Ruby chocolate pieces.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a temporary permit to Barry Callebaut U.S.A. LLC, so the company can market ruby chocolate. The permit allows Barry Callebaut to test 60 million pounds of the chocolate and evaluate the response from consumers.
What Is Ruby Chocolate?
Ruby chocolate comes from the ruby cocoa bean and has a pink color. It is considered the fourth type of chocolate after dark, white and milk chocolate. The color is natural and does not come from any berries or dyes.
“For the purpose of this permit, ‘ruby chocolate’ is the solid or semiplastic food prepared by mixing and grinding cacao fat with one or more of the cacao ingredients (namely, chocolate liquor, breakfast cocoa, cocoa and lowfat cocoa), citric acid, one or more of optional dairy ingredients, and one or more optional nutritive carbohydrate sweeteners,” the FDA said.
According to the FDA, ruby chocolate must have at least 1.5 percent nonfat cacao solids and have at least 20 percent by weight of cacao fat. It must also have “not less than 2.5 percent by weight of milk fat, not less than 12 percent by weight of total milk solids, not more than 1.5 percent of emulsifying agents and not more than 5 percent of whey or whey products.”
Ruby KitKat chocolate bars. Photo by Georg Wendt/picture alliance via Getty Images
Selling Ruby Chocolate
Barry Callebaut, introduced ruby chocolate in 2017. Describing the flavor as a “tension between berry-fruitiness and luscious smoothness,” the Swiss company explained that it used a unique process that involved the Ruby cocoa bean.
“The Ruby bean is unique because the fresh berry-fruitiness and color precursors are naturally present. The cocoa beans are sourced from different regions of the world. The bean has a specific set of attributes, which Barry Callebaut managed to unlock through an innovative process that took many years to develop,” Barry Callebaut said.
Although the company has been able to start selling ruby chocolate in other parts of the world, it required a permit from the FDA before it could call its product chocolate in the United States instead of “ruby couverture.” The FDA’s strict requirements limit what can be labeled as chocolate. Barry Callebaut has 15 months to test its products based on the permit’s guidelines.