Technology Forecasting on Functional Chocolates and Their Manufacturing Technology

Technological forecasting (TF) is a crucial tool that allows knowing the technological trends of the topics developed by scientists and entrepreneurs, thus anticipating environmental changes. On a global scale, these products (chocolates) are at the level of patents, with China being the country that has obtained the most significant number of patents, vastly outperforming the cocoa-producing countries. Also, no known functional chocolates are sold under that specific name. However, chocolates on the market serve as "carriers" of bioactive compounds. Unfortunately, they cannot be attributed to health properties since these properties have to be evaluated with in vitro, in vivo, and clinical studies. Launching functional chocolate on the market is possible. However, it would be a long-term process, which would involve previous stages such as the study of its ingredients' bioactive properties, laboratory-level product development, product functional properties, and quality and acceptance parameters. For research purposes, it is possible to speak of functional chocolates, potentially functional chocolates, or chocolates enriched with bioactive compounds since the development of research does not necessarily involve launching the product on the market