what they want because they have no real understanding of the complexity of making wholesale changes like you are dreaming for. As if you were the first person to have this realization. Please

Well do you care about results or not? Because if climate change is such an urgent threat to face, it seems like all efforts should be directed towards the lowest-hanging fruit and making the most possible impact with the resources that you have, instead of muddying the waters by convincing people that buying a hyper-processed chocolate substitute will actually change anything meaningfully. OP clearly does not care enough to make it his or her life's quest, but that doesn't make it inconsistent to criticize the effort of those who supposedly do, just like it's not inconsistent to criticize a bad movie without being an accomplished film director. What's inconsistent is selling climate change as an imminent thread that has to be an immediate top priority to address, while promoting purely performative efforts. It seems like what actually motivates activists in this area is the sense of moral superiority more than a sense of duty.

You can criticize the lack of effort and point that criticism directly at those in charge. Taking cheap shots at people making personal choices to at least not contribute to the problems directly is just not ever going to do anything positive. Again, these individuals are not the ones in control of government policy. They are just trying to do what they feel is a better way than actively participating in the worsening.

Shout at the US government all you want. At least you'll be putting the blame of inaction where it belongs. You're efforts will have the same effect that you say the individuals are having. None.

You want to make changes? Run for office. Get elected. Enact change. Oh, right, your comfy salary and cushy job are too nice to actually take on any sacrifice to do that. So getting a government job making changes from the inside are also not going to happen for same comfy/cushy reasons. Also, now, those jobs don't exist. So go out and campaign for those that are working to get into office. Work to campaign against those that are in office but not doing anything.

There's much more helpful ways of trying to get large scale changes made than trying to belittle other individuals.

There IS a lot of effort to address the really big things, all over the world!

The person behind choviva is not in a position to change China's coal usage or US freight rail uptake. Neither are you and neither am I. Should we just do nothing?

The world invested $2.1 trillion in the clean energy transition in 2024. We are doing the big things.

https://about.bnef.com/blog/global-investment-in-the-energy-...

Cool but I'd wish we measure the output vs how much we spend, as it's frequently dumped into a black hole with little to show for it.

No worries. DOGE came to the same conclusion and stopped the dumping into the black hole. We're all saved now. They've also actively eliminated climate change. Not from existing, but from the official records, and that's as good as actually eliminating it, right? After all, if you stop testing, the numbers go down.

That's not the point at all. But it is a bit like saying California high speed rail must be a glowing success because look at how much they've spent, etc.

Very little of the $2T is dumped into a black hole. 1/3 were electric vehicles, 1/3 was wind, solar & batteries, 1/6 was electrical infrastructure.

See this: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/72h/hourly

Now you're tilting at imaginary windmills. No one is "telling me what I can and cannot do because you disagree."

I'm simply pointing out it has zero net effect on the problem. It's like trying to stop an island from being flooded by rising sea levels, using a bucket brigade. It's not "better than doing nothing!"; it is doing something that achieves nothing.

Go ahead with your buckets if you want to. Buy them in pretty colors with flowers around the top. Have fun.

But it won't stop the tide.

So you just go ahead and continue to do nothing while armchair quarterbacking whatever it is you think you're controlling (it's nothing in case you haven't yet realized it). You showing up to a protest also does nothing more than using your stainless straw. It is the people in power that are actively denying climate change exists, striking from the official record any mention of it from any official forms of government communication, and there is nothing Joey Sixpack can do about it. Making fun of or belittling in any way other people for doing whatever they can is just beyond unhelpful.

Also, do you not think that those that are using stainless straws and eliminated use of single use plastics in their personal lives are also not doing other things to encourage their leaders to enact big changes? Signing petitions, writing/calling representatives, attending protests, participating in community events are all things that individuals can do that all add up to nothing in today's government leadership. It would be much better use of energy complaining about the havoc the current administration is doing to undo legislation that did enable large scale changes than admonishing the little guy for something totally out of their control

> If we wait around for a the panacea of solutions, we'll be wiped out as a species well before that solution hits (sadly human extinction seems to be that panacea solution).

