[HN Gopher] A third of chocolate products are high in heavy metals
___________________________________________________________________
A third of chocolate products are high in heavy metals
Author : geox
Score : 251 points
Date : 2023-10-27 13:57 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.consumerreports.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.consumerreports.org)
| BaculumMeumEst wrote:
| like the article says, the takeaway isn't to panic, but just to
| consider dark chocolate a food you don't overindulge in.
| obviously you want to avoid contaminants, but some degree of
| exposure is part of life, and it's the dose that makes the
| poison.
| davzie wrote:
| I know I'm spending too long on HN when I start panicking about
| every day normal things to consume or do incase it poisons me,
| causes cancer, gives me alzheimer's or something else that
| makes top page posts. The health-nut side of HN is what lets it
| down and makes it a depressing place to hang out in.
| Pigalowda wrote:
| Just eat a balanced diet and exercise. Don't smoke, drink, or
| do drugs (if you do then do them sparingly). Everything else
| won't move the needle and should be mostly ignored - someone
| is selling you something or gaining a click.
|
| Luckily for the American health care industry people ignore
| that advice and do their very level best to oppose it at
| every turn.
| davzie wrote:
| Well a big green tick for me on all those points. Thanks
| for being a voice of reason!
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > Just eat a balanced diet and exercise.
|
| I've never seen a particularly good definition for
| "balanced diet", and many communities that are super
| healthy have diets that don't look balanced at all.
| BaculumMeumEst wrote:
| the problem is these submissions are incentivized to scare
| the shit out of you, but not to be honest about "how worried
| you should be about it". this heavily applies to MSM stories
| as well.
|
| once i understood that, i got more aggressive about hiding
| this kind of content, or taking it with a huge grain of salt.
| Blackthorn wrote:
| There is no safe level of lead exposure, though.
| jksflkjl3jk3 wrote:
| How are you defining a "safe level"?
|
| Everyone in the world has been exposed to some amount of lead
| and most live out relatively long and healthy lives.
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| Comments like these are always so annoying to be honest.
|
| It takes the responsibility off the food manufacturers to
| do really simple things like, let's not put toxic chemicals
| in food, and instead writes the whole thing down with
| flimsy statements like "well you're already poisoned to
| some degree, should be fine though."
| smegger001 wrote:
| But its not entirely wrong there is some natural
| background level of expected exposure for things like
| lead, arsenic, mercury, etc as they are naturally
| occurring part of our environment. wanting to know what
| the floor is when talking about exposure to these toxins
| helps you understand the scale of exposure.
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| In what environment should we be expected to naturally
| encounter lead, arsenic, and mercury?
| jksflkjl3jk3 wrote:
| Just about anywhere in the world that's not a sterilized
| room.
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| I still think it's a disingenuous argument because we're
| talking about elevated levels in food production.
| smegger001 wrote:
| Not really for example there a naturally occuring high
| levels of arsenic in the ground water and soil near near
| cooks inlet Alaska, there's lead in Idaho, and cinnabar
| (a naturally occuring mercury contain mineral) in
| California, uranium in Arizona Colorado New Mexico and
| Wyoming.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| It's not disingenuous when people are talking about
| treating _any_ level like an elevated level.
| Herodotus38 wrote:
| Arsenic levels in soil can naturally vary depending on
| minerals under the soil. So you can get more if say you
| are eating a root vegetable that you need to wash the
| dirt off vs less from an above ground vegetable.
|
| Unfortunately I have learned a lot about this bc our
| region has unnaturally elevated levels of lead and
| arsenic die to pesticide use in the past. But can also
| just be bad luck and natural.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK231016/#:~:text=The
| %20....
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| Arsenic is naturally found in most water to varying
| degrees. It is an essential but poorly understood
| micronutrient. Its toxicity is similar to selenium,
| another essential micronutrient, so it isn't unique in
| terms of the dose response. Some plants concentrate it
| but that usually isn't bioavailable.
|
| Background lead levels are sometimes high naturally but
| those geographies are relatively rare. Lead is usually
| industrial pollution.
|
| Mercury chemistry in nature tends to have very poor
| bioavailability. Dietary mercury is almost exclusively
| industrial pollution where mercury is integrated into
| molecules that are much more bioavailable.
| jksflkjl3jk3 wrote:
| My point is that your requirement can't be absolutely
| zero lead. If you have sensitive enough equipment, you're
| always going to detect some amount of common
| contaminants.
|
| > let's not put toxic chemicals in food
|
| You make it sound like adding lead is an intentional act.
| Surely if it required no effort, food manufacturers would
| remove all of the lead. I don't know how much effort is
| required, but reports like this and testing by regulators
| is likely required to encourage them to put in more
| effort to get the lead down to a reasonable level.
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| Sounds like a regulatory problem.
| Aurornis wrote:
| This absolutist stance made sense when our equipment wasn't
| sensitive enough to detect low levels reliably. A lot of
| reports would literally say "not detected" and it would be
| interpreted as "not present"
|
| Modern equipment and techniques can reliably detect very low
| levels of lead. Nearly every chocolate product will contain
| some tiny level of lead.
|
| There are 469 entries on this database:
| https://www.asyousow.org/environmental-health/toxic-
| enforcem...
|
| Only a handful of them were so low that it's listed as not
| detected. I'm sure if they were motivated, they could have
| used more sensitive equipment to quantify the actual level of
| lead in those products too.
|
| That's why it's no longer useful to insist that there is no
| safe level of lead, because you're going to be consuming tiny
| amounts of lead in anything you eat or drink. Past a small
| enough threshold the effects really are negligible.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| This issue I sense with respect to whether there are truly
| any safe exposure amounts is that the moment you say
| anything greater than zero, you give wiggle room for
| companies (hell, even governments and regulatory bodies in
| general) to fuck around and pretend their negligence in
| allowing an-after-the-fact higher amount product was due to
| some arbitrary reason that ignores the fact that there
| really shouldn't be _any_ of the thing at all for practical
| purposes and that, consequently, this thing really _can 't
| exist_ or be allowed to continue being marketed. Folks
| interested in the language that this evokes have zero issue
| doing this with drugs, why so serious (in terms of
| incompetency) with respect to this?
