06 September, 2017
This is What's Trending Today...
About 80 years ago, food scientists introduced the world to white chocolate. Until this week, it was the last new kind of chocolate to enter the world market.
But now, scientists have invented a pink-colored chocolate.
It joins the likes of white, dark, and milk chocolate.
A chocolate manufacturer in Switzerland launched the new product Tuesday in Shanghai, China.
The chocolate company Barry Callebaut says that the pink color comes from the "ruby" cocoa bean. The color, the company adds, is natural. It has an "intense" and "fresh berry" taste.
The Financial Times reports that ruby cocoa beans grow in Ecuador, Brazil, the Ivory Coast and other countries.
Scientists worked for more than 10 years to develop ruby chocolate.
Barry Callebaut is the world's biggest supplier of cocoa. Chocolate makers around the world use its cocoa to make candy and chocolate products. The company said in a statement that it developed the new chocolate with millennials in mind. Millennials are people born in the 1980s or 1990s.
Millennials and others around the world reacted to the news of ruby chocolate on social media.
Barry Callebaut is hopeful that ruby chocolate becomes popular in China. The company's chief told reporters that it did research on the chocolate market in China, and explained that "ruby chocolate tested incredibly well in China."
Ruby chocolate products are expected to be available in stores in about six months.
And that's What's Trending Today...
Ashley Thompson wrote this story for VOA Learning English. Mario Ritter edited it.
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Words in This Story
berry –n. a small fruit
incredibly –adv. very well, great, hard to believe