[HN Gopher] Research reveals ways lead and cadmium in chocolate ...
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Research reveals ways lead and cadmium in chocolate may be reduced
Author : maerF0x0
Score : 113 points
Date : 2022-12-16 14:01 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (candyusa.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (candyusa.com)
| sphars wrote:
| Well shoot, now I'm concerned. Me and my pregnant wife both drink
| Crio Bru[1] which is roasted, ground 100% cacao and brewed
| similar to coffee. This has me thinking twice about it. It sounds
| like heavy metals may be present in this stuff too
|
| [1]: https://criobru.com/
| Alex3917 wrote:
| If you're brewing it in a drip coffee maker, the paper filter
| should filter out the majority of the lead.
| daniel_reetz wrote:
| Paper coffee filters do not effectively remove lead.
| Distillation and reverse osmosis remove lead.
| mint2 wrote:
| That is incredibly wrong and dangerous advice. There were
| studies that showed coffee grounds could be used to filter
| substantial but not all lead, is that what you misremembered?
| Alex3917 wrote:
| I was remembering this:
| https://www.wired.com/2000/02/coffee-is-your-friend/
|
| "A group of international scientists found that coffee
| filters can remove from 78 to 90 percent of dissolved heavy
| metals such as lead and copper from tap water."
|
| It looks like the quote is incorrect though, and it is
| actually the the ground coffee and not the paper filter
| that's removing the lead.
|
| Regardless, brewing ground cacao in the same way would
| likely also filter out some of the lead by the same
| mechanism, even if not as much. (Since the source of lead
| is embedded throughout the ground beans, rather than coming
| from the water which enters at the top of the column.)
| idiotsecant wrote:
| You shouldn't say things confidently that you don't know
| anything about, someone might believe you.
| ulnarkressty wrote:
| How could one test for heavy metals in foods at home? Supposedly
| Indian spices and other plant products coming from there contain
| non-trivial amounts of lead [0] [1].
|
| [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5415259/
|
| [1] https://www.consumerlab.com/reviews/psyllium-
| supplements/psy...
| version_five wrote:
| Many spices apparently have high levels of heavy metals, I
| don't know that it's specific to India. There was a study, I
| think maybe on HN, where they analyzed a bunch of grocery store
| spice brands and found heavy metals in many.
|
| I know it's not helpful but i get the impression it's not
| something easy to analyze at home.
|
| With all this stuff (mercury in salmon, toxins in liver,
| radioactive potassium in bananas), my take is that too much of
| anything is probably bad an everything is probably fine as part
| of a varied diet
| stevenwoo wrote:
| Consumer Reports did a widely reported survey last year but
| it was almost random which spice would be contaminated - one
| source of herb x would be fine but from a different source it
| was contaminated. https://www.consumerreports.org/food-
| safety/your-herbs-and-s... Spices that are colored (i.e.
| turmeric) are particularly vulnerable.
| https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.est.9b00744
| valarauko wrote:
| At least with spices you also need very little, so exposure
| to heavy metal contaminants through that route would be
| relatively lower.
| maria2 wrote:
| An XRF spectrometer might work on food.
| ekianjo wrote:
| First you need to burn the food product for a while to make
| sure that most of what is left is heavy metals in the ashes.
| (you typically need a flask for that, and an apparatus to get
| all the fumes from the burning process safely out).
|
| then from the ashes you need to dissolve them in water (easier
| said that done), and use reagents based on the type of metal
| you want to detect from the sample (titration). If you measure
| accurately the volume of water used to dissolve and the amount
| of ashes coming from the food product, you can determine a
| concentration for a specific heavy metal.
|
| Sigma-Aldritch probably sells the reagents you need for heavy
| metal testing.
| londons_explore wrote:
| What actual dose are we talking about?
|
| Like, if I'm an average chocolate eater, what proportion of my
| total lead intake will come from chocolate, vs other sources?
|
| If it's under 0.1%, it isn't worth talking about. If it's 1%,
| it's worth a passing thought. If it's 10% it's worth some effort
| to avoid/fix. If it's 50%, I'd probably give up chocolate.
