The future of chocolate! Can we still call it chocolate if it's lab-grown?
The following article has been written by Solkiki. Here’s what you need to know about the couple behind Solkiki.
Solkiki: the people behind the brand, how they get discovered, what they’ve been recognised for, their qualifications and more
Solkiki was founded by two people. They are trained, qualified and certified Chocolate Sommeliers (IICCT) and they (Bob and Iris) are the UK's first bean-to-bar chocolatemakers. They import the best ingredients they've ever tasted, directly from the good people who produce them in the correct way. They handcraft micro-batches of fine, organic chocolate from bean-to-bar, and they don't advertise. Therefore, they rely on word-of-mouth.
Iris and Bob have been making and selling their own chocolate (no mass production) since 2008. Solkiki chocolate has earned over 250 recognised awards for flavour. Every bar is tempered by hand, without lecithin or any animal ingredients; it's all vegan, even their internationally-acclaimed milk and white chocolates. Hand-tempering without additives takes skill and effort. It means Iris and Bob make chocolate that others cannot. They have earned Global Innovation awards multiple times at the World's top chocolate competitions and stay at the melting edge of fine chocolate and, as this article highlights, not-so-fine chocolate.
The BBC referred to them as “One of the World's Elite Chocolatemakers. An unprecedented force in the world of superfine chocolate.”
Now, here’s what they have to say about…wait for it… lab-grown chocolate!
Lab-grown chocolate
Lab-grown chocolate is coming to the shelves in 2027. Mondelez, which is behind brands including Oreo, Cadbury and Toblerone, is already funding Celleste Bio, an Israeli biotech startup producing lab-grown cocoa butter.
The price of chocolate has rocketed since 2023, but the price of cocoa butter has gone up even more. Companies have been researching alternatives to chocolate and cocoa butter. Briefly, lab-grown cocoa butter in volume is much cheaper than buying cacao from a farm.
Cadbury's has been quietly changing their ingredients for their chocolate. Although you can't legally call their Dairy Milk bar 'chocolate' in 27 countries, the bar now contains even fewer chocolate ingredients than before. The cocoa butter is replaced with harmless-sounding-but-far-from-harmless vegetable fat: a cheap, dangerous blend of 6 industrial oils, championed by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) in the UK. The 'chocolate' that remains is diluted with polyglycerol, then flavoured with petroleum vanilla to mask the waxy taste.
It's a race to be the first chemical alchemist to produce chocolate in a lab. Across Europe, Israel and the USA, a lot of research is currently being done to produce cacao ingredients without the use of trees or farms. Chocolate flavour through chemistry and fermentation is also being researched. Belgian ingredients group Puratos is working together with California Cultured, this is a startup that specialises in growing cacao from plant cells. More and more foods are being pushed toward labs, and chocolate is definitely one of the foods that has a lot of potential for much profit with little care for health.
As you might know, prices of cacao had hardly moved for decades, from the seventies until about 2022, the average global cocoa price fluctuated around $2000 per Metric Ton (1000kg or 2204lbs). At the end of 2024, it started to go well over $10,000, and as of January 2026, it is $5018,13 per Metric Ton. The price is expected to stay around this mark and definitely not to fall to the levels of the last few decades.
Cacao production globally exceeds 5 million tonnes. Production per year fluctuates; it's a finite product while demand for chocolate is rising year on year.
So, in short, put together a rising global demand for chocolate with the potential to push out unlimited amounts of chocolate in a lab for low cost, and you can see why there is a race between the big chocolate companies in the world, like Mondelez, Nestle, Mars and others.
Susan Jebb OBE of Food Standards *this morning* on Radio 4 calls it 'exciting science'. She tells the public not to worry because the FSA will do the thinking for you. FSA will do the research for you and only allow 3D printable, lab-grown chocolate to be commonly available in the UK if it is deemed 'safe'.
Susan and the wider FSA have arguably failed the English, Welsh and Northern Irish public on many fronts, permitting myriad food-like, ultra-processed products and ingredients to dominate the supermarket and make our people sick. Food standards in the UK were lowered last year with the King's approval and signature. Charles signed the Genetic Technology Bill, which allows the growth and sale of gene-edited foods in England without mandatory labelling or safety assessments. We don't know about the safety of longterm use of consuming GM-foods. Susan thinks toxins in moderation are acceptable, 'but they must be in moderation’, and holds a range of other questionable perspectives that contradict weightier volumes of alternative evidence.
Just a thought about the chocolate flavouring they are trying to create. What does chocolate taste like? This is one of the questions that many of our customers and we have been thinking about and comparing different chocolates, different profiles, different origins, different roasts/conches, ageing, etc. So, exactly what type of chocolate profile are the biotechs trying to emulate? Surely not the bland, burnt, deeply-flawed industrial profile, right?
Do we want to support British chemical manufacturers to produce chemicals for us to eat so we can enjoy a product that looks and behaves like chocolate? Or do we want to support farmers to continue to grow and ferment the finest, most delicious and most perfect food on the planet?! We have thousands of years of experience eating chocolate, we know in our deepest parts what it does to our mind, body and spirit. This is the wonderful reason why chocolate is such a popular and much-loved food. Do we really want this to be replaced by some artificial and chemically produced, genetically modified lab-grown Frankenproduct?
I would love to hear your thoughts about the future of chocolate. Please do get in touch and let me know what you think.
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