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Do I need to avoid dark chocolate now?
- mfgs 4y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20230319090005/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/09/well/eat/dark-chocolate-metal-lead.html https://web.archive.org/web/20230319090005/https://www.nytim...
- Xaiph_Rahci 4y agoThank you.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- doublerabbit 4y agotl;dr: concentrations of cadmium and lead in dark chocolate, so no you don't need to avoid dark chocolate. Eat it in moderation.
- Mordisquitos 4y agoAnother manifestation of Betteridge's law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines
- WastingMyTime89 4y agoNo, this is not an article. This is from the “ask column” and is a genuine question from someone eating dark chocolate every day including when she was pregnant and then breastfeeding. The answer given is actually yes, probably, you should if you are pregnant or breastfeeding and limiting consumption the rest of the time would be wise.
- prmoustache 4y agoI am pretty sure that if you were to follow all these kinds of headlines, you wouldn't be able to eat anything while being pregnant. Like even organic vegetables are often contamined or not sold for what they really are.
- WinstonSmith84 4y agoNot sure why it's downvoted, but that's written in the article: > A general rule of thumb is to consume no more than an ounce per day, Dr. Melough said. Eating more than that raises concerns not only about heavy metals, but also about high levels of saturated fat, she added. Regardless of the (too high amount of cadmium and lead), one shall not eat more than 1 ounce (30 grams) a day.
- kwhitefoot 4y agoAn ounce a day would be 10 kg per year, that's an awful lot of dark chocolate! According to Statista the average per capita consumption of chocolate confectionery in the US is about 9 kg so most people are well below the danger levels.
- sneak 4y agoDisappointing that the NYT didn't actually buy some bars and have them tested, and report real numbers from the wild. The quality of reporting on non-headline stuff in the NYT seems to be falling as of late. This article doesn't really tell me anything.
- sschueller 4y agoHere are the tests consumer reports did a while back: https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/lead-and-cadmium-in-dark-chocolate-a8480295550/ https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/lead-and-...
- pakitan 4y agoYeah, that is cited in the article along with https://www.asyousow.org/environmental-health/toxic-enforcement/toxic-chocolate#chocolate-tables https://www.asyousow.org/environmental-health/toxic-enforcem...
- markdown 4y agoConsumer Reports is just blogspam now. If you read anything they write about a topic you're expert in, you realise how much bullshit they spew. It's all just garbage to slap ads around.
- nicbou 4y ago> It's all just garbage to slap ads around. The whole internet feels like that nowadays.
- celtain 4y agoI didn't see any ads on their chocolate article, and according to wikipedia they don't accept any advertising.
- markdown 4y agoThey sell the articles to other parties, so the more they churn out, the better. It's a content mill. Below is an example of a factually incorrect article that they sold to the Washington Post: https://www.consumerreports.org/health/supplements/supplements-to-always-avoid-a1185290021/ https://www.consumerreports.org/health/supplements/supplemen... https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/02/06/kava-lobelia-supplements-to-avoid/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/02/06/kava-lobe...
- refactor_master 4y agoIt’s interesting how these things can be “healthy” and “unsafe” at the same time. Or maybe it’s because some of these health effects are often quite far-fetched (“may improve X”, “contains compounds which has, in other contexts, been known to be important for Y” whereas e.g. lead is very strongly correlated with negative effects. Makes me wonder on an “absolute scale” what we’re really talking about here: “-100 for heavy metals, +5 for polyphenols”. If that’s the case, some things are clearly very bad, even if evil white bread comes in at -80.
- novaRom 4y agoEverything is "healthy" and "unhealthy" depending on its amount. Good example is table salt. Too little and it feels unsatisfied, too much and it will poison you.
- sambapa 4y agoI think that the only things that are unhealthy in a "discrete" way are prions. Only one is enough to fuck you up.
- paulryanrogers 4y agoPlenty of toxins are only harmful to humans, in any amount.
- jasfi 4y agoDark chocolate would be healthy if weren't for the unsafe contaminates that show up in testing.
- greymalik 4y agoThe dose makes the poison.
- hexo 4y agoNO! With lead, there is no safe amount.