| khiqxj wrote:
| if you take the product they tested with the highest lead
| concentration (2.4ug per serving), and ate 10 servings, you
| would have 1/20th of the harmful concentration of lead,
| according to my calculations:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34018344
| hgomersall wrote:
| It's cumulative, so you can't just take spot concentrations.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| I once read something and I don't remember if it was from a
| good source. It said that one of the ways they can identify
| bones from the last 100 year is that older bones have something
| like 400x less lead traces in them. Basically everyone alive
| has a degree of lead poisoning thanks to leaded gasoline.
| khiqxj wrote:
| initially this article read as a scam (lobbying corpo "non
| profit" that claims to care about health and enviro but just
| creates a worse net effect by wasting resources) and a bit of
| research concludes:
|
| CDC says [1]:
|
| > Until 2012, children were identified as having a blood lead
| "level of concern" if the test result was 10 or more micrograms
| per deciliter (ug/dL) of lead in blood.
|
| the lobbying corpo's very own charts [2] show no lead
| concentration higher than 2.4ug per serving in any tested
| product. if you ate a serving of chocolate that contains 2.4ug of
| lead, you would have no more than 2.4ug/dL of lead, which is
| lower than the CDC's previously stated harmful level. if the lead
| was diluted through all the blood in your body (~5L = 50dL), your
| blood level of lead would be 2.4ug/50dL = 0.048ug/dL, far below
| the CDC's previously stated harmful level of 10ug/dL. with 10
| servings, at which point you will have other issues, you will
| have 0.48ug/dL, still 1/20th of the harmful level.
|
| 1. https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/data/blood-lead-reference-
| valu...
|
| 2. https://www.asyousow.org/environmental-health/toxic-
| enforcem...
|
| disclaimer: i cant do science or math, maybe i calculated
| something wrong
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| Via news article : https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dark-chocolate-
| metals-lead-cons...
| jeffbee wrote:
| We must go deeper: https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-
| safety/lead-and-...
|
| This source article contains the key information that the heavy
| metals are not contaminants introduced by the processors, they
| are present in the beans.
| kristopolous wrote:
| That's what I was expecting.
|
| Calling out for botanists to weigh in here - is there
| something that makes chocolate uniquely susceptible to this
| and if so, is it part of a class of other plants we typically
| eat? And lastly, this is for food chemists, is there a
| reliable way to remove such things in the manufacturing that
| can be added?
| Reason077 wrote:
| Not a botanist, but this is not unique to cocoa. Rice, for
| example, is known to take up arsenic, cadmium, and other
| nasties from soils. But it varies significantly depending
| on the rice variety and where it is gown. Basmati rice
| grown in California, Pakistan, and India is known to have
| low levels of arsenic compared to most other types of rice.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| Bioaccumulation? It does happen with heavy metals and
| plants.
|
| Soil quality is the next question.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioaccumulation
|
| https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02652030500387
| 5...
| Semaphor wrote:
| Your second question is answered in the article:
|
| > For lead, that will mean changes in harvesting and
| manufacturing practices, says Danielle Fugere, president of
| As You Sow. Such practices could include minimizing soil
| contact with beans as they lie in the sun, and drying beans
| on tables or clean tarps away from roads or with protective
| covers, so lead-contaminated dust won't land on them.
| Another option is finding ways to remove metal contaminants
| when beans are cleaned at factories, Fugere says.
|
| > Solving for cadmium is trickier, though it is possible,
| DiBartolomeis says. Carefully breeding or genetically
| engineering plants to take up less of the heavy metal could
| help, though that could take several years. Other potential
| options include replacing older cacao trees with younger
| ones, because cadmium levels tend to increase as the plants
| get older, and removing or treating soil known to be
| contaminated with cadmium.
| [deleted]
| rhplus wrote:
| Cacao grows in rainforests, so perhaps they're adapted to
| rich soils that over time have become net accumulators of
| heavy metals.