| Aurornis wrote:
| > This issue I sense with respect to whether there are
| truly any safe exposure amounts is that the moment you
| say anything greater than zero,
|
| If you set all of the limits at zero, we wouldn't be
| eating anything.
|
| You wouldn't even be eating vegetables from your own
| garden.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| The point I'm trying to make is when you have any
| tolerance at all for hard no things like lead, it only
| extends the Overton window of regulation so far, to the
| point where you're allowing for a defense when it needs
| to be an absolute liabillity. Lead intoxication (both
| acutely and chronic) is an absolutely castastrophic
| public health problem. It has to be absolutley
| unacceptable and legally made to essentially be
| indefensible where it can be objectively proven a chain
| of events flows from commercial activity of defendant
| company to the inclusion (or failure to remove it from)
| the product and seperately for any harm that results to
| customers.
|
| If no company can legit handle the liabillity aspect then
| it needs to be like nuclear weapons and "handled by the
| government" even though that opens its own range of
| potential issues. That is the least-worst arbiter and
| threat actor who handle's other such things.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Paying for damages sounds like that's also allowing
| nonzero amounts.
|
| And I don't know what you mean by the government handling
| it. Surely you don't mean the government handles all food
| production, but I can't figure out how else to interpret
| that.
|
| Lying about tolerances in service of an overton fight is
| not something that sounds very good to me.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| > lying about tolerances
|
| Wat?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| You're saying we can't tolerate nonzero amounts.
|
| As pointed out, _actually_ doing that would mean no food.
|
| Since you brought up the overton window, it sounds like
| you want to _claim_ we don 't tolerate any at all, while
| _actually_ tolerating it so people can eat. That would be
| lying.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| Its kind of ironic that dark chocolate is more a rich person's
| thing on a practical level and that the shittier the chocolate
| (in the sense of real chocolate content which is heavily used
| as a proxy for quality), the safer it might be
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| Not the first time. White bread was originally a rich
| person's food compared to whole grain. It cost more to
| produce white flour. Now we promote whole grain and charge
| more for it.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| Lol, I feel that way about anything "white" in terms of
| breads and such except like if its with italian food
| SllX wrote:
| Unfortunately (or fortunately? But I'm guessing this affects them
| to given the description of how this happens) I don't see any
| brands I actually eat on this list, save for Lindt, but we're
| talking one of those chocoballs two or three times a year.
| e40 wrote:
| Note there is a good site for checking your chocolate:
|
| https://www.asyousow.org/environmental-health/toxic-enforcem...
|
| It's nice that Consumer Reports made OP free for non-subscribers.
| SllX wrote:
| Thanks! The results were what I expected and depressing, but at
| least now I know.
| crazygringo wrote:
| What were you expecting?
|
| I personally can't see any kind of pattern anywhere at all,
| except dark chocolate is (logically) higher.
|
| Also, one-time testing isn't going to reveal much. Since
| different manufacturers are constantly getting different
| batches of beans from different farms, wouldn't the heavy
| metal content in any chocolate bar be essentially random?
| E.g. Cadbury's might be low in April, high in May, and then
| medium in June.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| Makes you wonder if there's any way to "synthesize"
| whatever it is that makes cacao _make cacao_ or something
| to the effect of the way various opioids and flavors are
| already synthesized en masse, although obviously in the
| opioid case we 're probably not gonna get around having to
| _grow_ poppies forever.
| kleton wrote:
| Okra is vaguely related to cacao, and you can process the
| seeds to some sort of ersatz substance with similar
| flavor compounds, but it lacks the saturated fats with a
| melting point similar to human body temperature that
| makes chocolate interesting.
| soperj wrote:
| So just add bacon fat?
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| > Shhhhhhh!
|
| -- Nestle/BigNesqwik
| chongli wrote:
| High quality chocolate has a ton of different flavours in
| it. It's extremely complex. Just like coffee, tea, wine,
| beer, vanilla, spirits, cheese, mushrooms (and so on;
| basically any luxury food). We can't synthesize what
| makes these things taste good because it isn't just one
| compound, it's thousands.
|
| Even something very basic you can make at home, such as
| caramel, can't be synthesized. From a very simple
| precursor (white sugar aka sucrose) you apply heat and
| the result is thousands of complex molecules. This is why
| caramel tastes good (like an actual food) but plain white
| sugar tastes pretty bad (because it's just an
| ingredient).
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Don't you fix these things by using the market, fine
| Cadbury an extra 5% pa of gross revenue if any bars are
| found with > N ug of any particular heavy metal. Tax all
| companies an extra X% if their products are in the bottom
| quintile for 2 consecutive years. Maybe don't fine them if
| they can show a person who eats their products at the 99%
| level, for a lifetime, would be below the level of toxicity
| -- the CEO can eat that much of the metal to demonstrate
| they're convinced that the toxicity figures are correct!
|
| In theory the chocolate producers will get a lower price
| unless they do what they can to reduce heavy metals.
|
| Of course the farmers get screwed in places where others
| have shipped their heavy-metal lawn waste ...
| SllX wrote:
| Some level of uniformity that the issue is about as
| universal as it sounds across brands based off the
| description in the article. It is, and that kind of sucks.
|
| I mentioned this to a friend earlier and he said something
| along the lines of "yeah I thought this was pretty well
| known" so... I didn't get the memo anyway and I am a
| somewhat frequent consumer of very dark chocolate.
| civilitty wrote:
| A bunch of organic chocolate products from Newmans Own, Trader
| Joes, and Whole Foods' brand are the worst offenders.
|
| Well shit, am I supposed to make brownies using just cannabis?
| The alternatives are all crap Hersheys/Mars chocolates
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Does cannabis concentrate heavy metals itself?
|
| I can't endorsed this source, but there are plenty of others
| https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-12-cannabis-heavy-
| metals...
| adrian_b wrote:
| The hemp seeds, like most seeds, also concentrate lead and
| cadmium.
|
| The other parts of the plant have only low concentrations
| of metals. Nevertheless, when any plant part is burnt, the
| ashes concentrate all the metals from that plant part.
