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

[aurumcalendula]

Ugh. I'd missed seeing that - thank you for posting about it.

*hugs*

[kathmandu]

Indeed it is one of the things that should not happen; that's why we have an FDA. My condolences on the turn it gave you.

I'm glad too, to see that Baker's chocolate tested well.

[castiron]

Sigh, while I needed incentive to stop eating so much of one of my favorites, finding it in the red zone for lead is a depressing way to do it.

[selkie]

It is a sunny spot to know that the Extremely Fudgy Fudge still exists in the world, but oh my God, there’s no need to carpetbomb every little thing back to the 1920s, guys.

[gwynnega]

That is very disturbing.

[thistleingrey]

That's a useful link, unfortunately. Mostly I eat a type that isn't amongst their tested products, which ... doesn't actually help because now I'm curious. :)

[goss]

Thank you for sharing this article!

I had no idea cadmium levels in cocoa could originate from the soil itself. Or that high levels of heavy metals were even found in popular brands. O_O

Will pass the article on and discuss with my relatives who grow their own cocoa and make artisan chocolates.

[phi]

If it helps any, that study used the California Prop 65 limits for determining a safe threshold. Prop 65 is problematic for many reasons, but take lead as an example. The lead limit is 0.5 micrograms/day according to CA. As a comparison, the federal EPA standard for drinking water is 15 parts per billion (or 15 micrograms per liter). In Cambridge our water leaves the reservoirs at 5 ppb (5 micrograms/liter) and could potentially pick up more lead depending on the type of pipes and solder joints it passes through in the way to the tap. That's more than 18 times the prop 65 limit if you drink the recommended 8 glasses of water a day. And yet, my child who guzzles tap water all day (I don't know how much exactly, I don't meter it, but definitely somewhere less the adult recommendation of 64 ozs and more than the 4oz he'd be capped at if we followed the CA guidelines), has never had detectable amounts of lead show up in any of his annual lead screening tests.

In other words, that article was the kind of scaremongery clickbait that I am determined is its own form of terrorism, to keep the populace so frightened and broken down by all the everything that we have no spoons left for collective action on things we _can_ fix.

[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.

[umadoshi]

This isn't even the first thing to make me despair about the world today, and yet. *gestures weakly* Why. WTF, world.

[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.

[minoanmiss]

Thank you so much for this information and I totally hear you on the betrayal when sustenance is suspect.

[cafenowhere]

I had not heard this news, which I agree is quite distressing. But it will help me to be mindful of how much chocolate I consume over the holidays--I should limit my intake anyway, for other health reasons. Thanks for posting about it.

[choco_frosh]

< hugs >

[nineweaving]

What a betrayal! I do hope that you will allow yourself a morsel of fudge made with untainted chocolate.

*hugs*

Nine

[rosefox]

Thanks for the link. I've accepted a certain amount of risk around this; I haven't stopped eating rice, dried oregano, or dried thyme, or feeding them to my kid, whose annual lead tests have never turned up anything concerning. But it's tiring to have to think about it.

[caszabrewin]

This is why knowing my food has become such an important part of my life. Big hugs.