And one day you'll care how other people feel inside

[sovay]

I suppose I got about an hour this evening between receiving the all-clear from my new neurologist on the consumption of chocolate and discovering the recent report on lead and cadmium in dark chocolate, which was extremely upsetting. I had spent part of this weekend with my mother rolling our traditional fudge for Christmas. I was able to reassure her that the baker's chocolate she uses for the recipe rated safely in the expert study, but I continue to feel that chocolate is not supposed to contain heavy metals. It's difficult enough when it's full of shredded coconut or nuts. Actually it upsets me viscerally when food is not safe, the way that feels like cheating or cruelty; it is one of the things that should not happen. It's being a rough week and nothing feels safe and you should be able to treat people without poisoning them.

Comments

[rushthatspeaks]

I realize anecdotes are not data, but I had multiple years of eating massive quantities of extremely dark chocolate for hormonal reasons-- at its worst five or six bars a day during my period, and just not eating other food-- including bars from the brands they find worst. I got my heavy metal levels tested back when I first got nastily anemic, as part of the diagnosis process, and I have no issues at all. I'm glad to be aware of the possibility, but I don't think you should let it keep you from having chocolate, especially in the quantities I've seen you have it.

That said, I'm sorry the news came right when you'd just been okayed for chocolate after a long while, which must have felt like a nasty rugpull. And I'm sorry the chocolate industry hasn't mentioned the problem more widely to people, especially since companies like Tazo have procedures to minimize it, which means that it's not that the industry just doesn't know.

[asakiyume]

Another reason to love Tazo, which I do.

[sovay]

I got my heavy metal levels tested back when I first got nastily anemic, as part of the diagnosis process, and I have no issues at all. I'm glad to be aware of the possibility, but I don't think you should let it keep you from having chocolate, especially in the quantities I've seen you have it.

I appreciate the anecdata. I am also very glad to hear that you have no heavy metal issues. It's the sort of thing I worry about generally just because we all lived through the era of leaded gasoline and sign agreements when we move that we can't prove anything about the walls.

That said, I'm sorry the news came right when you'd just been okayed for chocolate after a long while, which must have felt like a nasty rugpull.

Thank you, love. I was in fact explicitly looking forward to eating some of the fudge I had rolled, which I have not been able to do for the last three sets of holidays, and then like four different people I know linked the consumer report and it just felt like more evidence of the futility of the world. I might well have been a lot less upset had it been a fact about chocolate that I had known since 2014 when it looks as though the first studies were done on this issue in Brazil and the EU made plans to regulate it; I have known about mercury in fish since childhood. Being told that mitigation strategies already exist, even if not as effective as ideal, is better than being made to feel that nobody cares so long as the stuff sells.