|
| There's examples of other plants that thrive in the
| presence of heavy metals, such as this one that "bleeds"
| nickel rich sap:
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-45398434.amp
| yyyk wrote:
| Ah, so Tiberium is technically possible...
| passwordoops wrote:
| Generally plants are excellent at removing metals from the
| environment and concentrating them in different tissues,
| depending on the species and metal. Poplar trees, for
| example, have often been used for remediation of Mercury
| contamination of souls
|
| Not sure about the specifics of cocoa, but not beyond the
| pale to see cadmium, for example, be concentrated in the
| beans.
|
| As for removal from food stuffs, it really depends on how
| the metals are bound to the plant material. Could be as
| simple as heating up in a vat with agitation, to requiring
| something so drastic it changes the nature of the
| chocolate.
|
| Best way is to reduce the amount that can be integrated by
| the plant, but good luck with that. The farmers would
| probably have to import heavy-metals reduced soil
| jt2190 wrote:
| > metals are not contaminants introduced by the processors,
| they are present in the beans.
|
| That's true of the cadmium, but not the lead:
|
| > ... [L]ead seems to get into cacao after beans are
| harvested. The researchers found that the metal was typically
| on the outer shell of the cocoa bean, not in the bean itself.
| Moreover, lead levels were low soon after beans were picked
| and removed from pods but increased as beans dried in the sun
| for days. During that time, lead-filled dust and dirt
| accumulated on the beans. "We collected beans on the ground
| that were heavily loaded with lead on the outer shell,"
| DiBartolomeis says.
| Semaphor wrote:
| Link for Europeans: https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww
| .consumerreports.or...
| mistersquid wrote:
| The referenced study treats dark chocolate but, since cacao is
| cacao, wouldn't milk chocolate confected from these beans also
| have commensurately elevated levels of cadmium and lead?
|
| And, if so, shouldn't this extrapolation be communicated to
| consumers?
| Reason077 wrote:
| Milk chocolate contains significantly less cacao than dark
| chocolate. Typically 20-25% cocoa solids, where as dark
| chocolate is in the 50-90% range. So it should have
| proportionately _less_ cadmium etc per unit of weight.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Explains why only crazies like dark chocolate /s
| hgomersall wrote:
| Interesting that two different Lindt bars fall into different
| categories. Do they really use different beans for those? It
| feels like a sampling effect.
| mjh2539 wrote:
| Right, I get the impression that their sample sizes were very
| small.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I find it hard to believe that much lead sticks to the sticky
| coco beans while they're being dried just out in the open air.
|
| I go outside too - is the same amount of lead sticking to me and
| my lungs?
|
| Either we're talking super low lead levels here, or it's
| something else about the processing that causes this - like for
| example the fleet of leaded fuel powered tools being used to cut
| the beans down.
| spchampion2 wrote:
| Many countries permitted leaded gasoline for a long time, and
| many of the countries that kept it around the longest are also
| places that grow a lot of chocolate. Lead from car exhaust
| tends to stick around in the environment for a long time - as
| part of the soil and the dust in the air.
|
| In South America [1]:
|
| > The first country in South America initiating the phase-out
| of leaded gasoline was Brazil, moving toward alcohol fuels and
| unleaded gasoline from AD 1975 on, and achieving a total phase-
| out in 1991. On the contrary, unleaded gasoline in Bolivia,
| Chile, and Peru was not introduced before AD 1990-1991, and
| leaded gasoline was still in use until 1995 (Bolivia), 2004
| (Peru), and 2005 (Chile).
|
| In Africa [2]:
|
| > But lead was still common in fuel in Africa and the Middle
| East. In 2002, UNEP organized a coalition of African
| governments and oil companies to promote the phaseout of leaded
| gas, the supposed vehicular benefits of which have been found
| to apply only to very old cars driven in extreme conditions.
| Lead was history in sub-Saharan Africa by 2006, and by 2014 was
| found only in Algeria, Iraq, Yemen, Myanmar, North Korea, and
| Afghanistan.
