4.7 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 22 August 2025
⏱️ 9 minutes
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Chocolate may fill grocery store shelves around the world, but the raw product that powers chocolate is far more selective. The majority of chocolate farms are found in West Africa and South America – just 20 degrees north or south of the equator. Each farm produces chocolate of a different flavor. Some cocoa tastes fruitier; others, more floral. Nutty. Earthy. Spicy. But what drives these different flavor profiles? And can it be recreated in a lab?
A team led by scientists at the University of Nottingham in the UK sought to find out and published their results in the journal Nature Microbiology this week.
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0:00.0 | You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. |
0:05.4 | Hey, shortwavers, Hannah Chin here. |
0:07.9 | And Emily Kwong with our twice-monthy Science News Roundup featuring the hosts of All Things Considered. |
0:13.3 | And today we have Mary Louise Kelly. |
0:15.1 | We do. |
0:15.9 | And I am so here for this because I hear we're talking about my favorite topic, chocolate and what makes it delicious. Yes, we're also going to talk about how birds at sea poop way more |
0:25.9 | than scientists thought, plus the molecules that might be responsible for your daytime sleepiness. |
0:32.5 | Sorry, nodded off there. Go on. |
0:35.5 | All that on this episode of Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR. |
0:52.4 | All right. To start off, we are talking chocolate. I am here all day and every day for great |
0:54.1 | tasting chocolate. What do we |
0:55.7 | get? Fantastic. Okay, so published in the journal Nature Microbiology, this research focuses on |
1:00.7 | cocoa beans. Coco beans, which make chocolate, which grow on trees. Yeah, they do. And depending on |
1:06.1 | where you go, you kind of get different flavor profiles from those cocoa beans. So it could be fruity or floral or spicy. |
1:13.5 | And a team, led by scientists of the University of Nottingham, |
1:16.2 | wanted to figure out what was driving these different flavor profiles, |
1:19.4 | specifically at the level of microbes. |
1:21.2 | The level of microbes. |
1:22.6 | So very, very tiny microorganisms. |
1:25.5 | How are microbes involved in how chocolate tastes? |
1:28.5 | Well, after farmers pick cocoa beans, they ferment them, kind of let them sit in boxes or bags for days on end. |
1:34.5 | They do this because this is what has been taught to them generation from their parents. |
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