| aksss wrote:
| Yeah it seemed that going out of way to source from most
| artisanal producer in exotic locations may correlate with
| higher levels? Not strictly true but seemed like a
| correlative trend in my quick pass through results.
|
| Maybe the guy growing cacao in the roadside ditch in the
| valley watershed needs some of that fair trade money, but
| soil quality may not be highest concern.
| waveBidder wrote:
| Those ... are all corporate knock-offs of co-ops. what did
| you expect?
| civilitty wrote:
| Better quality control?
| sarchertech wrote:
| Newmans Own isn't a corporate knock off of a co-op. It's
| corporation started by Paul Newman that donates all of its
| profits to charity.
| flanbiscuit wrote:
| I like to buy from local independent chocolatiers and now I'll
| have to think twice about that. I can call them and ask them if
| they test their chocolate sources for heavy metal but somehow I
| doubt many are doing that.
| chris_va wrote:
| (from experience)
|
| Most local chocolatiers (e.g. truffle makers, etc) use bulk
| chocolate already produced from companies like Valrhona, so
| it may have the same issues.
|
| Most local chocolate makers use distributors to source their
| cacao beans, and those distributors test the batches. The
| regions with high Cd/Pb levels tend to be regions that those
| distributors avoid.
|
| You should always ask, though.
| hgomersall wrote:
| I wrote to our favoured UK brand (Willie's Cacao) and got a
| strong statement about their testing regime and the reliably
| good results. I guess I have to trust what they say but it's
| good to have some reassurance.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| Nearly all of these tests were done in 2014. I wonder how
| different the results would be today. Probably not much,
| unfortunately.
| stefan_ wrote:
| In fact I would expect them to be very different, to the
| point of just being random. Tons of brands on that list that
| will pick their supply by price, and it will probably even
| differ by what batch they get.
| okokwhatever wrote:
| Goal 2030: be the healthiest in the cemetery
| omginternets wrote:
| There's a joke I like a lot (fair warning: it is a stupid one).
|
| An elderly husband and wife die in their sleep on the same
| night. They both appear before the pearly gates, where St. John
| takes them on a tour of the heavens, ending with the banquet
| hall. The table is overflowing with all sorts of delicious
| foods--sweets, beautiful cuts of meat, cakes, cocktails, etc.
| This puts the husband in a foul mood, which further degrades
| into full-on sulking when he sees the liquor cabinet and the
| humidor. Eventually, his wife says to him "okay, dear, out with
| it. What did I do wrong _this_ time?"
|
| The husband glares back at her and mutters under his breath,
| "you and your damn bran-muffins... we could have been here
| years ago."
| AdamN wrote:
| Meta point here but Consumer Reports is doing really solid work
| for the consumer and is a nonprofit that needs donations - please
| consider subscribing/supporting.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| I really hate that Facebook has turned this sentence into
| something that used to have nothing to do with them that you
| did not intend and that is absent from your sentence in spirit
| but for the letter- like connotation they have legally
| purchased forever now.
| trgn wrote:
| whoa! Consumer Reports is a non-profit. TIL.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > Kids and pregnant people should consume dark chocolate
| sparingly
|
| I've never met kids that like dark chocolate. Pregnant "people"
| (IME they're usually women) famously have appetites for all kinds
| of interesting foods.
| BaculumMeumEst wrote:
| you can just say pregnant women
| jcutrell wrote:
| I don't think HN is the place for arguing gender politics.
| Pregnant people is as or more accurate than pregnant women.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| It may well not be the place, but the GP isn't the one who
| opened that door.
| GamerUncle wrote:
| There is simply no place to discuss whether there is
| anything beside pregnant women, giving the space to this
| antiscientifical vocab in science is not a matter of
| discussion don't let the loonies run the asylum simple as
| jnwatson wrote:
| I know lots of kids that like dark chocolate. In the States
| where the standard is Hershey's milk chocolate, it is easy to
| like anything else.
| zwieback wrote:
| I moved to the US from Germany 30 years ago and over the
| years I've grown to love Hershey's milk chocolate, maybe a
| bit too weird for coddled Europeans!
| enqk wrote:
| my 4yo mainly eat dark chocolate
| denton-scratch wrote:
| I now consider myself better-informed!
| prmoustache wrote:
| That's what we get when we pretend recycling stuff while all we
| do is sending the bad stuff to the very same countries that are
| tasked to grow our food.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| Serious question: say burning garbage had no detrimental
| impact, it would be the best solution right?
|
| We know that's not the case (don't we?) so how do we move
| through that particular "solution-tree" to get to the right
| practical solution/implementation?
|
| Not sure if what I'm saying is cogent but I feel like there's
| an ideological game of hide and seek _not_ being played or
| someone is "it" and simply leaving the rest of the players to
| hide but they lobbied against a rule that allowed for unoffical
| games of hide and seek and insisted they are only ever "it" and
| the rest of the players can't gather and create their own non-
| sanctioned game that disincludes the current player and that
| the current instance can never actually end to allow for a new
| game.
| kleton wrote:
| Japan incinerates essentially all of their trash, and it's
| not a polluted hellscape.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| So why aren't we doing that? Like what's the rub? And it
| better not be BigRecycling or imma lose my mind right now
| (you know what I mean) :/
| kleton wrote:
| Long ago, they tried burning trash in other countries and
| it was just basically an open burn pit, so incineration
| is a political no-go. Even though now it's possible to
| attain essentially complete oxidation and no nox/sox/ash
| in flue gas.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| You're telling me that a/the solution is to do exactly
| what all the "burn baby burn" people are sort of saying
| in some sense?
| orangepurple wrote:
| The solution is to burn everything and aggressively scrub
| the exhaust
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| Dingdingding! So how do we make it happen? Is there
| anyone with "eco"-credibillity who is saying exactly
| this?