|
| [1] - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4643815/ [2]
| - https://qz.com/africa/2053227/leaded-gasoline-is-now-
| banned-...
| dehrmann wrote:
| > Many countries permitted leaded gasoline
|
| Avgas is still leaded in the US.
| londons_explore wrote:
| And if I were the president, I would ban avgas tomorrow.
|
| The planes can all stay grounded till a replacement is
| available. The damage caused far outweighs the benefits of
| using it.
|
| Yes, I know ambulance planes probably use it... Yes I know
| farmers use it for crop dusting. Yes I know some remote
| alaskan communities rely on flights for supplies. But
| spreading lead dust throughout the whole nation is worse
| than not having those things.
| benlivengood wrote:
| > Yes I know farmers use it for crop dusting.
|
| In this context that takes on a very different meaning. I
| wonder how much lead is directly from crop dusting. Avgas
| is ~1g/liter of lead and 100LL is 0.5g/liter. A small
| plane burns ~50 liters per hour.
| soco wrote:
| Are the beans cut down with chainsaws? _very confused_
| sva_ wrote:
| Chopped open with machete usually. It's a rather delicate
| process, as you must chop through the outer shell, but not
| into the beans, as it would make them extremely bitter.
| croisillon wrote:
| Cad(mium )buri(ed in it)
| [deleted]
| chronicsonic wrote:
| Cannabis has this problem as well, processing it with certain
| types of stainless steel can cause chromium to be absorbed into
| the cannabis.
|
| Source: https://www.analyticalcannabis.com/articles/what-the-
| cannabi...
| passwordoops wrote:
| Looks like chocolate is a known source of heavy metals. Here's
| just one study I found in Google Scholar:
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S08891...
| davidmurdoch wrote:
| So the raw beans have heavy metals? Or does the processing
| introduce them?
| passwordoops wrote:
| From the OP article, some metals are exclusively from the
| beans (cadmium), others are introduced later (lead).
|
| But yeah, every time you're eating plant material, there will
| be some trace level of heavy metal. And it just increases up
| the food chain.
|
| Bioaccumulation is pretty cool as a phenomenon
| dr_orpheus wrote:
| The article says that cadmium is in the beans (because it is
| in the soil). But lead is likely introduced in processing.
| specialist wrote:
| Avoidance seems increasingly difficult. Mercury, lead,
| microplastics, herbicide, whatever. We're living in the toxic
| soup.
|
| I hope someone(s) are working on detox solutions. Hopefully safer
| than the current chelation therapies used for life threatening
| cases.
| davzie wrote:
| I swear this site will make you a nervous wreck about eating or
| bringing anything into your home if you took it too seriously.
| sekh60 wrote:
| I try not to stress too much. One has to die of something after
| all.
| zzzeek wrote:
| here's the actual brands and products:
|
| https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/lead-and-...
|
| or better:
|
| https://www.asyousow.org/environmental-health/toxic-enforcem...
|
| I go through the Equal Exchange 80% dark product about one bar
| every few weeks so I will be researching cadmium a bit
|
| (later)
|
| So after some research on cadmium and the specific data
| California has on it
| (https://oehha.ca.gov/proposition-65/chemicals/cadmium), I think
| my general take on the Equal Exchange chocolate I eat quite a lot
| of is that the saturated fat (15g) is still orders of magnitude
| more dangerous than the cadmium.
|
| Interestingly, the product itself seems much less appealing to me
| knowing it has this trace level of cadmium that will likely not
| affect me in any way, vs. the saturated fat that I already knew
| contributes towards directly life-threatening LDL cholesterol.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Saturated fat increases LDL by increasing the particle size,
| whereas it seems to be increases in particle number that are
| associated with increased cardiovascular risk. This is likely
| why studies fail to find any real world increase in risk, and
| the saturated fat heart disease theory, while still under
| debate, is mostly out of favor nowadays.
