As the first confectionery manufacturer we have managed to significantly reduce the amount of saturated fatty acids in our most popular chocolate bars. Starting in summer of 2010 consumers in Austria and other countries can buy MARS®, SNICKERS® and MILKY WAY® bars that contain at least 15 percent less saturated fatty acids. Physicians and nutritional scientists consider a reduction in the intake of saturated fatty acids an important step towards health improvement, especially with regard to avoiding heart and circulatory diseases.

As the EU chocolate directive allows only limited alterations in the chocolate part of these products, we only changed the composition of the fatty acids in the creamy centre of our bars. There we replaced palm fat by sunflower seed oil. While this sounds fairly simple, our research and development team invested five years, 10 millon euros and more than 40,000 hours of work in this project. The biggest challenge was to conserve the taste and the texture of the bars. In the end our experts managed to meet all goals.

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