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| >Nevertheless, every incinerator produces excess GHG
| emissions and therefore every state's GHG emissions
| intensity is higher than it would be without incinerators.
| These results are consistent with those of Tabata [83], who
| analyzed 727 power-producing incinerators in Japan and
| found that only five did not produce excess fossil CO2
| emissions.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| Ya but do they quantify the corresponding emissions
| created in the aggregate by our alternative efforts to
| deal with waste disposal and if that is the case, is it
| still clear that "our" way is superior to "Japan"'s way
| with respect to:
|
| 1) GHG emissions 2) palpable and visible environmental
| pollution/damage 3) cost 4) reliabillity
| (labour/cost/lack of long-term potentiation of any
| existing or novel variable that is reasonably foreseeable
| based on existing knowledge as informed by current data
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| Like, by you saying what you're saying and if Japan
| indeed operates in their way, than there's a contradition
| to the effect that Japan's really being hurt more than
| helped by it and its one of those "dolphin" areas for
| them
| rafaelmn wrote:
| We're still burning coal and gas for power - burning
| thrash is win/win in that regard. Problem with
| incinerators is nobody wants one in their backyard,
| despite safety claims.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| Is that like legit the rub that I'm talking about? Imma
| be so fucking pissed if this is ultimately all-rooted in
| freakin NIMBYers and Boomer Entitlement in general
| bullshit
| aksss wrote:
| Obviously burning is not the only alternative to shipping
| trash to poorer countries with loose or non-existent enviro
| and handling standards.
|
| Burying our own trash in landfills (regardless of location)
| has a lot of upsides if done well and maintained correctly.
| We still wouldn't want to be growing our crops atop it - I
| don't think..
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| I want to get to the bottom of WHY we even need to even
| ponder any of those or extend the line of inquiry any
| further if Japan's approach "works"...
|
| That Japan does this and it "works" is blowing my mind
| right now. That is extremely compelling and provocative in
| the context of this discussion so now I wanna know why
| we're making this more complicated by insisting on
| searching for a solution to a problem that already has one,
| however inelegant or politically inconvenient it is.
|
| I am not accusing you when I suggest we're making this more
| complicated, just making a hopefully reasonable inference
| that if burning works and this all comes down to a
| political communication/advocacy ("PR issue"), then I will
| happy join the "burn it all" crowd). But, you know,
| respectfully.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| There's got to be more to this story if its true as to
| why we are even still discussing this issue
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| While that is an issue, I don't see why you think that is
| connected?
|
| The article only mentions contamination in phosphate-based
| fertilizers.
| prmoustache wrote:
| One example, Ghana, second largest cocoa exporter in the
| world is also the home of the largest e-waste dump site.
|
| I don't know the current status, but Ivory Coast, 1st
| producer used to have large dump sites it was struggling to
| manage.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDjDGrrDD7o
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDjDGrrDD7o
| waveBidder wrote:
| Lead and Cadmium are inherent in volcanic soil, and is thus
| something they're going to have to process out.
| Aurornis wrote:
| It's interesting to see the charts with a binary threshold where
| green is good and red is bad:
| https://www.asyousow.org/environmental-health/toxic-enforcem...
|
| The threshold is based on heavy metals per serving. I suppose it
| makes sense that dark chocolate would be flagged more frequently
| because it has a higher concentration of cacao per serving.
|
| It also means that for some of these products, eating half as
| much dark chocolate would give the same dose as someone eating
| twice as much milk chocolate. Good reminder to consider the
| absolute dose rather than binary thresholds.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Yeah, I don't like the binary threshold at all. 3.8 is green,
| while 4.3 is red? That hardly makes a difference to your
| health.
|
| Meanwhile, both 0.2 and 3.8 are green, while 4.3 and 19.2 are
| red? It doesn't distinguish _at all_ that one is 4x or 20x
| worse or better than another.
|
| A color interpolation would be far more informative for health.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| How much chocolate do you think the heaviest "chocoholics"
| consume? Demographically (in terms of money and in reference to
| the consumer), who do you think is most likely to be
| "vulnerable" to this reality? What's the extent of the harm
| possible or does it compound indefinitely like bioaccumulation
| or whatever?
| irrational wrote:
| My wife consumes a lot of chocolate. She would subsist solely
| on chocolate if that was possible. I have no idea how much
| she actually consumes, but I'm never surprised to find empty
| chocolate chip bags in the garbage.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| If you love your wife, show her this article. I have no
| remaining commentary on the matter otherwise
| irrational wrote:
| Oh, I did. She just laughed. Chocolate is way too
| important to her to care about lead poisoning.
| scottlamb wrote:
| I suppose it just gets across the message that many products
| aren't compliant at an assumed one serving per day. But yeah,
| for seeing which levels are meaningfully different thus which
| products I should really be avoiding, it's not as useful as it
| could be.
|
| > It also means that for some of these products, eating half as
| much dark chocolate would give the same dose as someone eating
| twice as much milk chocolate.
|
| Looks like they used the chocolatiers' serving sizes, which
| might differ between dark and milk chocolate products already.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Serious question: what is the actual story or solution here?
|
| Are food manufacturers breaking California law or not?
|
| And given that it's the cacao beans themselves with lead and
| cadmium (not factory contamination or something), is the solution
| to test every batch from each farm individually, and then just
| throw half the beans into the garbage? Or shut down half the
| cacao farms worldwide because of tainted soil?
|
| Or is this pretty much in line with food safety levels generally,
| there's nothing to be worried about, and California guidelines
| are overly strict?
|
| I just find it unfortunate that the article presents all the
| facts but basically zero analysis or context.
| adrian_b wrote:
| This problem is not specific to cocoa.
|
| The seeds of many plants concentrate lead and cadmium whenever
| they are found in their environment, so with most seeds and
| nuts there is always a risk of high lead or cadmium content.
|
| In most countries there are legal limits for the lead and
| cadmium content of seeds and nuts, but the limits are much more
| lenient than for other products, because there are few sources
| of seeds and nuts that are not affected, so setting low limits
| would eliminate most products from the market.
|
| So the only recommendation is like for fish, which should not
| constitute a too large part of the food due to the risk of high
| mercury content, also most seeds and nuts should not be a too
| large part of the food, due to the risk of high lead and
| cadmium content.
|
| The pollution caused by human stupidity has converted some of
| the healthiest foods into health risks.
