ALWAYS LAB TESTED. NEVER LAB GROWN.™
Chocolate has been part of human food culture for thousands of years. But what we call chocolate is changing quickly.
Real cacao has become expensive and volatile, while food technology companies are developing cocoa ingredients through cellular agriculture. That has consumers asking a very reasonable question: what exactly is lab-grown chocolate, and how does it compare with traditionally grown cacao?
Why has real cacao become so expensive?
Cacao trees grow in a relatively narrow geographic region and are vulnerable to weather, disease, crop conditions and supply disruptions. Those pressures have helped drive dramatic cocoa price volatility and encouraged manufacturers and food-tech companies to look for alternative ways to produce cocoa ingredients.
That does not automatically make new technology good or bad. But it does make understanding the ingredient in your food more important than ever.
What is lab-grown chocolate?
Cell-cultured cocoa starts with cacao plant cells that are multiplied under controlled conditions using nutrients and bioreactors. Companies are working to turn that cultured material into cocoa ingredients, including cocoa butter, that can be used in chocolate products.
The technology is impressive. But consumers are already asking important questions: Is lab-grown cocoa the same as traditionally grown cacao? How will it be labeled? Is it highly processed? Does it have the same nutritional profile? Will it eventually replace some conventionally grown cacao?
Those are fair questions, and many do not yet have decades of nutritional and consumer-use data behind them.
Cacao vs. cocoa: does processing matter?
The words cacao and cocoa are often used interchangeably, but processing can make an important difference. At Rockin Wellness, our Chocolate Cacao is made with real organic raw cacao, not alkalized Dutch-process cocoa.
Cacao naturally contains plant compounds called flavanols and polyphenols. Processing can alter those compounds.
What is alkalized or Dutch-processed cocoa?
Dutch processing treats cocoa with an alkalizing agent. It can make cocoa darker, smoother tasting, less acidic and easier to use in food manufacturing. But research has also found substantial reductions in measured flavanols as alkalization increases.
That is one reason the question should not simply be, “Does this taste like chocolate?” A better question is, what happened to the cacao between the tree and the finished product?
Is lab-grown cocoa nutritionally the same as raw cacao?
That is one of the most interesting questions consumers are asking, and it deserves a careful answer. Cell-cultured cocoa technology is still developing. We do not believe consumers should assume that a newly manufactured cocoa ingredient is nutritionally identical to minimally processed whole cacao unless evidence establishes that comparison.
That does not mean cell-cultured cocoa is inherently unhealthy. It means nutritional equivalence and manufacturing functionality are two different questions.
What should you look for on a chocolate or cacao label?
Turn the package around and read the ingredient list. Look for terms such as cacao, natural cocoa, alkalized cocoa or cocoa processed with alkali. Ask how the ingredient was processed and whether the finished product is tested for quality and safety.
As cell-cultured cocoa ingredients move toward commercialization, consumers may have another question to add: where did my cacao actually come from?
Why Rockin Wellness chooses real raw cacao
Rockin Wellness Chocolate Cacao was created around real cacao, not around recreating the flavor of a candy bar. We use organic raw cacao rather than alkalized Dutch-process cocoa because we value the ingredient itself and the naturally occurring compounds that made cacao remarkable in the first place.
Our finished product is lab tested for safety and quality. The cacao itself is traditionally grown.
ALWAYS LAB TESTED. NEVER LAB GROWN.
Innovation can be extraordinary. But sometimes there is value in leaving an extraordinary ingredient closer to the way nature made it.
Rockin Wellness Chocolate Cacao. Real nutrition starts with real ingredients.
