Research reveals ways lead and cadmium in chocolate may be reduced

https://candyusa.com/news/research-reveals-ways-lead-and-cadmium-in-chocolate-may-be-reduced/

by maerF0x0 • 4 years ago

121 82 4 years ago

candyusa.com

maerF0x0• 4 years ago

Via news article : https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dark-chocolate-metals-lead-cons...

jeffbee• 4 years ago

We must go deeper: https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/lead-and-...

This source article contains the key information that the heavy metals are not contaminants introduced by the processors, they are present in the beans.

kristopolous• 4 years ago

That's what I was expecting.

Calling out for botanists to weigh in here - is there something that makes chocolate uniquely susceptible to this and if so, is it part of a class of other plants we typically eat? And lastly, this is for food chemists, is there a reliable way to remove such things in the manufacturing that can be added?

jt2190• 4 years ago

metals are not contaminants introduced by the processors, they are present in the beans.

That’s true of the cadmium, but not the lead:

… [L]ead seems to get into cacao after beans are harvested. The researchers found that the metal was typically on the outer shell of the cocoa bean, not in the bean itself. Moreover, lead levels were low soon after beans were picked and removed from pods but increased as beans dried in the sun for days. During that time, lead-filled dust and dirt accumulated on the beans. “We collected beans on the ground that were heavily loaded with lead on the outer shell,” DiBartolomeis says.

Semaphor3• 4 years ago

Link for Europeans: https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.consumerreports.or...

mistersquid• 4 years ago

The referenced study treats dark chocolate but, since cacao is cacao, wouldn't milk chocolate confected from these beans also have commensurately elevated levels of cadmium and lead?

And, if so, shouldn't this extrapolation be communicated to consumers?

Reason0772• 4 years ago

Milk chocolate contains significantly less cacao than dark chocolate. Typically 20-25% cocoa solids, where as dark chocolate is in the 50-90% range. So it should have proportionately less cadmium etc per unit of weight.

hgomersall2• 4 years ago

Interesting that two different Lindt bars fall into different categories. Do they really use different beans for those? It feels like a sampling effect.

mjh2539• 4 years ago

Right, I get the impression that their sample sizes were very small.

croisillon• 4 years ago

Cad(mium )buri(ed in it)

passwordoops3• 4 years ago

Looks like chocolate is a known source of heavy metals. Here's just one study I found in Google Scholar:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S08891...

davidmurdoch• 4 years ago

So the raw beans have heavy metals? Or does the processing introduce them?

passwordoops3• 4 years ago

From the OP article, some metals are exclusively from the beans (cadmium), others are introduced later (lead).

But yeah, every time you're eating plant material, there will be some trace level of heavy metal. And it just increases up the food chain.

Bioaccumulation is pretty cool as a phenomenon

dr_orpheus• 4 years ago

The article says that cadmium is in the beans (because it is in the soil). But lead is likely introduced in processing.

zzzeek3• 4 years ago

here's the actual brands and products:

https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/lead-and-...

or better:

https://www.asyousow.org/environmental-health/toxic-enforcem...

I go through the Equal Exchange 80% dark product about one bar every few weeks so I will be researching cadmium a bit

(later)

So after some research on cadmium and the specific data California has on it (https://oehha.ca.gov/proposition-65/chemicals/cadmium), I think my general take on the Equal Exchange chocolate I eat quite a lot of is that the saturated fat (15g) is still orders of magnitude more dangerous than the cadmium.

Interestingly, the product itself seems much less appealing to me knowing it has this trace level of cadmium that will likely not affect me in any way, vs. the saturated fat that I already knew contributes towards directly life-threatening LDL cholesterol.

UniverseHacker6• 4 years ago

Saturated fat increases LDL by increasing the particle size, whereas it seems to be increases in particle number that are associated with increased cardiovascular risk. This is likely why studies fail to find any real world increase in risk, and the saturated fat heart disease theory, while still under debate, is mostly out of favor nowadays.

Georgelemental2• 4 years ago

Yes, saturated fat is unjustly maligned. And from an evolutionary perspective, it doesn't make sense that it would be so harmful; pre-agricultural diets had lots of saturated fat so human metabolisms should have evolved to handle it well.

Rury• 4 years ago

I've heard that, for the most part, small dense LDL is what is mostly found in cardiovascular disease.

khiqxj4• 4 years ago

well chocolate is high in calories and much more so when you buy a product that adds a bunch of sugar. this is relevant because people who eat a lot of chocolate have bad health but still probably dont have any lead problems aside from subtle, low dose related ones, which will be hard to distinguish from having unhealthy calory intake

stjohnswarts4• 4 years ago

You might want to look up more recent research on saturated fat. there's still no doubt that hydrolyzed fats are horrible for you though.

zzzeek3• 4 years ago

my cholesterol goes up proportionally to saturated fat intake, the link between saturated fat and LDL cholesterol (and LDL cholesterol and heart disease) is quite clear despite a huge desire from the public for there to be other "studies" that somehow make it OK to down any amount of dairy. I spent many years hoping for such studies all the while my 300-level cholesterol was lining my arteries with plaque until I finally had to get on statins (not a vegan here).

tigerlily• 4 years ago

Great thanks for the link, I wonder if it would be possible to filter by provenance. I imagine some places produce cacao containing more Cd and Pb than other places?

ck2• 4 years ago

And that's in the food supply which is supposedly regulation and monitored (not).