I don't think this sort of hyperbole helps either. We could double down on carbon emissions to double the worst projections and humans would still be in no risk of being wiped out. Sure it would really suck for a lot of people, but our species would survive. We've survived much worse.

Absolutely. No fucking way am I giving up chocolate for anything so it’s just a moot point and a funny read.

and here I am ready to have a Ninja iTransformer on my counter than converts leaves and grass and sunlight into every delicacy in the world, at my fingertips.

As for saving the planet, are we still pretending that reduce/reuse is an option, or have we moved onto white hat underground climate engineering as the only practical solution given current politics and markets.

A lot of things are happening, this company is just doing a little part of it and that's alright.

China have ambitious plans to carbon neutral by 2050 and the US had plans to... ok maybe the US is a bit stuck for the moment but it seems like at least some states seem to care.

What's important is that people show that investing in environmental-friendly companies is worthwhile. Right now that is not usually the case unless there's some kind of state/government incentive. And no, incentives are not bad since the option of polluting also has a cost, the only difference is that the cost of polluting is a long-term loan that it growing and is already hard to pay off.

For this reason I think they are unfortunately over-selling the climate aspect.

However, it is still a good idea for shortening the supply chain, reducing labor costs, and hedging against climate risks.

Cacao (like coffee) is a crop with structures still reverberating from the colonial period. It is labor intensive (not amenable to mechanization) and low margin for most small holder producers. As a perennial crop it requires long term investment to establish, and the harvest cycle often requires financing to bridge. It is subject to fluctuating global commodity prices. The plants themselves are climate sensitive and the impact of changing temperatures and precipitation are already wreaking havoc. Attempting to expand or relocate production to compensate often means deforestation of threatened ecosystems.

The next generation of cacao and coffee farmers see these problems and want to ditch the fields in favor of city jobs. Why put your life into something so risky?

Sunflowers avoid most of these problems since they are an annual crop that grows in temperate latitudes and can be heavily mechanized. (The problems of monoculture are a separate discussion).

Of course it won't be as good as the real deal. That's fine; use sunflowers for the chocolate covered candy garbage. Let craft chocolate be a luxury good with prices that offer a living wage to producers.

> But if we slightly decrease the carbon footprint of a Hershey's bar, we'll be OK.

They're not saying it alone will fix it. They also say they:

>created the ChoViva website with an environmentally conscious mindset. This means we use fonts, colours, images and animations in a purposeful way, do without flashy videos and welcome you in the low-energy dark mode by default.

And I doubt you think they're claiming less JavaScript is all we need.

So what is their claim then? They think that if you optimize your consumption based on "environmentally friendly" supply chains and aesthetics, even if those optimizations are actually unhealthy (ie. replacing cocoa with sunflower seeds) and/or useless, we'll solve climate change?

This is all about aesthetics for addicted consumers. What would actually be much better, all around, is if our culture started promoting buying high quality cocoa powder and making our own cookies instead of buying highly processed garbage that pretends to be good for the environment.

> we'll solve climate change

Things can help solve a problem without being sufficient to solve it on their own. Do you refuse to use LED lights because they won't bring your power bill down to zero?

I used to watch sci-fi films and think: "well this isn't realistic, people simply wouldn't accept eating Soylent Green or a nutrient paste ration"

Now I realise that these things will come to us branded up as desirable and high-status. It isn't ultra-processed pea protein, this is a 'vegan steak'

Human beings evolved to eat whole foods. If you're going to eat something else, you better be very, very sure about the long-term effects.

> Human beings evolved to eat whole foods. If you're going to eat something else, you better be very, very sure about the long-term effects.

Of all the things humans in a modern world do, that's the thing you're critical of? Do you use computers, sit all day, drive a car, take medicine, ...?

> Human beings evolved to eat whole foods. If you're going to eat something else, you better be very, very sure about the long-term effects.

I think if you apply similar processing to sunflower seeds and cocoa beans, one isn't more of a "whole food" than the other.

I would give this a try. It's probably not exactly the same as chocolate, but that doesn't mean it has to be worse.