| aksss wrote:
| In second to last paragraph, you mean that for these reasons
| of contamination, fish and chocolate should not constitute
| too large a part of one's diet, correct? Just trying to
| clarify.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Yes.
|
| Consuming them from time to time should not be a problem,
| but eating a chocolate (or fish) every day presents the
| risk of excessive intake of contaminants.
|
| Unfortunately, most of us cannot afford to make a chemical
| analysis of every food we buy, to determine whether it is
| safe or not for consumption, so it is better to be
| cautious.
|
| Even the legal limits for the lead and cadmium content of
| cocoa and of most seeds and nuts are rather high also based
| on the reasoning that on average they should be only a
| minor part of the daily intake.
| goda90 wrote:
| Seeds like grains that make up most of people's diets and the
| diets of most livestock? That doesn't sound great.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Actually products like white flour or white rice have
| significantly less contaminants than whole grains.
|
| I do not agree with the propaganda about whole grains being
| healthy. Whole grains have more contaminants and more anti-
| nutrients, e.g. phytic acid.
|
| Whole grains would be healthier in comparison with white
| flour or white rice only for someone who would eat nothing
| else, and even then they would not be healthy enough.
|
| A healthy diet should include processed grains like white
| flour or white rice as a source of cheap proteins and of
| energy and it should also include some sources of healthy
| fat and many other sources for the nutrients that are
| necessary only in small quantities, like vitamins, minerals
| or proteins rich in lysine (which is insufficient in
| cereals). Whole-grain products have inflated prices, while
| a combination of e.g. white flour with various vegetables
| is simultaneously cheaper and healthier.
|
| Relying on whole grains to provide what is missing in white
| flour or white rice is completely inefficient and it also
| adds the risk of an excessive intake of contaminants.
| crawfordcomeaux wrote:
| How did you come to the idea that processed foods are
| part of a healthy diet
| bobthepanda wrote:
| not all processed foods are healthy, but also not all raw
| foods are healthy either. most of the issues with
| processed foods are with the ultra-processed foods, those
| foods that are manufactured into a food product with
| minimal or no cooking required. and there's the stuff
| like iodine or niacin fortification and pasteurization,
| which we know has had systemic positive effects on
| nutrition.
|
| there's also where exactly you draw the line for
| processing. fermentation is like the oldest food
| preservation method we have (kimchi, cheese): is that
| processing? the raw diet people even believe cooking of
| any time is processing.
| avery17 wrote:
| Nothing is healthy, everything is just varying levels of
| bad for you. Its all about minimizing.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Any kind of food must be processed by removing the parts
| that are not edible or are contaminated or contain
| various harmful substances.
|
| This kind of processing is always good.
|
| The kind of processing that is bad either adds to food
| substances that are not food, e.g. conservants or
| colorants, or it destroys useful components of the food,
| like vitamins or unsaturated fatty acids, by heating or
| other harsh treatments.
|
| The useful part of the grains, which cannot be obtained
| from other sources at a similar price, are the proteins
| and the starch, which are needed by a human in large
| quantities daily. Everything else that is contained in
| the whole grains can be found in countless other
| vegetables that are better sources than the whole grains.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| that being said, whole grains do cause less glycemic
| spiking and are important for diabetics.
| nikkwong wrote:
| What you're missing here is that whole grains (or whole
| foods in general) are biologically active with
| phytochemicals such as phenolic acids, flavonoids,
| lingans, etc, which their processed counterparts
| generally have less of (or none at all). These compounds
| get into our body and then work in many ways (many of
| which that we don't fully understand) to improve
| important markers of human health.
|
| Plant food is biologically active in ways that animal
| products are not, and I think people who eat exclusively
| meat as a source of protein are missing out on a lot of
| opportunity from the chemical activity of plants that has
| been shown to be health promoting.
|
| Whole foods do have more antinutrients but in studies
| I've seen most authors conclude that the benefits greatly
| outweigh the risks. I agree that I am concerned about the
| metals in whole foods though; and careful sourcing is
| important (and even then sometimes insufficient).
| adrian_b wrote:
| There are many other vegetables, from which other parts
| than the seeds are eaten, and which provide large amounts
| of biologically active phytochemicals.
|
| Seeds, like those of cereals or of legumes, are a
| necessary part of food because they are the only part of
| the plants with high content of proteins.
|
| Because of their disadvantage of also concentrating
| pollutants, it is preferable to use them mainly as a
| source of proteins and starch, which does not require the
| use of whole grains, and to get any desirable
| phytochemicals from other parts of plants.
|
| In the case of oily seeds, the extracted oils (if they
| are obtained by cold pressing or supercritical carbon
| dioxide extraction) contain most of the phytochemicals
| but much less of the heavy metals. For instance, cold-
| pressed sunflower oil is a better source of
| phytochemicals than raw sunflower seeds, because the
| latter, like cocoa, have frequently high contents of lead
| and cadmium.
|
| So there are ways of processing that improve the quality
| of the food ingredients. The kinds of processing that are
| bad are typically those which add undesirable substances
| to food, not those which remove undesirable substances
| from food.
| xhrpost wrote:
| In addition to some of the other comments here mentioning
| whole grain benefits, I remember doing some brief
| research here and seeing that processed grains like white
| rice or white bread tend to be inflammatory while brown
| rice and whole grain bread are anti-inflammatory. Not
| sure if that just makes this a "pick your poison"
| situation or what.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Fish also have selenium which counters the mercury effect.
|
| https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/FS437
|
| Eat a lot of fish like the Japanese, you might even become
| less violent for some reason :)
| chris_va wrote:
| (disclaimer: I make bean-to-bar chocolate)
|
| As background, food often concentrates whatever is in the soil,
| and cacao perhaps more so. The shell around the cacao bean is a
| big filter, and tends to accumulate stuff. This concentration
| isn't specific to cacao, e.g. see rice and arsenic, etc etc.
|
| Volcanic soil naturally has a lot of cadmium, for example, so
| you end up with it in the final product for cacao from some
| regions. The growing areas more popular with large
| manufacturers (i.e. cheaper cacao) just so happens to be areas
| with high cadmium levels, so there is a a bit of a correlation
| between cadmium levels and the size of the operation.
