Environment
We’ve now figured out how to culture chocolate in the lab. The breakthrough could help with spiralling cocoa costs, and may even lead to tastier treats with more nutritional value
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It is by far the rarest and most exclusive chocolate I have ever eaten. In fact, you can’t even buy it in shops. It doesn’t look that special, though – just a few flattened droplets a slightly lighter shade than most dark chocolate, sealed in a tiny plastic bag.
It smells like dark chocolate and tastes like it, too, but better – less bitter. Most of all, for me, there is no doubt that this is the real thing.
That is important because what I am eating wasn’t made using cocoa beans sourced from trees like normal chocolate. Rather, it was grown in a glass flask by California Cultured, one of several firms aiming to mass-produce chocolate in vats using cell culture technology.
Cultured chocolate could be even better than the tree-grown kind, claims Alan Perlstein, CEO of the company, with higher levels of chemicals such as polyphenols that might have health benefits, no contaminants such as heavy metals taken up from the soil or pesticides sprayed on crops, and a taste that rivals anything on the market now. “We’re trying to create flavours that are almost unobtainable through traditional chocolate manufacturing,” he says.
For many chocolate companies, however, the main appeal of getting raw ingredients from vats instead of trees is the potentially unlimited supply. Climate change is hitting cacao farms hard, leading to shortages – the price of cocoa beans has quadrupled after remaining relatively stable for decades.
So, can chocolate grown in a vat really compete with the tree-grown variety on price? And will consumers embrace it?
