Reply to Ziegler et al.: Electrorheological technology to make chocolate healthier and tastier.

As noted by Ziegler, Hayes, and Lambert (1), most publications in food science are about food compositions and their related health effects. However, our paper (2) focuses on a new electrorheological (ER) technology, which works with all samples from major chocolate manufacturers in reducing chocolate’s viscosity and lowering the fat level. Ziegler et al. (1) agree that current chocolate products are healthy and tasty. Our technology does not change the composition of these chocolate samples, but reduces their viscosity and lowers the fat level, thus making them healthier and tastier. The title of our paper (2) simply illustrates this key point. We do not list the compositions of our tested chocolate samples because they are provided by major chocolate manufacturers, who have already made the information public. As explained by Beckett (3), reducing the fat level in chocolate products to make them healthier is important and urgent. This issue was called into attention and elaborated in articles and books decades ago. Just from 1995 to 2004, there were more than a dozen US patents granted, exploring methods to reduce the fat level in chocolate, some of these are found in refs. 4–12. Unfortunately, no actual general solution was found. To bypass this critical outstanding problem, two manufacturers, Proctor & Gamble and Nabisco, introduced some low-calorie fat to substitute for cocoa butter in their chocolate products. Somehow, their fats can only be used in a very limited number of countries. Therefore, our ER technology, which is universal and able to reduce the fat level for all chocolate samples from major chocolate manufacturers, is very significant. Ziegler et al. (1) argue that reducing the fat level is not significant because of limited average daily consumption of chocolate. Such an argument is wrong and misleading. As many people communicated with us, although they usually do not consume chocolate, they consider that to reduce the fat level in such popular food, chocolate, and make it heathier is important and significant for the food industry and society. As pointed out in our paper (2), our ER technology is significantly different from traditional ER fluids, where the applied electric field is perpendicular to the flow direction or the shearing direction, leading to an increase in the effective viscosity or even solidifying the ER fluids. All ER references cited by Ziegler et al. (1) are examining if the ER effect of chocolate can be strong enough for automobile shock absorbers (13, 14). In our technology, we apply the electric field in the flow direction and control the size of aggregated particles. Then the viscosity along the flow direction is significantly reduced. Ziegler et al. (1) seem to fail to notice the key difference here. The basic science developed in our work (2) is new and completely different from the previous ER research. For this reason, we mentioned the previous ER work in chocolate (14), but do not cite more papers related to the study of chocolate ER shock absorbers because they are irrelevant. In summary, our explanations should clarify all questions raised by Ziegler et al. (1).