|
| I've been told that pretty much all larger chocolate
| organizations _do_ test each batch for cadmium, lead, etc. The
| smaller ones are usually sourcing cacao from higher quality
| distributors, and those distributors also test everything (and
| also do transparency reports on labor, handling, and such).
|
| Fundamentally, the guidance on what is an acceptable level is
| not clear, though I cannot speak for the decision making at the
| companies listed in the article. CA's particular threshold
| considered low, and you can get equal amounts of Cd/Pb from a
| lot of other food sources (generally people don't eat multiple
| chocolate bars per day, but they might have a cup of rice and
| get a similar amount of cadmium). Maybe that's also a problem.
|
| _Lead_ though, really should not be in there. It 's not from
| the soil, and it's mostly in the shell, which should be removed
| in processing.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Thank you -- that's very helpful context!
| tomcam wrote:
| Great post. I'm dying to know what company you have/work for?
| Theo by any chance? AFAIK bean to bar is highly unusual, done
| by only a dozen or so companies. You appear to be living the
| dream!
| chris_va wrote:
| https://spinnakerchocolate.com/
| schoen wrote:
| I was told a few years ago that bean-to-bar was done by
| very few companies. But I've since heard that it's had kind
| of an explosion that somewhat parallels the popularity of
| beer microbreweries, with a huge boom in sales of
| chocolate-making equipment.
| Panoramix wrote:
| I put about a tablespoon of cacao nibs in my breakfast cereal
| every morning. They are tasty and high in fiber. I guess I
| have to do some calculations on cadmium exposure.
| foobiekr wrote:
| I thought the lead was from beans left outdoors to ferment
| near machinery / vehicles / industrial sites with lead in the
| emissions.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| > (and also do transparency reports on labor, handling, and
| such).
|
| Where would one find these reports?
| chris_va wrote:
| An example: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5ab9229a
| a9e0287fbf927...
| lippihom wrote:
| I'm just always blown away by the niche expertise you find on
| here! Thanks for the info.
| klipt wrote:
| You should see how much lead is in the average carrot.
|
| Last I checked, baby carrots can have similar lead/lb as the
| chocolates they're talking about here.
|
| And people chow down on carrots thinking they're "healthy".
| soperj wrote:
| Can you provide some back up on that? I can't seem to find
| anything.
| klipt wrote:
| See table 7 in
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-91554-z
|
| Carrot is just one example. 0.027 mg lead / kg carrot.
|
| Or 0.027 micrograms lead / g carrot.
|
| According to the asyousow.org report linked above more than
| 0.5 micrograms lead per day is bad, which is just 20g
| (0.7oz) of fresh carrot.
|
| Celery and beetroot are not far off either, around half the
| lead of carrot by weight.
| soperj wrote:
| I don't know that a study conducted in Poland with polish
| goods actually gives you the lead & cadmium levels in an
| average carrot. Thank you for providing the study though!
| downrightmike wrote:
| Odd how the only one that had levels in the teens was Lindt,
| from Europe. Seems like manufacturers could and should be doing
| more in the USA.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| So cocoa got heavy metals from soil, makes sense.
|
| But why does it have significant more concentration than other
| crops?
| zwieback wrote:
| _The researchers conclude that while cocoa bean shells may be
| one source of lead, most contamination occurs during shipping
| or processing of the beans and in manufacturing. Further
| research on those stages of the process will help to isolate
| the source._
|
| source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1281312/
| waveBidder wrote:
| it doesn't really:
|
| >The FDA estimated dietary exposure of children to Cd and Pb
| from 2014 to 2016 based on Cd and Pb concentration data from
| the FDA Total Diet Study and food consumption data from the
| National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and determined
| that dietary Cd and Pb from all sweets (i.e., candy, gelatin,
| jelly, sugar, and syrup), including chocolate, comprises 1.2
| and 3.5% of total dietary intake, respectively.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32293881/ https://sci-
| hub.se/10.1021/acs.jafc.9b08295
| perihelions wrote:
| From the linked report:
|
| - _" Excessive nib Cd levels occur due to several main factors:
| 1)_ Theobroma cacao _is a natural Cd accumulating plant species
| compared to others grown on the same soils; 2) topsoil Cd
| increases from deposition of litter and harvest debris on the
| soil surface; 3) Because cocoa roots remain in the topsoil,
| tillage to incorporate soil amendments harms the trees; 4) Most
| cocoa soils in South America and the Caribbean (LAC) are
| strongly acidic with pH as low as 4.5, so low that soil Cd is
| highly phytoavailable; 5) Some cocoa soils were historically Cd
| contaminated by mining wastes (minor part of land in cocoa
| production); and 6) some cocoa soils are naturally Cd enriched
| from parent rocks (e.g., marine shale) which makes these have
| high Cd:Zn ratios and thus have very high Cd phytoavailability.
| In these soils, beans can reach 10 mg Cd /kg rather than the
| 0.8 mg Cd/kg limit usually enforced on bean imports in the EU.
| One location in Colombia has 27 mg Cd/kg topsoil, 100-fold
| background levels. Other areas with high Cd:Zn problem soils
| growing cocoa were identified in at least Ecuador, Honduras,
| Peru and Trinidad & Tobago."_
|
| - _" Cocoa plants absorb Cd into roots on a ZIP-family Zn
| transporter, not on the NRAMP5 transporter used by rice. Zn2+
| in soil solution strongly inhibits Cd2+ uptake; thus higher
| Zn2+ in soil can reduce Cd in cocoa beans. The Cd:Zn ratio in
| the soil solution strongly affects Cd accumulation in cocoa
| trees and beans. Unfortunately, surface applied ZnSO4 does not
| rapidly leach into the rooting zone soil, and foliar Zn sprays
| are ineffective in reducing Cd in beans. Surface applied ZnEDTA
| as a Zn fertilizer could leach Zn into the rooting depth soil.