| Georgelemental wrote:
| Yes, saturated fat is unjustly maligned. And from an
| evolutionary perspective, it doesn't make sense that it would
| be so harmful; pre-agricultural diets had lots of saturated
| fat so human metabolisms should have evolved to handle it
| well.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Evolutionary arguments here don't make much sense - the
| vast majority of human history we had average lifespans on
| the order of 25 or 30 years. If the negative effects of
| something (like heart disease) typically fail to manifest
| within that window there is no selection mechanism by which
| this kind of eating has an effect on long-term evolution of
| the species.
| robcohen wrote:
| I thought that was only true if you included infant
| deaths. I haven't researched it but that's what I as a
| layman thought.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| As others have mentioned, this is true, but is a great
| illustration of how averages are extremely misleading
| when representing non-normally distributed data, and are
| used excessively in popular culture and media. Modal
| (most common single digit) lifespan of hunter gatherers
| is usually in the 70s, despite low averages (mean) due to
| high infant mortality [1]. Modern health care massively
| reduced infant mortality, but doesn't change mortality
| much in middle years, when most people don't actually
| need any healthcare.
|
| [1] https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/
| 978-3-3...
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| That's also incomplete knowledge. If you made it to adult
| hood your chances of living to 50 or 60 are way
| underestimated by "pop culture ancient humans" knowledge.
| Kids are kind of weak compared to adults immune system
| wise (in most cases!).
| Georgelemental wrote:
| You are off by a factor of 2. If you exclude deaths in
| early childhood people regularly made it to their 60s
| Swizec wrote:
| But if everyone is done having kids by their mid 30's,
| the increase in heart disease risk in their 50's still
| wouldn't show up as an evolutionary pressure. Especially
| when you consider humans are tribal animals and parental
| survival is not critical to offspring survival as long as
| the tribe keeps going.
| [deleted]
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| One interesting hypothesis I've heard is that there is
| actually a huge selection pressure for long human
| lifespans, to preserve cultural knowledge and skills
| necessary for survival, as well as to help with child
| care. The parenting age adults can't exactly hunt and
| gather if they have to watch babies all day long- yet
| human children are pretty helpless and need almost
| constant care for years.
|
| As a dad, even in modern times I couldn't work at all
| without someone to help with parenting... however if I
| can work, I could bring in enough resources to support an
| entire family.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| >The parenting age adults can't exactly hunt and gather
| if they have to watch babies all day long- yet human
| children are pretty helpless and need almost constant
| care for years.
|
| Gathering food or light manual work? You just stick 'em
| in a papoose (we used a shoulder sling). Heavier work,
| hang the papoose in a tree. Once they can walk they can
| gather food and do light work.
|
| I'm not saying grandparents wouldn't make it easier, but
| babies/toddlers are quite adaptable.
|
| I think for hunting (with weapons) you'd want them to be
| at least 5.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I would imagine having pepaw & memaw around to watch the
| kiddos while mom and dad were out gathering food would be
| a huge boon as far as keeping your progeny alive to
| reproduce again.
| khiqxj wrote:
| well chocolate is high in calories and much more so when you
| buy a product that adds a bunch of sugar. this is relevant
| because people who eat a lot of chocolate have bad health but
| still probably dont have any lead problems aside from subtle,
| low dose related ones, which will be hard to distinguish from
| having unhealthy calory intake
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Most "chocolate" products really have little, if any
| chocolate. Google says Hershey's milk chocolate is only 11%
| actual cacao. Still, plenty of people eat 85-100% cacao
| dark chocolate, or even savory chocolate foods like Mole in
| Mexican food, which I think should be considered separately
| from, e.g. chocolate flavored candy. Interestingly, cacao
| is one of the best dietary sources of copper, and it seems
| plausible that getting more copper this way would overall
| reduce risk of cardiovascular disease [1-3].
| [1] https://perfecthealthdiet.com/2012/11/chocolate-what-
| is-the-optimal-dose/ [2]
| https://perfecthealthdiet.com/recommended-supplements/
| [3] https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/204871/dark-chocolate-
| cuts-heart-deaths-australian-study
| khiqxj wrote:
| you get enough copper (to meet national recommendations)
| just by eating anything, no need to seek it out.
