Lab grown chocolate

medtran49 said:
I'd give it a try.

And, according to the Star Trek franchise and lots of other SciFi literature, the vast majority of our food will be lab grown or materialized from molecules eventually. As long as it's not soylent green!
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OMG, you’re reading my mind! :laugh:

I say that because when I first read this, I had an instant memory of Chief O’Brien (TNG) explaining to his wife how his grandmother (or maybe great-grandmother) used to cook “with meat…real meat…” and the expression on his wife’s face was something like 😮.

I didn’t even like TNG, so I haven’t seen all the episodes, haven’t watched repeats in syndication, so that scene was buried way down there, and you popped it right out!
 
I think I read somewhere that they already have lab-grown "meat" (IT'S MADE FROM PEOPLE!!!11) somewhere in Europe. Not sure about that, but I would definitely try the lab-grown chocolate before the meat.
 
Puggles said:
I think I read somewhere that they already have lab-grown "meat" (IT'S MADE FROM PEOPLE!!!11) somewhere in Europe. Not sure about that, but I would definitely try the lab-grown chocolate before the meat.
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I think America is the country that’s approved lab grown meat.
Here it’s been approved only as pet food!
 
"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”
That may be the problem for Africa, where the cacao plantations did not even exist until the late 1800s. In the sub-tropical and tropical parts of the Americas, cacao plantations have existed for centuries. The plantations ( at least, the ones I have visited), are surrounded and protected by lush, tropical rain forests, which provide considerable humidity occasioned by proximity to the sea and by the heat from tropical climates. In Africa ( I don't know for sure, I've never been there) they may well be situated on deforested land, but that's not the case here. The socio-economic consequences of lab-grown chocolate, over here,in central and south America,where the finest types of cacao ( criollo, forastero, trinitario) are grown, would be a disaster for local producers.
African countries may well produce over 70% of the world's cacao, but that doesn't mean they produce the finest; just the most.
The article may well be intelligently written (of course, all Guardian articles are), but ironically, it talks about US needs and West-African production. Not a single mention of any central or south American producers - which is where cacao originated.
Big confectionery companies like Mondelez, Mars and Nestlé are most heavily affected by price hikes.
Well of course they are. They're only interested in making profit, and providing sugar-laden products to the masses. The journalist also says "I’m no expert, but I enjoyed it – and found it basically indistinguishable from regular dark chocolate."
So she's not an expert, and she talks about "regular" dark chocolate? What's "regular"?
Sorry for the rant, but proper chocolate is something I feel very strongly about.It's something special, like Scotch whisky, or Kentucky bourbon, or French brie, or Russian caviar.
 
I'm sure like whisky it will always remain special, it already is a heavily quality tiered item but the point is no matter how you dice it up damage is being done.
Rounding on people who point that out or try to do something about it, framing them as whining and inexperienced in life rather than acknowledging it might be a problem helps no-one and has a tad of ostrich behaviour to it.

I would want to know more about it before I could say yes or no to eating it, sometimes the solutions can cause more problems than they solve and other times the solutions are marvellous. So how much (in energy and resources) it took to produce and the impact on humans as well as the planet would matter to me in the long run but would I try it, hell yeah.
 
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karadekoolaid said:
"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”
That may be the problem for Africa, where the cacao plantations did not even exist until the late 1800s. In the sub-tropical and tropical parts of the Americas, cacao plantations have existed for centuries. The plantations ( at least, the ones I have visited), are surrounded and protected by lush, tropical rain forests, which provide considerable humidity occasioned by proximity to the sea and by the heat from tropical climates.
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The ecological damage caused by cacao seems to be less of an issue in South America than in Africa, although deforestation itself is a threat to cacao in South America:

As the ancestral home of cacao, South America’s northern Andes is where the world looks for some of its finest chocolate ingredients. The great diversity of cacao tree varieties in the region leads to an abundance of distinct flavors and aromas that are sought after by luxury chocolatiers. Unfortunately, the region is facing substantial deforestation and land degradation pressure, and, as a shade-grown tree, Theobroma cacao is losing its natural habitat.
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Source: RELEASE: Colombia Becomes First Country in Latin America to Commit to Deforestation-Free Chocolate

karadekoolaid said:
The journalist also says "I’m no expert, but I enjoyed it – and found it basically indistinguishable from regular dark chocolate."
So she's not an expert, and she talks about "regular" dark chocolate? What's "regular"?
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She means the mass produced chocolate as sold by the big confectionary companies, I assume. I don't think the lab grown substitutes are aiming to reproduce or replace what you term 'proper chocolate'.

And now, I declare, I'm confused about what is or isn't 'proper' or 'real chocolate'.
 
Morning Glory said:
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karadekoolaid said:
So she's not an expert, and she talks about "regular" dark chocolate? What's "regular"?
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She means non-lab-produced chocolate, chocolate produced by traditional means, the stuff we’re currently buying and consuming. She’s saying, “As a casual chocolate eater, I couldn’t tell the difference between the lab-produced chocolate and the chocolate I currently buy in the shops.”

That’s who all this stuff is directed to, anyway. I don’t think it’s a surprise that the largest number of consumers of…well, anything…aren’t experts or connoisseurs, even of certain high-end things, like caviar. Most of us just want a bit of this or that to make the day better, and we don’t want to pay too much for it, whether it be wine or cheese or chocolate.

I don’t think the lab-made chocolates will ever displace the fine handmade chocolates that aficionados demand. The lab folks are looking to have the biggest impact for their effort, and that means making a dent in the Nestle and Hershey market share. No one cares about the environmental impact of some boutique chocolate maker…they don’t make enough of an impact. It’s the big global corps they’re going after, because it’s the big global corps causing the most damage.
 
SandwichShortOfAPicnic said:
Rounding on people who point that out or try to do something about it, framing them as whining and inexperienced in life rather than acknowledging it might be a problem helps no-one and has a tad of ostrich behaviour to it.
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No, I'm far more concerned that those people who think they're doing something about it are actually playing into the hands of corporate giants, who would absolutely love to have an artificial chocolate substitute, so they can create even worse "chocolate" bars and bypass the (generally poor) farmers. A cacao tree takes about 5 years to produce fruit, and each tree will, on average, produce a mere 9 lbs of cocoa beans - which have to be removed from the pod by hand, dried out in the sun, sorted, and processed before they can even be sold.
The writer also tosses in the Western Universe's horror story of "ecological damage", "deforested land", "pesticides", etc. ( "Climate change!"), which I personally find offensive, considering that Western nations and their industrial revolution pumped billions and billions of junk into the atmosphere, razed huge areas of forest and woodland to build factories, and are now bleating about "climate change" to developing countries which are struggling to produce enough food (or saleable commodities) to increase their GDP or feed the huge majority of their poverty-stricken populations.
Perhaps the writer should have said " Right, it's time for those who sacked and pillaged to pay a just price for an exquisite product".
 
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