| But ZnEDTA costs much more than ZnSO4."_
| tedchs wrote:
| > Chocolate [...] Is a popular treat eaten by children and adults
| and not an essential part of a someone's diet
|
| Well that's just, like, your opinion, man.
| mikercampbell wrote:
| That sounds like the voice of someone who is trying to ruin
| chocolate for me by making me think heavy metals every time I
| get a break of that KitKat bar
| mecsred wrote:
| The article focuses on cocoa content as the source of heavy
| metals. KitKat is mostly milk chocolate and wafer, you should
| be good on that front.
| 55555 wrote:
| Probably funded by Big Vanilla
| soco wrote:
| Some of us even enjoy heavy metals \m/
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| Cacao can be part of the diet, it's healthy, like Carob (a good
| substitute)
|
| Chocolate is a processed product, enriched in sugar, not
| beneficial in the long term
| notfed wrote:
| Okay, but, heavy metals are from the Cacao.
| delfinom wrote:
| mmmm flavor.
| benatkin wrote:
| They have a Feastables product! By MrBeast. Missed opportunity to
| include the flavor that I had last night:
| https://feastables.com/products/deez-nutz-chocolate (purchased at
| 7-Eleven)
|
| BTW there's a trademark lawsuit, in which I'm rooting for
| MrBeast: https://www.businessinsider.com/dees-nuts-sues-mr-beast-
| feas...
|
| Extrapolating, but I don't think it's the worst, if lead is worse
| than cadmium. Their milk chocolate one is lower in lead than the
| one from Hershey's.
|
| It reminds me of arsenic in rice.
|
| The founder of Braintree is on a longevity quest and he has a
| list of what makes healthy chocolate, and suggests a brand. I
| might start ordering my chocolate.
| https://protocol.bryanjohnson.co/Blueprint-At-A-Glance
| Modified3019 wrote:
| On the topic of rice and arsenic, a method of parboiling can
| greatly reduce the amount, useful if one eats a lot of rice:
| https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-say-this-rice-cookin...
| queuebert wrote:
| On the plus side, these tainted chocolate bars provide better
| X-ray shielding.
| gniv wrote:
| And so do dried herbs and spices. I wonder how the levels
| compare.
|
| https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/your-herb...
| MrOwen wrote:
| Great point to bring up! I learned of this a while ago and
| saught out sellers who said they tested their products for
| contaminants like that and found only 2! Hopefully this is not
| against guidelines to list but the sellers are Starwest
| Botanicals and Mountain Rose Herbs. Starwest seems to be a
| little more strict/upfront about testing than mountain rose but
| products from either should be significantly safer than what
| you find in the grocery store (which I now avoid like the
| plague).
| irrational wrote:
| Just in time for Halloween when kids will be consuming massive
| amounts of chocolate.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Fortunately, there's precious little _actual_ chocolate in most
| modern Halloween candy.
|
| Now if the heavy metals were in corn syrup and palm oil...
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Hershey and Nestle are addressing the problem by slowly replacing
| chocolate with brown-dyed wax so that no one realizes that there
| is no longer any actual chocolate in the products. Cadmium intake
| is down 15%, and profits are up 42%. That's win/win.
|
| Correction: It's a brown "waxlike substance". Paraffin was too
| costly.
| beef234 wrote:
| So... Tootsie rolls?
| wes-k wrote:
| They've been user testing this product for decades!
| antimimetics wrote:
| This is interesting
| hbarka wrote:
| The author of the article does not seem to be able to make a good
| distinction between cacao and cocoa. For instance, they wrote
| "cocoa plant" but there's no such. There's a cacao tree and it
| grows pods (similar in size and shape to a small American
| football) and these pods contain beans surrounded by pulp. These
| pods are cut from the cacao tree, the mushy pulp is allowed to
| ferment and dry over a period of many days, and then the beans
| from desiccated pod are what ultimately get transformed into
| powder and then we get what is referred to as the cocoa butter---
| from cacao tree to cocoa butter. Finally, it's a complex process
| of churning the cocoa butter with the addition of milk and
| lecithin to get the tasty end product chocolate. In most cases it
| is mostly milk chocolate and lecithin with a smaller percent of
| cocoa butter.
|
| The native origins of Cacao trees are in the Amazon region
| (Brazil, Colombia, Peru) but have a rich history of being
| transplanted to other regions around the world since colonial
| times, largely for commercialization. In present day, the top
| growers of cacao trees are in Africa. 70% of the world's cocoa
| come from Cameroon, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, and Ghana.
|
| The CR article fails to make the connection as to where in the
| lifecycle the heavy metals are introduced.
| ses1984 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the heavy metals are introduced from the soils
| in certain regions, maybe most regions, where cacao is grown.
|
| I think you may have applied a little unnecessary pedantry. In
| many languages there is only one word used to describe the tree
| and the finished product, and that's most of the time enough to
| figure out what people are talking about in context.
| hbarka wrote:
| Among nutritionists and cooks, there is a big distinction.
| There's cacao powder and there's cocoa powder. There's also a
| big difference between cocoa versus chocolate, which is
| really milk chocolate.
|
| The real question is which soils contain the pollutants. Is
| there a statistical significance among cacao trees grown in
| the Amazon region versus African region, for example, and
| why.
| ses1984 wrote:
| Ok, but it's pretty obvious to anyone reading that cocoa
| plant and cacao plant refer to the same thing. And if the
| only difference between cocoa powder and cacao powder is
| the heat used in processing, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't
| change the heavy metal content, so it's irrelevant.
|
| It's funny your make such a big deal out of this and then
| say something like "chocolate is really milk chocolate."
| hbarka wrote:
| > the only difference between cocoa powder and cacao
| powder is the heat
|
| and this is why it's important to know your cocoa from
| cacao
|
| Grape vine - grape fruit - wine
|
| Cacao tree - cacao bean - cocoa
| dwroberts wrote:
| > For instance, they wrote "cocoa plant" but there's no such
|
| They're both accepted names for the same plant
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _For instance, they wrote "cocoa plant" but there's no such.