> Here’s what we’ve found out: It’s not about the cocoa-beans, but about the way they are treated during the manufacturing process.

I eat a lot of high end single origin chocolate bars, and I simply don’t believe this. Two bars from the same brand at the same percentage of cocoa content using different beans taste completely different. In exactly the same way as wine or coffee. It’s one of the most interesting parts of eating good chocolate. I just don’t believe this approach will ever replace my chocolate consumption, but may have a shot at the larger market of bad chocolate bars.

What are some of you choice bars? Recently I tried a few single origin bars and was floored by how different they tasted amongst themselves, and how dramatically different they were to your run of the mill godiva or lindt.

How much of this is variation between farms and how much is variations between batches? If the taste of every batch (a given farm's crop in a given season) were effectively random we would also see large variations from farm to farm. The theory are suggesting is that a given farm (or a given country, or a given brand) is long-term consistent and different from one another, but a double blind difference taste test at low N would be insufficient; You would need to test/quantify other forms of variation as well.

Fruition is my entry recommendation. Every bar they make is good. Then Castronova, Goodnow Farms, Askinosie, Soma, and Dick Taylor. A good heuristic for evaluating a new brand is if the package tells you where the beans are from and if the ingredients list is “cocoa beans, sugar”.

EDIT: I realize you asked about bars not brands, but I’m in transit and brands was easier than individual bars. I’m a huge fan of the Askinosie orange bar in particular.

I'm likewise extremely skeptical, but I'd still like to taste it.

Maybe a replacement where chocolate isn't the main ingredient?

If I’m going to eat a fast-food burger other than in-n-out I may as well eat a beyond burger or something else non-meat because McD’s and BK’s meat are nothing like real meat.

If I’m going to eat a Kit Kat or some other gas station candy bar I may as well eat artificial chocolate because it pretty much already is fake chocolate.

However I can’t eat a Beyond BK (do they make those anymore? Or the White Castle beyond burgers?), probably because they cost more than the original product. And I assume this fake chocolate will have the same problem.

They’ll try to sell it as a luxury item because that price point is the only way they can stay in business but it just won’t be that good.

I realize I may not be the average consumer, but I love Impossible Burgers. I generally try to limit my intake of mammalian meat for animal welfare reasons, but I've found no other alternative satiates that "red meat craving" like an Impossible burger can for me.

I love chocolate, and while I'm skeptical this will taste like my favorite dark chocolate, I'm open-minded that it could be a viable substitute on some occasions.

I can’t remember which one did the BK Whopper and White Castle burgers - beyond or impossible. (I live in Europe but was spending most of my time in the USA when these came out).

Whatever one it was - it has a heme protein extracted from soybean roots which gives it that blood smell and taste that is so satisfying.

Both used Impossible AFAIK (pretty sure they both have them still, too).

> it has a heme protein extracted from soybean roots which gives it that blood smell and taste that is so satisfying.

Glad you like it. Personally, I wish places didn't replace the real veggie burgers with them, but that's mostly a side effect of American restaurants tending to think there should be exactly one veg option so they can't coexist.

Impossible burgers smell strongly of soybean meal to me. As in I'm mildly repulsed if the person sitting across from me is eating one.

Are you sure that was an Impossible burger and not a Beyond burger? I've tried both and the aroma of Beyond burgers (which I think taste fine but the aroma of uncooked patties reminds me of cat food) was much more noticeable to me.

It's whatever the busy burger place at the ferry building was selling about 6 years ago. I am not sure, but I do think it was Impossible.

The impossible whopper is a thing. It's my go-to when I go there!

They changed the chocolate recipe in East Germany because they didn't have the ingredients.

At one point they sold "chocolate" made of fish meal.

Interesting. Source?

The only relevant thing I could find was the „Schlager Süßtafel“ ( https://www.t-online.de/leben/essen-und-trinken/id_100228748... ) which seems to have been made with milk from cows fed with fishmeal, which made it taste weird.

Ah, yes.

People in the time said it was in the food, but it was "just" used to feed the animals that produced the food.

Made primarily from sunflower seeds? I just don't think that's going to taste like chocolate.

