By taking out cocoa, QOA makes chocolate that's free of child labor and deforestation

It takes a staggering 19,928 liters of water to create 1 kg of cocoa beans (with other estimates going as high as 27,000 liters). Between 2001 and 2015, cocoa farming caused the deforestation of 2.3 million hectares of rainforest and old growth forest. And 1.56 million children work in cocoa production in Ghana and Ivory Coast alone.

While chocolate manufacturers are trying to lighten cocoa's negative load, those improvements aren't happening fast enough. Which is why QOA is taking a different route: removing cocoa from the equation. Founders Sara and Maximilan Marquart — brother and sister, and food chemist and engineer — analyzed the chemical composition of chocolate and set out to compose a substitute with the same taste and mouthfeel, but made by fermenting sustainable ingredients, including byproducts of other food manufacturing processes.