There’s a new class on campus which lets students spend their hours studying chocolate – and you don’t need a golden ticket from a Wonka bar to get in.

The class is called Chocolate Chemistry. No, there aren’t rivers of chocolate flowing through the classrooms or fondue fountains running on every desk. But the course isn’t totally hands-off the chocolate, either.

Last week, the course’s lab time was devoted to a taste analysis called a triangle test. In the test, the student tasters were given three samples of chocolate, two of which were the same and one of which was different. They were then expected to taste and identify which of the three were 70 percent cocoa samples and which were 85 percent cocoa samples, in a test area bathed in yellow light to prevent distinguishing between different chocolate colors.

WATCH students take the taste test HERE

Could the students tell a difference?

After the lab, Dayne Turner said he could, because he’d been preparing for such a test his whole life. He said he would give his performance on the test an A.

“[I've had] lots of experience, lots of practice,” said Turner, a junior from Lawrenceville. “You know – putting in the long hours eating chocolate all the time.”

Shane Simon, a sophomore from Loganville, also said he expects an A.

“I’ve been eating chocolate for a long time, so I guess I know which one is different,” Simon said.

The new elective, Chocolate Chemistry, can be found on OASIS next to any other University course. Offered by the Department of Food Science and Technology, FDST 2040 came from an idea broached by food science professor Robert Shewfelt.

Shewfelt said in an interview last week he hopes the class will attract new students to his line of work.

“I figured it was a good way to entice people into considering Food Science as a major,” Shewfelt said, smiling. “I’m the chief recruiter for Food Science.”

In this inaugural semester, Shewfelt’s recruits have mostly come from the course’s attractiveness to students perusing OASIS. Several students admitted to stumbling across the class by accident when looking for electives online.

“I was on OASIS and saw on my schedule I could take another Food Science class,” Turner said. “I saw the description for the class and freaked out because I love chocolate and I couldn’t imagine a better class to take.”

Although it may have been easy to find, students seemed to agree Chocolate Chemistry is not an easy class to take, and it shouldn’t be seen as a schedule-filler. Katie Brogdon said there’s more to the study of chocolate than enjoying flavors.

“I love it, but it’s not all about the fun,” Brogdon said. “It’s a really scientifically-based class, and you have to know a lot about organic chemistry to grasp it all.”

Chocolate Chemistry consists of two hours of lecture time each week, and an hour and a half of labs. This week, the lab was devoted to testing what’s called a Maillard browning reaction. Shewfelt explained that Maillard browning is a process that determines the color and smell of the chocolate, and is important to understand in any complete study of chocolate.

This week, just as they would in any other science lab on campus, Chocolate Chemistry students mixed together different ingredients and concentrations in their beakers to see how they would affect the end result. In order to test the Maillard reactions, the lab students wafted the different sweet-smelling aromas toward their noses, then wrote down their observations. And while they weren’t working specifically with chocolate, they were working with the compounds which create that chocolate smell.

WATCH students in the chocolate lab HERE

Brogdon said the lab gave her new appreciation for a favorite old treat.

“I’ve learned a lot about the different reactions and the different chemical components that make up chocolate,” Brogdon said. “[Those] reactions give it its characteristic flavor. [They're] what make chocolate, chocolate.”

Course teaching assistant and Ph.D. student Katie Robbins says it’s easy to lose track of the importance of chocolate studies.

She said people tend to forget the study of chocolate “has a whole industry [devoted] to it, and there’s a job out there relating to chocolate and the way the ingredients fit together chemically.”

Shewfelt compared the importance of chocolate study to the importance of Food Science in general. He pointed to the recent peanut butter poisonings as reason enough for people to pay attention to the field.

“There’s real science behind food, particularly real science behind chocolate,” Shewfelt said. “It’s important to understand the science if you’re going to improve the food products.”

Improving food products aside, many Chocolate Science students say the course will make them a knowledgeable source on chocolate. As Halloween approaches and many people plan to eat what these students study, Turner said he plans to remind his friends of things they might take for granted.

“Right before they take that first bite I might just say, ‘You know, you should appreciate that chocolate for all the vitamins and stuff it’s got in it that you don’t know about,’” he said.