Process:

Fermentation: The sunflower seeds undergo an innovative fermentation-like process, similar to ancient beer brewing technology, to enhance their flavor.

Roasting: The fermented seeds are then gently roasted. Grinding: The roasted ingredients are ground into a concentrate that resembles cocoa powder.

Mixing and Conching: The concentrate is mixed with additional ingredients, ground further, and conched to achieve a smooth, creamy texture, similar to traditional chocolate

Carob was the old-timey chocolate substitute in the 70s (probably because of inflation back then as well). Carob is kind of chocolate tasting, but it's better to just say it's carob instead of trying to pretend it's chocolate - it definitely didn't have the same smoothness as chocolate.

Replacing cocoa as the base for a chocolate that can work with local crops and be price competitive without being too dissimilar has been a fancy of mine since the cost of cocoa went through the roof in the last year. My wife and I run a small wholesale bakery and I’ve been dying to try and come up with my own alternatives. I heard there has been work using Fava beans, which I like the idea of because it’s easier to grow those in more places than the cocoa bean. Sunflower seeds is an interesting base, I wonder what their “fermentation-like” process is.

This is going to be directed at poor people, who can't afford real chocolate. It might taste better than the puke taste of hershey. But replacing Cocoa butter is just the same trend as using food emulsifiers and thickeners, and stabilizers as is done with other foods. Taking out fat and replacing it with substitutes, hasn't really corresponded to people losing weight. It probably won't be good for you.

Interesting that humanity comes up with stuff like this in times where shipping is cheapest. Wouldn't this have been much more impactful in the 19th century or so when getting chocolate was more expensive than now? Or is the process that hard that it can be only done with modern technology?

> Interesting that humanity comes up with stuff like this in times where shipping is cheapest.

Go look at the news. A trade war just started, and tariffs are going to drive up the cost of chocolate in the US.

I assumed that this product isn't that new, I can already buy it in normal stores around me. This has been in development for multiple years if it's already on shelves now, no?

On another note, I wonder when the next "less than 4kb bundle size" framework we're going to see. Somehow, that always ends up mattering!

Idk, I feel like it'd be good if people could engage with "looks tasty relative to savings (carbon or monetary)" or something equivalent.

I see why they're leaning into the environmental angle, but I think they're better off marketing their product as upscale, better than regular chocolate.

They should be selling upscale, luxury-priced high-end "chocolate" bars, doing taste tests against fancy brands.

I don't think you can sell a luxury brand without a luxury story behind it. The creation of a substitute good in times of high cacao prices is the opposite of a luxury.

Luxurious margins make it possible to promote a luxury story. Think like Häagen-Dazs.

> "Häagen-Dazs" is an invented pseudo-Scandinavian phrase coined by the American Reuben Mattus, in a quest for a brand name that he claimed was Danish-sounding.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A4agen-Dazs

Yeah, but Häagen-Dazs is actually quite good (as far as commercial store-bought goes), even in blind taste tests...

While I haven't tried it I think the environmental/conflict-free angle may be the only one they can target. The organic/vegan/vegetarian angle is already out since we do have chocolate meeting that criteria. The fact that their products page has most/all of the products combined with something else leads me to believe the taste isn't there yet which is why IMO they can't go the luxury route if they have an inferior substitute.

Would love to hear from someone who has tried it.

I've had one of these products and the outer fake chocolate was much worse than chocolate. I don't think the luxury marketing would work.

Interestingly, they have a whole bunch of products (both from renowned brands and store brands) in their home market in Germany on the shelves already: https://choviva.com/products

The CO2 angle is a weird one. I can't see this succeeding on anything more than novelty scale unless it's cheaper than chocolate.

If it's cheaper, this could easily be a vanilla/vanillin situation.

This immediately reminded me the episode from Friends about Mockolate - is just me?

lol! Same here :-) In fact, I clicked it only because the headline immediately reminded me of that episode.

Well my wife is allergic to cocoa, so that's an interesting alternative.

why not replace the sugar with stevia?

Because it tastes terrible.

I’ve tried supposedly luxury chocolate with Stevia. It was horrible.

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