Artificial Chocolate Attempts to Sidestep Cocoa’s Biggest Problems

Various assortments of chocolate. Shulevskyy Volodymyr/Shutterstock

A new start-up is trying create the perfect fake chocolate that tastes the same as the real thing.

Some chocolate fans are reportedly concerned about the ethical relationship between the cocoa industry, deforestation, and use of child labor.

A new British food company claims that it has created a “guilt-free alternative to chocolate that can be indistinguishable from the real thing,” reported Bloomberg in a Dec. 6 feature.

WNWN Food Labs Ltd., which is based in East London, is making artificial chocolate using barley and carob from Southern Europe that is similar to the cocoa-fermentation process.

“We call ourselves an alternative ingredients company,” Ahrum Pak, WNWN’s co-founder and CEO told Bloomberg.

The Quest for a Chocolate Alternative

The company joins competitors like Planet A Foods, of Munich, which makes fake chocolate from fermented oats, and California Cultured Inc., which produces lab-grown chocolate out of cacao bean cells, in Davis, California.

The journalists from Bloomberg called WNWN’s chocolate alternative “convincing imitations of cocoa-based bonbons in terms of taste, texture, and appearance,” and that “a hazelnut variety was a more believable substitute than the milk chocolate one.”

WNWN, which is an acronym for “waste not, want not,” uses the same gas chromatography mass spectrometry techniques that vegan food makers use to assist in the imitation of a particular chocolate’s smell and flavor.

“The real drivers of the flavor creation, the way we tease these flavor molecules out of our plant-based substrate ingredients, is the fermentation,” Johnny Drain, WNWN’s co-founder and chief technology officer told Bloomberg.

He told the reporters that the company focused on the quality of its products taste and texture to make it closer to the real thing.

“It’s not just a carob chocolate bar,” Drain said, and that the bar is “a facsimile, analogous to chocolate.”

Drain also told Bloomberg that its processes would allow chocolate companies use to far less water in the making of their products and reduce the impact of greenhouse gas emissions.

A gastronomic consultant for high-end restaurants in Europe, Drain co-founded the company in 2021 with his partner Pak, a former investment banker.

The two secured $1 million from FoodLabs, a German venture capital fund based in Berlin, and they are now raising funds to finance a seed project, reported Bloomberg.

Child Labor Abuses Still Exist in the Cocoa Supply Chain, Despite a 20-Year Ban

In 2001, the dominant chocolate producers such as Nestlé, Mars, and Hershey signed the Harkin-Engel Protocol, to end abusive child labor in their supply chains.

However, despite the efforts, the U.S. Department of Labor reported that 1.56 million children still work in the industry.

Meanwhile, cocoa production has been a major factor in deforestation, along with cattle, palm oil, and soybeans, according to the World Resources Institute.

The Ivory Coast, the world’s top cocoa producer, has lost about 85 percent of its forests since the 1960s due to the exploitation of the profitable commodity, reported Bloomberg.

Chocolate companies have been trying hard to make sure that their cocoa suppliers are cleared by groups such as Fairtrade International and Rainforest Alliance, and are investing in helping families in the regions that supply their beans.

Cocoa-exporting nations in West Africa, like the Ivory Coast and Ghana, have have placed surcharges and premium duties on cocoa exports to improve workers’ livelihoods, making the beans more expensive for chocolatiers.

Premium chocolate bars are currently being sold and advertised as sustainable and ethical to consumers who have grave concerns about the cocoa industry; but these bars are more expensive

A Potentially Cheaper and More Viable Alternative to Premium Chocolate

However, Drain believes that WNWN can provide both a product that is both cheaper and ethically appealing to the same consumer demographic.

The company hopes to expand and become a key supplier to major food companies for environmentally and morally sound alternatives to traditional sources of cocoa, vanilla, and coffee.

Bloomberg said that the company has plans to open a new factory in Portugal in 2023, which can produce up to 331,000 pounds of artificial chocolate per month.

Two limited-edition chocolate bars have been issued this year, while WNWN’s first chocolate product is expected to hit British supermarkets in 2023.

“You can make something taste like coffee, but what’s the point if it doesn’t have caffeine. You can make something taste like chocolate, but what’s the point if it doesn’t have the bromine?” Christopher Taylor, CFO of Li-Lac Chocolates, a Brooklyn-based boutique chocolatier told The Epoch Times.

“It’s probably easy to create a close substitute for milk chocolate, which includes a lot of milk and sugar obviously. But the closer you get to pure chocolate, the harder it becomes to create a passable imitation. I’m not saying never, but count me rather skeptical for now,” he continued.