\n<\/p>\n
Would you eat lab-grown chocolate?<\/p>\n
I requested a sample from California Cultured, a Sacramento-based company. Its chocolate, not yet commercially available, is made with techniques that have previously been used to synthesize other bioactive products like certain plant-derived pharmaceuticals for commercial sale.<\/p>\n
A few days later, it arrives. The morsel, barely bigger than a coffee bean, is supposed to be the flavor equivalent of a 70%-80% dark chocolate. I tear open its sealed packet and a chocolatey aroma escapes \u2013 so far, so good. I pop it in my mouth.<\/p>\n
Slightly waxy and distinctly bitter, it boasts those bright, fruity dark chocolate notes. I\u2019m no expert, but I enjoyed it \u2013 and found it basically indistinguishable from regular dark chocolate.<\/p>\n
Globally, humans consume more than 7m metric tons of chocolate per year, and our appetite is only growing. In the US, chocolate demand surges in October in advance of Halloween; the National Retail Federation estimated a $3.9bn US spend on Halloween candy this year, with chocolate options like Reese\u2019s Peanut Butter Cups and M&Ms dominating.<\/p>\n
But the chocolate market has grown volatile in recent years. Cacao trees \u2013 which provide chocolate\u2019s essential ingredient \u2013 are particularly vulnerable to drought and disease. Additionally, unpredictable weather related to the climate crisis has caused production shortfalls and inconsistent harvests in key chocolate-producing regions in west Africa.<\/p>\n
<\/span>The National Retail Federation estimated a $3.9bn US spend on Halloween candy this year, with chocolate options dominating.<\/span> Photograph: Bloomberg\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Chocolate prices reached a historic high of $12,000 per metric ton in 2024, though the rising costs have not truly deterred consumers, explains Bloomberg Intelligence market analyst Ignacio Canals Polo.<\/p>\n Big confectionery companies like Mondelez, Mars and Nestl\u00e9 are most heavily affected by price hikes. Canals Polo says they are \u201ctrying to adjust their portfolios to rely less on cocoa\u201d by \u201cshrinkflating\u201d their products; reformulating recipes to use cheaper ingredients, such as vegetable oil instead of cocoa butter; and promoting non-chocolate confections, like biscuits, gummy candy or chocolate-free spins on classic products \u2013 think KitKats enrobed in flavored cream coatings.<\/p>\n Graphic with three lines of text that say, in bold, \u2018Well Actually\u2019, then \u2018Read more on living a good life in a complex world,\u2019 then a pinkish-lavender pill-shaped button with white letters that say \u2018More from this section\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n This volatility represents an opportunity for the lab-grown product. California Cultured takes cuttings from regular cacao plants and cultivates the cells on plates containing a nutrient-rich medium made mostly of sugar and plant extracts. The company then grows specific cell types, such as those that produce cocoa butter or cocoa flavanols, explains Alan Perlstein, the company\u2019s CEO. After that comes harvesting, fermenting, drying, milling and packaging the product into, functionally, a lab-grown cocoa powder to be used in confections like bars and drinks.<\/p>\n Other companies, such as Nukoko and ChoViva, are developing chocolate alternatives made from ingredients including fermented fava beans or sunflower seeds. Scientists are experimenting with chocolate made from ground cacao husks typically discarded in the conventional chocolate-making process.<\/p>\n California Cultured is still waiting on Food and Drug Administration approval to launch its chocolate to market. But it has established its first commercial partnership with the Japanese confectionery company Meiji, which makes Hello Panda and Chocorooms. Perlstein says California Cultured\u2019s processes can facilitate \u201cmore interesting flavors, aromas or experiences\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/span>California Cultured has established a commercial partnership with the Japanese confectionery company Meiji, which produces the Hello Panda snack.<\/span> Photograph: David Tonelson\/Alamy<\/p>\n Initially, lab-grown chocolate may be more expensive, but Perlstein hopes the price difference will disappear within three years of becoming available. If scaling these processes up is feasible, Americans could be seeing chocolate products with a \u201clab-grown\u201d designation on shelves as soon as next Halloween. But will people buy them?<\/p>\n \u201cI think in certain niche sectors, like tech, it\u2019s going to be very, very cool to be like, \u2018It\u2019s lab-grown chocolate \u2013 you can have more control, you can geek out on the very fine nuances,\u2019\u201d says Eagranie Yuh, a former chocolatier and chocolate educator. But Yuh also thinks \u201cmost people have a visceral response\u201d to the idea of lab-grown food. A 2023 German survey of 727 people found that food\u2011technology neophobia \u2013 a fear of the new \u2013 strongly influenced attitudes about lab-grown meat, though even the wary were at least willing to try it.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Practical advice, expert insights and answers to your questions about how to live a good life<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Emphasizing adjustments to chocolate, such as tweaked levels of caffeine and health-supporting polyphenols, also adds \u201ca rational element to what is a largely an emotionally driven product\u201d, says Yuh. \u201cChocolate is very human.\u201d<\/p>\n For instance, we commonly prefer the tasty but lower-quality bars of our youth. Yuh says the human narrative behind products can also be important for chocolate consumers, such as knowing that ingredients were responsibly grown and processed by people who were fairly paid.<\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear how consumers will react to lab-grown products or when they will become available. But chocolate lovers will probably face questions of cost \u2013 financial, ecological and ethical.<\/p>\n There could be ecological benefits to lab-grown chocolate. Cacao trees are often farmed on deforested land, degrading soil and requiring heavy doses of fertilizer and pesticides. But \u201cthe socioeconomic consequences of rolling out [lab-grown chocolate] at large scale could be huge for the smallholder farmers in West Africa\u201d, who rely on cacao sales for their livelihood, says Sophia Carodenuto, a political geographer specializing in global food systems at the University of Victoria.<\/p>\n \u201cLab-grown chocolate may be innovative, but it can\u2019t replace the heritage, livelihoods and soul behind real cocoa,\u201d says Shirley Temeng-Asomaning, founder and CEO of Chocolate Mall, a Ghana-based confectionery company. \u201cMy hope is that science will complement and not compete with the farmers who built this industry, and that technology helps make chocolate more sustainable, not less human.\u201d<\/p>\n For his part, Perlstein believes the demand for chocolate is \u201cinfinite\u201d \u2013 and big enough to support new players.<\/p>\n \u201cThe demands of cocoa are just so ravenous \u2013 even if every single cocoa farmer were to expand production constantly year after year, which would be impossible, there would still be a huge demand,\u201d he says, citing the growth of newer chocolate-consuming markets such as China, India and Africa.<\/p>\n Demand may exist, Carodenuto says, but \u201cwhat is needed is for the market to pay more for ethical and ecologically sustainable cocoa\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Would you eat lab-grown chocolate? I requested a sample from California Cultured, a Sacramento-based company. Its chocolate, not yet commercially available, is made with techniques that have previously been used to synthesize other bioactive products like certain plant-derived pharmaceuticals for commercial sale. A few days later, it arrives. The morsel, barely bigger than a coffee<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31767,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[8433,2284,11167,4741],"class_list":{"0":"post-31766","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-chocolate","9":"tag-future","10":"tag-halloween","11":"tag-labgrown"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31766\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}