- eurleif 4y agohttps://www.jefftk.com/p/lead-in-chocolate https://www.jefftk.com/p/lead-in-chocolate
- prmoustache 4y agoThe main issue here is how we pretend to recycle batteries and electronic components while what we really do is dumping them to African countries such as Ivory Coast, Ghana which are the very same countries that produce the highest amount of Cacao. Stop buying new electronic stuff / computer / gadgets / appliances every other years guys. This whole scheme of growth and making and buying new things while we still have no decent way to recycle or stop contaminating is out of hands.
- BiteCode_dev 4y ago> Stop buying new electronic stuff / computer / gadgets / appliances every other years guys And when you do, buy it second hand. backmarket.com is really good for this.
- xtiansimon 4y agoHow is backmarket.com better or different from eBay?
- BiteCode_dev 4y agoThere is a huge banner on backmarket's home page that explains exactly that. Which tells me you have made the level zero of effort to get an answer to your question, and instead expected me to provide said effort.
- xtiansimon 4y agoSorry if you feel my response was a _request to you personally_. Just a friendly question in an open forum. As such, you can choose how to respond—with opinion, anecdotes, rumor, or, insults—doesn’t hurt my feelings one way or other.
- smegsicle 4y agoall ive heard about backmarket.com is that it has a big stupid banner i think im going to avoid it
- bell-cot 4y agoAdmitting that the article is a "What should I do?" personal health advice column - it still struck me that the contamination has been well-known for decades, yet there is no hint at either the chocolate companies or regulators caring enough to even consider doing anything. (I don't count empty-platitude press releases from the former as "doing anything".) Idea: The FDA equips a few inspectors with good XRF (XRay Fluorescence) testers, and plays a "let's drive the most-contaminated ~3% of the products out of the U.S. market" game.
- Weneedlead 4y agoThe levels have been recently lowered, IIRC.
- kzrdude 4y agoWhy would dark chocolate be worse than any other chocoloate (apart from concentration). If it's truly worse even per piece of cocoa, is it about the cocoa butter?
- hannob 4y agoJust a matter of concentration. 80% of 100g is more than 40% of 100g. It's that simple.
- kzrdude 4y agoHow do we know that? I'd ask both us and NYT to be scientific about it. Cargo culting science: "We tested dark chocolate and it was bad" => avoid dark chocolate and no further conclusions. (Media is full of this pattern.) More rational investigation: "We tested dark chocolate and it was bad" => Find the problematic ingredient => What are the other places we use this ingredient?
- adave 4y agoRead reports and don't expect media to throw numbers and mathematical proofs. They are a business and have to cater to general public who don't really understand or care.
- kzrdude 4y agoGreat media stories bring the reports to a scientist in the field and have them contextualise it. In fact neither the journalist or the laypeople (us here) can do better than that by themselves, in general. But yes, stories are mass produced and nobody has the time for that.
- gnicholas 4y agoThe metals come from the cacao, and milk chocolate has much less cacao by volume, because it is diluted by lots of milk solids and sugar. Unless there are also surprising amounts of metal in milk/sugar, why would they need to be more rigorous about investigating milk chocolate?
- LightBug1 4y agoHomer Simpson suggestion: what if we put massive magnets in the production process?
- dTal 4y agoThat is in fact quite common in food production, but all it accomplishes is removing metal filings from processing machinery. It can't remove molecular metal contamination from the food itself. Also, lead isn't ferrous.
- LightBug1 4y agoThanks! Was hoping someone would break that down.
- adhesive_wombat 4y agoIt's also related to food industries using blue sticking plasters: they are made so that they will set off the same metal detectors that are looking for bits of broken machinery.
- andromaton 4y agoOr ferromagnetic
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- zkirill 4y agoI'm surprised that raw ingredient sourcing wasn't mentioned or maybe it was but I missed it. To me, reducing your intake doesn't make as much sense as paying for traceability and certification.
- gnicholas 4y agoThis article doesn’t mention that the levels are well above the CA legal limits, or whether those limits are useful/relevant. It also doesn’t explain if the body ever purges these metals, or how the contamination occurs (IIRC, the lead is suspected to be deposited on drying beans that are roadside, and the cadmium is from the soil.) Are there any more comprehensive articles? I don’t find the recommendation here to be especially convincing or well-researched.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]