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A consumer report not too long ago found cadmium at unsafe levels in many dark chocolate brands: https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/lead-and-cad

A consumer report not too long ago found cadmium at unsafe levels in many dark chocolate brands: https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/lead-and-cadmium-in-dark-chocolate-a8480295550/ https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/lead-and-... The cacao was contaminated with cadmium from the soil during harvest.

Bluestein 2y ago
> found cadmium at unsafe levels in many dark chocolate brands: That's just bonkers.- PS. Lead too, apparently ...
- MattGaiser 2y ago
  Chocolate production is a mess of child labour, toxins, violence, and poverty.
  - lazide 2y ago
    No wonder it’s so tasty.
  - Bluestein 2y ago
    > child labour, toxins, violence, and poverty That does sound like a mess. I wonder if so called "fair trade" production is, in effect, helping much ...
    - lostlogin 2y ago
      Trade Aid chocolate claims to be better. And it delicious. https://www.tradeaid.org.nz/about-us/trade-aid-chocolate/ https://www.tradeaid.org.nz/about-us/trade-aid-chocolate/
      - Bluestein 2y ago
        Always a plus :)
  - hansvm 2y ago
    And I thought I was just allergic. Maybe it's heavy metals and a few biohazards.
    - Bluestein 2y ago
      Seriously, a lot of our developed alergies could just be perfectly natural reactions to the amount of chemicals and other garbage ... everywhere, these days.-
    - eichin 2y ago
      A friend with an unreliable chocolate allergy turned out to have a soy allergy that the soy lecithin triggered (you can find alternatives with sunflower lecithin instead.) Once they figured that out, as far as they were concerned soy was a biohazard :-)
      - hansvm 2y ago
        That's interesting. I know I'm fine with soy sauce and tofu. I'll bring it up the next time I'm at the doctor and see what the culprit is.
  - numpad0 2y ago
    While that's despicable, likely biased researches aren't the right way to fix that. Same apply for alleged high arsenic content in rice and seaweed, high mercury content in fish, etc.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
perihelions 2y ago
Discussed on HN here (and a few other threads if one's motivated to search): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38038465 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38038465 ("A third of chocolate products are high in heavy metals (consumerreports.org)"; 201 comments)
duffpkg 2y ago
In short the article and conclusions are a total mess and made a nice attention grabbing headline with little to no substance. As someone that has built and managed clinical laboratories for human samples, I find this article from consumer reports extremely misleading. The describe results as a percentage of a theoretically acceptable level. For example, for cadmium, they are saying an acceptable level is 4.1 ug/day . Then they seem to imply that "TJ The Dark Chocolate Lover's Chocolate 85% Cacao" has 229% of the 4.1ug/day if a consumer ate a 30g piece. They never actually spell out what they mean or what the actual results they found were, or what the limit of detection of the methodology was or the error range of their tests. I guess they are saying that that chocolate has 9.3ug of cadmium in a 30g sample but it's impossible to say from what they wrote. The FDA states that the maximum daily consumption of cadmium should be limited to 0.21-0.36ug per kg of body mass. For an avg american male that would mean a threshold of 17.64-30.24ug/day. A typical salad containing 250g of romaine lettuce has 2-14ug of cadmium in it. Lettuce and cereal grains are the most common sources of cadmium in american diets. The amounts we are talking about are extraordinarily small and difficult to measure. We are talking 5-100 quadrillion individual atoms of cadmium. https://article.images.consumerreports.org/image/upload/v1672933163/prod/content/dam/CRO-Images-2022/Special%20Projects/Consumer_Reports_Test_Methodology_for_Heavy_Metals_in_Chocolate_Bars_-_January_2023.pdf https://article.images.consumerreports.org/image/upload/v167... https://www.fda.gov/food/environmental-contaminants-food/cadmium-food-and-foodwares#:~:text=For%20the%20IRL%20for%20cadmium,kilogram%20body%20weight%20per%20day https://www.fda.gov/food/environmental-contaminants-food/cad....
- Bluestein 2y ago
  > Lettuce and cereal grains are the most common sources of cadmium in american diets. Lettuce has cadmium. TIL.- > threshold of 17.64-30.24ug/day. So; it I am not mistaken; by these measurements the amount claimed to be contained in the article, for chocolate; would be within bounds ... (It's just you then could not go ahead and have a salad :)
  - bobthepanda 2y ago
    Plants take up things in the soil. That tends to also extend to heavy metals and the like. It would be really hard to find totally pristine land for a range of crops. Some of the contamination is naturally occurring.
fortran77 2y ago
Maybe it's the "Cad" in Cadburry?!
- Bluestein 2y ago
  I for one like your pun.- PS. Regarding your username, fan of Fortran 75 meself :)
- lostlogin 2y ago
  I know it varies region to region, but here in New Zealand, Cadbury is probably the worst chocolate you can buy.
  - EdwardDiego 2y ago
    Not sure if it's the cadmium or palm oil tbh. (Private equity ruins everything) I'm just hoping that the W in Whittakers doesn't stand for tungsten.
  - DaoVeles 2y ago
    Thats because us Aussies make it. We are not great at chocolate and Im sorry we export that weird sweet wax your way. Whittakers is better by a long shot.
  - gambiting 2y ago
    Tbf, as an immigrant to the UK - I find the same here. Cadbury chocolate is just awful. I'd honestly rather have Aldi chocolate than Cadbury, it's second only to American chocolate in terms of how bad it is.
nielsbot 2y ago
Although, I note (FTA): "Fortunately, cadmium is not well absorbed from the gut," So maybe there's hope...
lr4444lr 2y ago
Flaxseeds as well. ConsumerLabs carefully documents the cadmium concentration of common brands[0], and many are unsafe. Flax is such an efficient bio-concentrator of cadmium in fact, that a municipality in PA considered sowing a field of it to remediate a polluted former industrial site. (No clue how they would have harvested and disposed of the tainted flax.) [0] https://www.consumerlab.com/reviews/flaxseed-whole-ground-and-milled/flaxseed-food/?search=flaxseed%20cadmium https://www.consumerlab.com/reviews/flaxseed-whole-ground-an... (may require membership to read).
- lazide 2y ago
  Probably burned it - hence releasing it all into the air. But hey, out of sight, out of mind?
- magicalhippo 2y ago
  > No clue how they would have harvested and disposed of the tainted flax. Sounds like a good basis for a NileRed[1] episode, say making paint[2] from flax seeds. [1]: https://nile.red/ https://nile.red/ [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_pigments#Cadmium_red https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_pigments#Cadmium_red
- stephen_g 2y ago
  They could potentially do pyrolysis of the biomass (after harvest) and then extract the heavy metals from the resulting char. e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0961953402000740 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09619... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921344917303178 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09213...
- bregma 2y ago
  > No clue how they would have harvested and disposed of the tainted flax. It's flax. Harvest it before it goes to seed, ret it, break it, scutch it, spin it, weave it, make it into expensive garments. Unless you eat your shirt it's going to be perfectly safe.
  - 2y ago

