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COULD LAB-GROWN CHOCOLATE BE THE FUTURE OF HALLOWEEN?  
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Adrienne Matei
October 31, 2025
The Guardian
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_ It could eventually cut down on the production of traditional
chocolate, which degrades soil and requires much fertilizer and
pesticides _

"Chocolates", by cleverocity (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

 

Would you eat lab-grown chocolate?

I requested a sample from California Cultured, a Sacramento-based
company. Its chocolate, [[link removed]]
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
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 – so far, so good. I pop it in my mouth.

Slightly waxy and distinctly bitter, it boasts those bright, fruity
dark chocolate notes. I’m no expert, but I enjoyed it – and found
it basically indistinguishable from regular dark chocolate.

Globally, humans consume more than 7m
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chocolate per year, and our appetite is only growing. In the US,
chocolate demand surges
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in October in advance of Halloween; the National Retail Federation
estimated a $3.9bn
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US spend on Halloween candy this year, with chocolate options like
Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and M&Ms dominating.

But the chocolate market has grown volatile in recent years. Cacao
trees – which provide chocolate’s essential ingredient – 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.

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.

Big confectionery companies like Mondelez, Mars and Nestlé are most
heavily affected by price hikes. Canals Polo says they are “trying
to adjust their portfolios to rely less on cocoa” by
“shrinkflating
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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 – think KitKats enrobed in flavored cream coatings
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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’s 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.

Other companies, such as Nukoko and ChoViva, are developing chocolate
alternatives made from ingredients including fermented fava beans
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sunflower seeds. Scientists are experimenting with chocolate made from
ground cacao husks
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typically discarded in the conventional chocolate-making process.

California Cultured is still waiting on Food
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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’s processes can facilitate “more interesting
flavors, aromas or experiences”.

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 “lab-grown”
designation on shelves as soon as next Halloween
[[link removed]]. But will people
buy them?

“I think in certain niche sectors, like tech, it’s going to be
very, very cool to be like, ‘It’s lab-grown chocolate – you can
have more control, you can geek out on the very fine nuances,’”
says Eagranie Yuh, a former chocolatier and chocolate educator. But
Yuh also thinks “most people have a visceral response” to the idea
of lab-grown food. A 2023 German survey
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of 727 people found that food‑technology neophobia – a fear of the
new – strongly influenced attitudes about lab-grown meat, though
even the wary were at least willing to try it.

Emphasizing adjustments to chocolate, such as tweaked levels of
caffeine and health-supporting polyphenols, also adds “a rational
element to what is a largely an emotionally driven product”, says
Yuh. “Chocolate is very human.”

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.

It’s unclear how consumers will react to lab-grown products or when
they will become available. But chocolate lovers will probably face
questions of cost – financial, ecological and ethical.

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 “the socioeconomic
consequences of rolling out [lab-grown chocolate] at large scale could
be huge for the smallholder farmers in West Africa”, who rely on
cacao sales for their livelihood, says Sophia Carodenuto, a political
geographer specializing in global food systems at the University of
Victoria.

“Lab-grown chocolate may be innovative, but it can’t replace the
heritage, livelihoods and soul behind real cocoa,” says Shirley
Temeng-Asomaning, founder and CEO of Chocolate Mall, a Ghana-based
confectionery company. “My 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.”

For his part, Perlstein believes the demand for chocolate is
“infinite” – and big enough to support new players.

“The demands of cocoa are just so ravenous – 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,” he
says, citing the growth of newer chocolate-consuming markets such as
China, India and Africa.

Demand may exist, Carodenuto says, but “what is needed is for the
market to pay more for ethical and ecologically sustainable cocoa”.

_Adrienne Matei_ [[link removed]]_
writes about lifestyle, wellness and the environment for the Guardian
US_

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