With cocoa becoming more expensive and having such a damaging effect on the planet, it’s clear we need more options when it comes to enjoying chocolate.
And a company called California Cultured may just have an answer.
The American firm is developing sustainable chocolate – by growing it in the lab from harvested cocoa cells.
CEO Alan Perlstein wants to provide everyone with ‘real high quality chocolate at an affordable price’ – and it could be on shelves by the end of the decade.
‘The cultivation of chocolate has led to destruction of much of the untouched tropical forests of the world,’ he told the Daily Mail.
‘Now, with cocoa shortages as well as quality issues we’re seeing poor imitations taking the place of our childhood classics.
‘We can basically change all of that with the technology we’re developing.’
California Cultured has sent me a small sample to try about the size of a coffee bean – and it beats the low-quality stuff pumped with palm oil that’s coating our biscuits.
California Cultured has sent me a small sample of lab-grown chocolate to try – about the size of a coffee bean
Our love for chocolate relies on a tree called Theobroma cacao, which thrives under specific conditions such as high humidity and abundant rain.
The plant’s seeds (cocoa beans) are used to make cocoa solids and cocoa butter – the primary ingredients of chocolate.
To make lab-grown chocolate, the team at California Cultured take cells from cocoa beans and ‘cultivate’ or grow them on plates in the lab featuring a ‘food’ of nutrients and sugars.
The cells are kept alive and replicate in the nutrient mix until there are enough to be used for chocolate – typically just days instead of the months or even years it takes to grow and harvest cacao the conventional way.
‘We’re able to trick the plant cells into thinking it’s still in the ground and we trick the cells into growing infinitely,’ Perlstein told the Daily Mail.
‘After a certain level of growth we’re able to harvest that and transform it into chocolate.’
The little sample the team send me is made up of lab-grown cultured cocoa powder, sugar and cocoa butter.
The first thing I notice is it starts to melt on the finger just like the real thing – a good sign that it’s authentic.
The world’s first lab-grown chocolate was developed by Swiss researchers back in 2021 – but California Cultured wants to be the first to get it on the shelves
As it melts on my tongue, I’m struck by how familiar it tastes – a bit bitter, not too sweet, and with a faint vegetal tang.
It doesn’t quite match up to what I’d say is the best chocolate I’ve ever tasted – York Cocoa Works from the UK’s ‘chocolate city’ – which is sweet, rich and complex.
However, it’s vastly superior to the cheap rubbish that is now ubiquitous in advent calendars and coating our chocolate biscuits.
If I’d tried this sample without knowing what it was, I’d probably have said there was something different about it – but couldn’t have told you what.
According to Perlstein, people will be able to buy California Cultured’s product in the shops from around 2028.
He admits that in the beginning when it first hits the shelves lab-grown chocolate is ‘going to be expensive’ – between $15-$20 (£11-£15) – but as production is expanded they’re ‘going to be able to bring the price down’.
‘Our intent is to make sure that we bring the price down to more conventional and traditional levels of chocolate products within probably four years of bringing the product to market,’ he told the Daily Mail.
Their method could also be used to make lab-grown coffee.
Cacao plants can only grow within approximately 20 degrees north and south of the equator – and they thrive under specific conditions such as high humidity and abundant rain
Currently, production of cocoa is limited to the tropics – the hot, humid region of the Earth that surrounds the equator.
Even then, a few countries dominate commercial production, including Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon and Nigeria in west Africa, Indonesia in Asia and Ecuador in South America.
But lab-grown chocolate has the advantage of being potentially made anywhere.
Perlstein wants to grow it close to where consumers live – as opposed to distant rainforests – so they can ‘see it and understand it’ prior to tasting, blurring the boundary between laboratory and visitor attraction.
The world’s first lab-grown chocolate was developed by Swiss researchers back in 2021 – but California Cultured wants to be the first to get it on the shelves.
‘We’re trying to reinvent this really important ingredient that has not really advanced in over 100 years,’ he told the Daily Mail.
‘We’re very impatient to bring it to the market.’