Bluestein 2y ago

> found cadmium at unsafe levels in many dark chocolate brands: That's just bonkers.- PS. Lead too, apparently ...

MattGaiser 2y ago
Chocolate production is a mess of child labour, toxins, violence, and poverty.
- lazide 2y ago
  No wonder it’s so tasty.
- Bluestein 2y ago
  > child labour, toxins, violence, and poverty That does sound like a mess. I wonder if so called "fair trade" production is, in effect, helping much ...
  - lostlogin 2y ago
    Trade Aid chocolate claims to be better. And it delicious. https://www.tradeaid.org.nz/about-us/trade-aid-chocolate/ https://www.tradeaid.org.nz/about-us/trade-aid-chocolate/
    - Bluestein 2y ago
      Always a plus :)
- hansvm 2y ago
  And I thought I was just allergic. Maybe it's heavy metals and a few biohazards.
  - Bluestein 2y ago
    Seriously, a lot of our developed alergies could just be perfectly natural reactions to the amount of chemicals and other garbage ... everywhere, these days.-
  - eichin 2y ago
    A friend with an unreliable chocolate allergy turned out to have a soy allergy that the soy lecithin triggered (you can find alternatives with sunflower lecithin instead.) Once they figured that out, as far as they were concerned soy was a biohazard :-)
    - hansvm 2y ago
      That's interesting. I know I'm fine with soy sauce and tofu. I'll bring it up the next time I'm at the doctor and see what the culprit is.
- numpad0 2y ago
  While that's despicable, likely biased researches aren't the right way to fix that. Same apply for alleged high arsenic content in rice and seaweed, high mercury content in fish, etc.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

perihelions 2y ago

Discussed on HN here (and a few other threads if one's motivated to search): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38038465 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38038465 ("A third of chocolate products are high in heavy metals (consumerreports.org)"; 201 comments)

