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

[asakiyume]

Wow, that's absolutely fascinating about the lead and cadmium in chocolate. So often I think of contamination as happening later in the game--and yet with cadmium, it happens while the plant is growing (the lead is more like what I usually think of as contamination--picking up contaminants after harvesting or during processing).

I was curious about cacao's absorption of cadmium from the soil. Apparently this is a problem for other food plants, too: you can have land that's technically not contaminated by cadmium, but certain plants will still pull enough cadmium out of it to end up cadmium heavy--durum wheat, flax, sunflowers, and potatoes, for example (source). Continuing to geek out, I found that some plants are hyperconcentrators of cadmium--so theoretically you could use them to clean out the cadmium (can't find the article I initially saw on this, but here's one. Arundo donax is apparently a giant reed). I also found out that some tropical soils--Caribbean and South American--are "young" soils and therefore (don't understand the "therefore"-ness of it, but okay) have more cadmium. "Old" soils, such as you get in West Africa, have less cadmium (source). (Here I'm talking about naturally occurring cadmium, not about contamination with cadmium, which of course also happens.

But all that geeking is pretty heartless in the face of what you're saying, and you're right: we should be able to treat people without poisoning them. Our small pleasures should not create harm. I hope, now that you do have the all-clear, that you will enjoy some of the not-as-dangerous chocolate mentioned in the article.

[sovay]

But all that geeking is pretty heartless in the face of what you're saying, and you're right: we should be able to treat people without poisoning them.

It's not heartless: my first thought when I read about the absorption of cadmium by cacao was that I am familiar with this mechanism in arsenic, whence being careful that your rice hasn't soaked it up. If you don't know information, it can still be interesting even if it's upsetting. I like the idea of plants that are cadmium extractors. If the reeds will grow in the same soils as cacao trees, I like to think someone is already looking into the possibilities.

I don't like that I found out in this red-alert fashion rather than discovering years ago that heavy metals were a known issue in chocolate production. I wouldn't have liked the news then, but it wouldn't have felt like something that flew under the radar for years or was withheld.

Our small pleasures should not create harm. I hope, now that you do have the all-clear, that you will enjoy some of the not-as-dangerous chocolate mentioned in the article.

Thank you. phi's numbers check also helps.