|
| what i want to know is how to correctly interpret all
| these studies that claim some food substantially
| increases health outlooks.
|
| while those are spam websites (buy this, buy that,
| amazonamazonamazonamazonamazon), its still possible for
| them to be correct
| Rury wrote:
| I've heard that, for the most part, small dense LDL is what
| is mostly found in cardiovascular disease.
| [deleted]
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| You might want to look up more recent research on saturated
| fat. there's still no doubt that hydrolyzed fats are horrible
| for you though.
| zzzeek wrote:
| my cholesterol goes up proportionally to saturated fat
| intake, the link between saturated fat and LDL cholesterol
| (and LDL cholesterol and heart disease) is quite clear
| despite a huge desire from the public for there to be other
| "studies" that somehow make it OK to down any amount of
| dairy. I spent many years hoping for such studies all the
| while my 300-level cholesterol was lining my arteries with
| plaque until I finally had to get on statins (not a vegan
| here).
| ck2 wrote:
| And that's in the food supply which is supposedly regulation and
| monitored (not).
|
| You should see what they ALWAYS find in supplements which are not
| at all regulated and definitely not monitored no matter what
| anyone thinks or claims.
|
| https://www.consumerreports.org/food-safety/your-herbs-and-s...
|
| Those are spices but it's in every vitamin, mineral, etc.
| supplement you've ever taken. There are allowed limits but they
| blow right through them because there's no testing and no
| oversight and no penalty for doing so.
|
| And yes lead is a forever chemical and yes it is making everyone
| stupid, this is well proven science beyond all argument, average
| IQ went way up when leaded car gas was finally banned but lead
| still sprayed everywhere around airports from aviation fuel.
| CincinnatiMan wrote:
| As someone who eats about 1-2oz of dark chocolate (usually 85%)
| per day, this is concerning. However I have found the dark
| chocolate to be a great stimulant, giving me motivation without
| anxiety the way caffeine does. Now I'm unsure what to do.
| Tenoke wrote:
| Supposedly the stimulating effect of chocolate mostly comes
| from PEA (Phenylethylamine) which people just buy in pills to
| use as a nootropic. So you can just try that if it's only about
| the effect. Though you'd likely need maois and maybe something
| else to better recreate what you get from chocolate.
| trashface wrote:
| You could try caffeine with L-Theanine supplements. Though I
| guess those could have lead too. The site I get mine from (bulk
| supplements) does have a lead warning when you buy, but as I
| understand it, they do that because lead testing is so
| expensive its easier to just put up the warning (which they
| need to be able to sell in California). Of course it could also
| be laden with lead for all I know. You can get L-Theanine from
| lots of places though and its most true teas (black, green,
| white, matcha, etc).
| paulbaumgart wrote:
| Some brands source their cacao from less contaminated areas:
| https://www.consumerlab.com/news/best-dark-chocolate-and-coc...
| Semaphor wrote:
| Directly related and possibly of interest, the 381-page "As You
| Sow" report "Expert Investigation Related to Cocoa and Chocolate
| Products" [0] that "Details Simple, Safe, and Low-Cost Solutions
| to Reduce Levels of Lead and Cadmium in Chocolate" Requires an
| email address to download though.
|
| [0]: https://www.asyousow.org/blog/2022/8/17/new-report-
| explains-...
| derbOac wrote:
| One thing that's apparent from that report is the year effect.
| Older, pre-2022 tests were much more likely to have very low
| levels of heavy metals; more recent, 2022 tests are more likely
| to have high levels. This is true within brand as well. At
| least it strongly looked that way with many of the brands I
| saw.
|
| I don't know if that's due to testing effects, or agricultural
| or processing changes, or shifts in regional supply (maybe due
| to the pandemic?), or something else. But some of those results
| make it look like it's a relatively recent, and sharply growing
| problem.
| cosmicradiance wrote:
| I am yet to discover anything healthy produced at large-scale by
| profit earning companies.
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