duffpkg 2y ago

In short the article and conclusions are a total mess and made a nice attention grabbing headline with little to no substance. As someone that has built and managed clinical laboratories for human samples, I find this article from consumer reports extremely misleading. The describe results as a percentage of a theoretically acceptable level. For example, for cadmium, they are saying an acceptable level is 4.1 ug/day . Then they seem to imply that "TJ The Dark Chocolate Lover's Chocolate 85% Cacao" has 229% of the 4.1ug/day if a consumer ate a 30g piece. They never actually spell out what they mean or what the actual results they found were, or what the limit of detection of the methodology was or the error range of their tests. I guess they are saying that that chocolate has 9.3ug of cadmium in a 30g sample but it's impossible to say from what they wrote. The FDA states that the maximum daily consumption of cadmium should be limited to 0.21-0.36ug per kg of body mass. For an avg american male that would mean a threshold of 17.64-30.24ug/day. A typical salad containing 250g of romaine lettuce has 2-14ug of cadmium in it. Lettuce and cereal grains are the most common sources of cadmium in american diets. The amounts we are talking about are extraordinarily small and difficult to measure. We are talking 5-100 quadrillion individual atoms of cadmium. https://article.images.consumerreports.org/image/upload/v1672933163/prod/content/dam/CRO-Images-2022/Special%20Projects/Consumer_Reports_Test_Methodology_for_Heavy_Metals_in_Chocolate_Bars_-_January_2023.pdf https://article.images.consumerreports.org/image/upload/v167... https://www.fda.gov/food/environmental-contaminants-food/cadmium-food-and-foodwares#:~:text=For%20the%20IRL%20for%20cadmium,kilogram%20body%20weight%20per%20day https://www.fda.gov/food/environmental-contaminants-food/cad....

Bluestein 2y ago
> Lettuce and cereal grains are the most common sources of cadmium in american diets. Lettuce has cadmium. TIL.- > threshold of 17.64-30.24ug/day. So; it I am not mistaken; by these measurements the amount claimed to be contained in the article, for chocolate; would be within bounds ... (It's just you then could not go ahead and have a salad :)
- bobthepanda 2y ago
  Plants take up things in the soil. That tends to also extend to heavy metals and the like. It would be really hard to find totally pristine land for a range of crops. Some of the contamination is naturally occurring.

fortran77 2y ago

Maybe it's the "Cad" in Cadburry?!

Bluestein 2y ago
I for one like your pun.- PS. Regarding your username, fan of Fortran 75 meself :)
lostlogin 2y ago
I know it varies region to region, but here in New Zealand, Cadbury is probably the worst chocolate you can buy.
- EdwardDiego 2y ago
  Not sure if it's the cadmium or palm oil tbh. (Private equity ruins everything) I'm just hoping that the W in Whittakers doesn't stand for tungsten.
- DaoVeles 2y ago
  Thats because us Aussies make it. We are not great at chocolate and Im sorry we export that weird sweet wax your way. Whittakers is better by a long shot.
- gambiting 2y ago
  Tbf, as an immigrant to the UK - I find the same here. Cadbury chocolate is just awful. I'd honestly rather have Aldi chocolate than Cadbury, it's second only to American chocolate in terms of how bad it is.

nielsbot 2y ago

Although, I note (FTA): "Fortunately, cadmium is not well absorbed from the gut," So maybe there's hope...

lr4444lr 2y ago

Flaxseeds as well. ConsumerLabs carefully documents the cadmium concentration of common brands[0], and many are unsafe. Flax is such an efficient bio-concentrator of cadmium in fact, that a municipality in PA considered sowing a field of it to remediate a polluted former industrial site. (No clue how they would have harvested and disposed of the tainted flax.) [0] https://www.consumerlab.com/reviews/flaxseed-whole-ground-and-milled/flaxseed-food/?search=flaxseed%20cadmium https://www.consumerlab.com/reviews/flaxseed-whole-ground-an... (may require membership to read).

lazide 2y ago
Probably burned it - hence releasing it all into the air. But hey, out of sight, out of mind?
magicalhippo 2y ago
> No clue how they would have harvested and disposed of the tainted flax. Sounds like a good basis for a NileRed[1] episode, say making paint[2] from flax seeds. [1]: https://nile.red/ https://nile.red/ [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_pigments#Cadmium_red https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_pigments#Cadmium_red
stephen_g 2y ago
They could potentially do pyrolysis of the biomass (after harvest) and then extract the heavy metals from the resulting char. e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0961953402000740 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09619... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921344917303178 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09213...
bregma 2y ago
> No clue how they would have harvested and disposed of the tainted flax. It's flax. Harvest it before it goes to seed, ret it, break it, scutch it, spin it, weave it, make it into expensive garments. Unless you eat your shirt it's going to be perfectly safe.
- 2y ago