The AP story of the chocolate fueled race car is linking it’s way around the web fast; who doesn’t love a story about chocolate? But I think the University of Warwickshire may have overdone the plant-produce innovation just a tad because all the references to soy, carrots, and potatoes sounded more like vegetable soup than marketable science,  so I tried to look a little deeper.  Seems like the chocolate may be farther upstream in the process and the fuel is probably hydrogen produced by bacteria eating chocolate waste. Not quite so sexy when you think about it as fueled by bacterial off gassing now is it? Those marketing people can be so sneaky!

But this quick research trip yielded more news on the world chocolate scene that hasn’t gone viral yet.  Seems that sometime in 2010 Lindt, USA will start roasting cocoa beans in the US!  Currently chocolate blocks are imported from Europe for final processing. This could be the beginnings of a story akin to the one of the California winery winning blind taste tests in France (I hear some people are still bitter about that….)  Maybe the day when American chocolate has a world reputation for quality isn’t too many decades away. Maybe chocolate factories will spring up around America…  if you’ve ever been to Hershey, PA on cocoa roasting day then you know why this would be grand thing.

And incidentally Lindt is working on using the waste cocoa shells as a fuel source in New Hampshire.  Since this is an actual factory with the massive volume of waste that comes from real production it’s probably more ecologically significant, even if it’s not as fun as the car.