Food of the Gods, Part 2: A Chocolate Revolution

Re-imagining the chocolate supply chain with biotechnology

In my previous post, I talked about the history and cultural significance of chocolate and what it means to farmers and artisans here in Colombia. Now let’s dive into the environmental aspects of its production.

The chocolate business is not all sweet. Planting of high-value crops, like cacao, is usually associated with deforestation which reduces biodiversity and contributes to the warming of the Earth. To add to that, cacao can only be grown within 20 degrees of the equator, and climate change threatens to shrink the suitable farmland. Most commercial cacao farms use pesticides and fungicides that harm both the environment and consumers. The supply chain for chocolate is riddled with exploitation to bring its price down – yet, the product is still not affordable for a lot of the people who make it.

It's not surprising that biotechnology is looking to create more sustainable and equitable alternatives to chocolate production. Efforts have been made to make cacao more resilient to droughts, fungal infections, and overbreeding. Cacao is particularly vulnerable to fungi and diseases, so scientists have been working to preserve the information about the current species by sequencing the genome of Theobroma cacao – just in case a disease or an environmental disaster wipes out this precious crop. With genetic information on hand, we could engineer the plant to be resistant to diseases or even bring it back from the dead in the event of extinction.

Or we could give up cacao altogether.

I know that sounds radical, so let me clarify: we would not have to give up chocolate, just the crop used to make it. But how can you have chocolate without cacao? WNWN Labs, a London-based biotech startup, is making “delicious, ethical, sustainable” milk chocolate without the beans – and also without palm oil or milk. What is it made out of then? The company uses a blend of oats and tiger nut (which sounds like it’s a nut but is actually a tuber) to get the creamy texture of milk chocolate, plus fermentation technology to give the grains and legumes cocoa-like flavor characteristics. They claim that their process produces “a striking resemblance” to the taste, melt, and mouth feel of conventional chocolate but with 80% less greenhouse gas emissions. Sounds pretty impressive, no?

But I would argue that this product is not really chocolate but more like a candy bar. Milk chocolate has a lot of sugar and other added ingredients, which mask the complex flavor of authentic cacao. The real feat, in my opinion, would be to recreate the entire spectrum of flavors – and benefits – of chocolate in the lab, using the power of synthetic biology. Another biotech company called Planet A is trying to do this using precision fermentation technology.

Although it’s called fermentation, this process has nothing to do with the natural fermentation that cacao beans undergo. Arguably, fermentation is where the magic happens: it gives cacao its characteristic richness and complex flavors. During the process, the complex carbohydrates in the cacao bean are broken down by naturally present bacteria and yeast into sugars, and sugars are converted to alcohols and citric acid, reducing the bitterness and giving it a mild acidity that we can detect in some chocolate varieties. Some chocolate producers even use the double fermentation method. To do this, they add the pulp from the cacao fruit or other local fruits to continue the alchemical flavor transformation when the yeast and bacteria run out of sugars in the bean itself.

Natural fermentation of cacao usually takes place outside, in the open air, under the sun, with the beans covered by banana leaves. Precision fermentation, on the other hand, happens in steel tanks inside a highly controlled lab environment – and it does not involve the beans at all! What is being fermented is the yeast itself. This is a special yeast that has been genetically engineered to make the molecules that contribute to the flavor of chocolate. Typically, the engineering process involves taking the genes from the cocoa plant’s DNA and inserting them into yeast. Then, the yeast is grown in big tanks (similar to the beer brewing process) to make large quantities of those flavor molecules.

This biotechnological fermentation process has been pretty successful. It has been perfected over the last couple of decades and used to make a lot of the flavors used in our food (such as vanilla and stevia,), fragrances (like cruelty-free musk), medicines (including the antimalarial drug artemisinin, insulin, and others), biodegradable plastics, fabrics, and so much more. And scientists have already shown that this type of genetic engineering can be used to make caffeine and theobromine in yeast, bypassing the mother plant.

But what makes chocolate unique is not just the fat and sugar content, nor even the “active ingredient” theobromine. It is the hundreds of molecules that the plant makes through a network of biochemical transformations, refined by wild bacteria and yeast during the fermentation. Knowing what I know about the technological power of precision fermentation, I still don’t think synthetic biology could replicate what has been perfected by millions of years of evolution, thousands of years of selective plant breeding, and centuries of process development. Add to that the energetic imprint that the cultivation of this food has carried over thousands of years, the cultural significance, the love that artisan producers put into matching the flavors of the bean with the perfect chocolate recipe.

The reason why people pay $5–10 for a bar of a single-origin chocolate bar is because of the unique flavor that cannot be replicated by a mass production process. Every artisan bar contains the wisdom of nature, the energy of the sun converted into a living, growing tree, the imprint of the place where it has grown, its climate, soil, altitude, the amount of moisture and light – what the wine connoisseurs refer to as the terroir. And don’t forget the wild yeast strains that co-evolved with the bean. Scientists have shown that the taste of wine is affected in large part by the microbes that ferment it, and the same goes for coffee and chocolate. These tiny fellows are sort of artisans themselves.

Growing cacao is providing a decent alternative for farmers and encouraging tourism to rural areas in Colombia. If biotech re-imagines the chocolate supply chain, what would happen to those people, and their livelihoods? What would happen to the cultural significance of cacao, the ceremonies, and rituals that surround its consumption in indigenous cultures? What will happen to the myths and stories – will they also disappear? Will we forget what real cacao tastes like? Will we forget the craftsmanship that goes into making it?

As a scientist, I know the drive to create something new, an ingenious solution that no one has come up with before. You just want to see if you can do it – if you can make caffeine without the coffee plant, or chocolate without cacao, or make flowers that glow in the dark. It’s almost like playing God. But some things don’t need to be messed with — because they are already perfect.