«El dueño de Oreo, Cadbury y Toblerone, financia a la startup israelí Celeste Bio para desarrollar chocolate cultivado en laboratorio»
https://www.instagram.com/p/DY28zKGDtap/?igsh=ZmJwc3l0OWR6b28w Mondelez International—the global confectionary giant behind Oreo, Cadbury, and Toblerone—has actively funded the Israeli food-tech startup Celeste Bio to advance lab-grown chocolate technology. Operating through its venture capital arm, SnackFutures Ventures, Mondelez participated in a $4.5 Million funding round to secure an “insurance policy” against skyrocketing cocoa costs, climate-induced crop failures, and supply chain volatility. The creation of this bio-engineered chocolate begins by extracting living cells from a single, premium cocoa bean and placing them in a Petri dish. These cells are then transferred into a bioreactor, where they undergo a cell suspension culture and fermentation process. Fed on a strict diet of water, sugar and vitamins, the cells multiply into a dense biomass that is harvested and processed into pure, bio-identical cocoa butter. This AI-led method can yield up to one ton of cocoa butter from just a single cocoa pod, completely bypassing the need for hectares of land, agricultural pesticides, or traditional harvesting seasons. Despite its potential to combat deforestation and labor exploitation in the cocoa belt, cell-cultured chocolate faces significant faces significant logistical and socio-economic hurdles. A major issue is consumer acceptance, as critics label it an artificial “Franken-food” that distances people from whole, natural food sources. Furthermore, industry experts warn that lab-grown technology is a high-cost “moonshot” that requires immense amounts of energy to run bioreactors, meaning it remains less scalable than other plant-based alternatives. There are also deep concerns regarding its economic impact on traditional farming communities; heavily shifting production to laboratories could financially devastate millions of smallholder farms in West Africa who rely entirely on cocoa cultivation for their survival. The last serious concern is the lack of research on the long-term health impacts of this chocolate on humans and the fact that the nutritional value could be drastically impacted. Check out the comments section for brands you can trust! What do you think—can we trust lab-grown chocolate?
