Mars Debuts Eco Chocolate Bar Made From Animal-Free ‘Dairy’

Image via Mars / PR Newswire

Want your Snickers fix but don’t appreciate the guilt of enabling climate change? Mars has a chocolate bar for that. The confectionery company has launched CO2COA, its “first-ever earth-friendly and animal-free chocolate innovation in the US.”

Rainforest Alliance-Certified cocoa goes into this “sustainability-inspired” sweet treat. And, sure, you could just snack on eco-conscious dark chocolate, but the draw here is that this is milk chocolate—without the cow.

CO2COA’s “milk” comes from California-based food tech startup Perfect Day, which finds its niche in something called ‘precise fermentation’. Essentially, that means replicating dairy proteins like casein and whey at the DNA level to produce “nature-identical dairy protein,” giving the chocolate the same taste and texture as a candy bar made with cow’s milk.

Further setting CO2COA apart from regular milk chocolate bars is the fact that it is lactose- and cholesterol-free. Plus, Mars says the fermentation uses as little as 1% of the water and “up to 97% fewer greenhouse gas [CO2] emissions” as dairy production.

Image via CO2COA

To top it all off, the chocolate bar is wrapped in paper-based packaging.

While the chocolate bar is vegan-friendly, its molecular closeness to natural dairy means that it also contains milk allergens. It’s therefore not for consumers with milk allergies.

“CO2COA is another example of how Mars continues to think and act differently to help create the world we want tomorrow,” says Alastair Child, chief sustainability officer of Mars Wrigley. The CSO adds that CO2COA reinforces Mars’ push to achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across its entire value chain by 2050.

The innovative plant-based bar will be available online for US$2.39 for a limited time, and shipping is free.

[via Brand Eating and Vending Market Watch, images via various sourcess]