| There's a cacao tree..._
|
| Cacao and cocoa are more interchangeable than you think:
|
| > _Theobroma cacao (cacao tree or cocoa tree)_ [1]
|
| The usage shifts according to country and industry. Where you
| live/work I have no doubt it's called cacao, but in another
| region it will be the opposite.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theobroma_cacao
| hbarka wrote:
| Grape vine -> grape fruit -> fermentation+processing = wine
|
| Cacao tree -> cacao bean -> fermentation+process = cocoa
| butter -> +milk+sugar+lecithin = chocolate
|
| [0] https://www.webmd.com/diet/difference-between-cocoa-and-
| caca...
| RobotToaster wrote:
| At least it isn't death metal.
| account-5 wrote:
| Is this a world thing or a US thing?
| autoexec wrote:
| This ought to make Halloween a little creepier. Everything we've
| got for the Candy Bowl this year has chocolate in it.
|
| The FDA hasn't just dropped the ball here, they've set it down
| and kicked it away from them. They seem dead set against
| regulating the food industry to protect consumers (aka doing
| their job). Food companies could produce chocolate safely, but
| they don't want to because it would eat into their profits.
| They're fine with poisoning us to make a little more money, but
| if they weren't allowed to sell chocolate at all unless it
| conformed to a federal limit they'd do it because selling
| chocolate would still be massively profitable.
|
| We really need to put pressure on the FDA to do their job and set
| federal limits for the amount of heavy metals allowable in our
| foods. Our food supply seems to be getting less and less safe all
| the time. Why are we letting these FDA employees live off of our
| tax dollars if they refuse to work for us?
| anon373839 wrote:
| It's a difficult problem to solve. There is a very sleazy
| revolving door between regulators and regulated industries.
| Industries will essentially send people to work as regulators
| and represent the industries' interests while in their
| government posts. These people then return to industry to
| command much higher salaries. In this way, government service
| is a stepping stone to a better private sector job.
|
| But it would be hard to shut this down because regulatory
| bodies need industry insiders working for them. You don't want
| the agencies to be composed of people who couldn't hack it in
| the private sector.
|
| This is one of the reasons I am skeptical when people
| reflexively suggest more government regulation as the solution
| to all problems.
| smolder wrote:
| > But it would be hard to shut this down because regulatory
| bodies need industry insiders working for them. You don't
| want the agencies to be composed of people who couldn't hack
| it in the private sector.
|
| I think this problem (the need for industry players in
| regulatory bodies) is overstated by many. In particular, you
| don't need them in leadership roles, they can just consult.
| We could also write a law to close the door on their return
| to an industry after working as a regulator, but we don't. My
| conclusion is that the corrupt practices continue mainly
| because the corrupt people want them to.
| autoexec wrote:
| I'll agree that there are some cases where it'd be useful to
| have someone with familiarity with the industries they
| regulate on staff.
|
| This case in particular is one where in-depth insider
| knowledge or decades of industry experience shouldn't be an
| issue since setting "safe" levels of poison is entirely about
| the negative health impacts of heavy metals on the consumer
| and the specific means for reducing the levels of those
| poisons in the products themselves can be left entirely to
| the "experts" at the chocolate factory/cocoa farm. Regulators
| can just set a level deemed "safe" and it falls on the
| corporations to either offer a safe product or, if they are
| unable or unwilling to meet the standard, find a new way to
| make money that doesn't involve the mass poisoning of the
| American public.
|
| We could bring just about any random person in off the street
| and have them consult with medical experts to develop the
| standards. In fact, the farther away from the food industry
| that person is the better.
|
| I'd argue that the more a regulatory agency is focused on the
| health and safety of the consumer, the less important it is
| for the regulators to be intimately familiar with the
| industry being regulated. At least, when we're already aware
| of the health problems and know what to test for. Industry
| insiders may be able to help identify products or chemicals
| in cases where companies know they are selling dangerous
| products and are hiding that information from the public, but
| it seems that someone with close ties to the industry
| wouldn't be very likely to act as a whistleblower in those
| cases anyway.
| 01100011 wrote:
| As someone who regularly consumes large amounts of dark chocolate
| and has for decades, is there anything I can do to reduce the
| accumulated heavy metals, short of injecting chelating
| agents(assuming that would even work)? And I'm not suggesting
| chelation therapy, just mentioning it because I have heard it is
| the usual treatment for _acute_ metal poisoning.
| Solvency wrote:
| Literally by donating blood. That's the most effective way to
| gradually clear heavy metals.
|
| But they're also stored in your fat tissue. When you burn fat
| you temporarily leak those metals back into your bloodstream.
| 01100011 wrote:
| I can only find references to blood donation lowering PFAS
| levels, not heavy metals, but it does make some sense.
| downrightmike wrote:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6523211/
| perihelions wrote:
| For convenience, here's the primary source at the end of the
| chain of links (at depth=5):
|
| _" Expert Investigation Related to Cocoa and Chocolate Products:
| Final Report"_
|
| https://static1.squarespace.com/static/59a706d4f5e2319b70240...
| (pdf, 381pp)
| eh_why_not wrote:
| The file is from March 2022, and the article October 2023.
| Curious why it would take 1.5 years to go from investigation to
| report.
| goodmachine wrote:
| Mmm... cadmium
| demondemidi wrote:
| Similar problems with protein powder:
|
| https://www.consumerreports.org/dietary-supplements/heavy-me...
| GalaxyNova wrote:
| how fucked are we?
| dang wrote:
| Related. Others?
|
| _Do I need to avoid dark chocolate now?_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35216973 - March 2023 (62
| comments)
|
| _Hershey sued over chocolate containing heavy metals_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34179115 - Dec 2022 (9
| comments)
|
| _Lead and Cadmium Could Be in Your Dark Chocolate_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34016384 - Dec 2022 (11
| comments)
|
| _Research reveals ways lead and cadmium in chocolate may be
| reduced_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34014515 - Dec
| 2022 (82 comments)
|
| _Consumer Group's Test Finds Lead, Cadmium in Some Chocolate
| Treats_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11359270 - March
| 2016 (1 comment)
| Solvency wrote:
| I love how Hu Chocolate is one of the worst offenders while Whole
| Foods and Erewhorn peddle it as the healthiest chocolate.
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