4 ms·
There’s also a big difference between ethically sourced, tester boutique chocolate and Hersheys/Cadburys type swill that isn’t fit for the name.
by TylerE 3y ago
There’s also a big difference between ethically sourced, tester boutique chocolate and Hersheys/Cadburys type swill that isn’t fit for the name.
- gruez 3y agoWhat does ethical sourcing have to do with heavy metal poisoning?
- totetsu 3y agoThis is just conjecture but, some of the other comments here have said that the lead contamination come from environmental contamination during the harvesting and fermenting process. If non-ethically sourced cocoa is coming from farmers earning below poverty level incomes for their crops, they may not have the ability or incentive to avoid this contamination.
- richbell 3y agoI've heard that mass-produced chocolate tends to source cocoa from the Ivory Coast, which has an alarming amount of heavy metals in their soil. This is just hearsay though, I don't have any specific sources that compare between Africa and South America. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Sediment-trace-metal-contamination-in-the-Ivory-Kouadio-Trefry/aa23711196bb9efc427020dbb244f909365a9216 https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Sediment-trace-metal-c...
- defrost 3y ago> I don't have any specific sources that compare between Africa and South America. I do, but they'll kill me (figuratively) if I publish them. Which highlights the issue of dark | private data. There's the public USGS National Geochemical Database: Soil for central north america: https://mrdata.usgs.gov/ngdb/soil/ https://mrdata.usgs.gov/ngdb/soil/ There's a Geochemical Atlas of Europe: http://weppi.gtk.fi/publ/foregsatlas/ http://weppi.gtk.fi/publ/foregsatlas/ and a "work in progress" Global Geochemical Baselines database under development that will reference the available glonal surveys in the public domain, buuuut ... If you want solid usable data from across the globe you probably want to access the pooled transnational mega mining companies database of surface geochemical results, back in 2008 the <redacted> companies portion was some 16 TB of raw sample results from every conutry and territories across the globe. Not complete of course, but once you mosaic that with other collections of a similar size .. that's something pretty neat.
- happytiger 3y agoI should have known, but didn’t, that international soil databases of this size existed in private hands. I’ve only seen the USDA surveys. Kind of mind blowing.
- gnicholas 3y agofrom TFA: > High cadmium levels are almost exclusively found in cacao beans grown in South America, with beans grown in West Africa showing little contamination.
- richbell 3y agoYes, the cadmium is from volcanic soil. That's not the only heavy metal.
- ericmcer 3y agoHersheys actually has very few heavy metals. They come from cacao so cheap milk chocolate has far fewer than boutique dark ones.
- ars 3y agoYes, there's a big difference. The "ethically sourced, tester boutique chocolate" is likely to have higher levels of heavy metals. The larger companies are better able to setup processes to avoid the metals - go look at the original data and see.
- richbell 3y agoI don't know if that's necessarily the whole story. Boutique chocolates tend to contain more cocoa solids and cocoa butter. Larger companies tend not to use as much and instead have fillers like palm oil. It's then no surprise that a boutique dark chocolate might have more contaminants than mass-produced milk or dark chocolate.
- ars 3y agoSo then compare to the mass produced dark chocolate that doesn't have filers. There's tons of it, just plain dark chocolate chips. (As opposed to a candy bar.)