You should see what they ALWAYS find in supplements which are not at all regulated and definitely not monitored no matter what anyone thinks or claims.

https://www.consumerreports.org/food-safety/your-herbs-and-s...

Those are spices but it's in every vitamin, mineral, etc. supplement you've ever taken. There are allowed limits but they blow right through them because there's no testing and no oversight and no penalty for doing so.

And yes lead is a forever chemical and yes it is making everyone stupid, this is well proven science beyond all argument, average IQ went way up when leaded car gas was finally banned but lead still sprayed everywhere around airports from aviation fuel.

Semaphor3• 4 years ago

Directly related and possibly of interest, the 381-page "As You Sow" report "Expert Investigation Related to Cocoa and Chocolate Products" [0] that "Details Simple, Safe, and Low-Cost Solutions to Reduce Levels of Lead and Cadmium in Chocolate" Requires an email address to download though.

[0] https://www.asyousow.org/blog/2022/8/17/new-report-explains-...

derbOac• 4 years ago

One thing that's apparent from that report is the year effect. Older, pre-2022 tests were much more likely to have very low levels of heavy metals; more recent, 2022 tests are more likely to have high levels. This is true within brand as well. At least it strongly looked that way with many of the brands I saw.

I don't know if that's due to testing effects, or agricultural or processing changes, or shifts in regional supply (maybe due to the pandemic?), or something else. But some of those results make it look like it's a relatively recent, and sharply growing problem.

cosmicradiance• 4 years ago

I am yet to discover anything healthy produced at large-scale by profit earning companies.

sphars• 4 years ago

Well shoot, now I'm concerned. Me and my pregnant wife both drink Crio Bru[1] which is roasted, ground 100% cacao and brewed similar to coffee. This has me thinking twice about it. It sounds like heavy metals may be present in this stuff too

[1] https://criobru.com/

Alex39172• 4 years ago

If you're brewing it in a drip coffee maker, the paper filter should filter out the majority of the lead.

daniel_reetz• 4 years ago

Paper coffee filters do not effectively remove lead. Distillation and reverse osmosis remove lead.

mint2• 4 years ago

That is incredibly wrong and dangerous advice. There were studies that showed coffee grounds could be used to filter substantial but not all lead, is that what you misremembered?

idiotsecant3• 4 years ago

You shouldn't say things confidently that you don't know anything about, someone might believe you.

ulnarkressty• 4 years ago

How could one test for heavy metals in foods at home? Supposedly Indian spices and other plant products coming from there contain non-trivial amounts of lead [0] [1].

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5415259/

[1] https://www.consumerlab.com/reviews/psyllium-supplements/psy...

version_five• 4 years ago

Many spices apparently have high levels of heavy metals, I don't know that it's specific to India. There was a study, I think maybe on HN, where they analyzed a bunch of grocery store spice brands and found heavy metals in many.

I know it's not helpful but i get the impression it's not something easy to analyze at home.

With all this stuff (mercury in salmon, toxins in liver, radioactive potassium in bananas), my take is that too much of anything is probably bad an everything is probably fine as part of a varied diet

valarauko• 4 years ago

At least with spices you also need very little, so exposure to heavy metal contaminants through that route would be relatively lower.

stevenwoo• 4 years ago

Consumer Reports did a widely reported survey last year but it was almost random which spice would be contaminated - one source of herb x would be fine but from a different source it was contaminated. https://www.consumerreports.org/food-safety/your-herbs-and-s... Spices that are colored (i.e. turmeric) are particularly vulnerable. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.est.9b00744

ekianjo• 4 years ago

First you need to burn the food product for a while to make sure that most of what is left is heavy metals in the ashes. (you typically need a flask for that, and an apparatus to get all the fumes from the burning process safely out).

then from the ashes you need to dissolve them in water (easier said that done), and use reagents based on the type of metal you want to detect from the sample (titration). If you measure accurately the volume of water used to dissolve and the amount of ashes coming from the food product, you can determine a concentration for a specific heavy metal.

Sigma-Aldritch probably sells the reagents you need for heavy metal testing.

maria2• 4 years ago

An XRF spectrometer might work on food.

londons_explore3• 4 years ago

What actual dose are we talking about?

Like, if I'm an average chocolate eater, what proportion of my total lead intake will come from chocolate, vs other sources?

If it's under 0.1%, it isn't worth talking about. If it's 1%, it's worth a passing thought. If it's 10% it's worth some effort to avoid/fix. If it's 50%, I'd probably give up chocolate.

khiqxj4• 4 years ago

if you take the product they tested with the highest lead concentration (2.4µg per serving), and ate 10 servings, you would have 1/20th of the harmful concentration of lead, according to my calculations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34018344

hgomersall2• 4 years ago

It's cumulative, so you can't just take spot concentrations.

citizenpaul• 4 years ago

I once read something and I don't remember if it was from a good source. It said that one of the ways they can identify bones from the last 100 year is that older bones have something like 400x less lead traces in them. Basically everyone alive has a degree of lead poisoning thanks to leaded gasoline.

londons_explore3• 4 years ago

I find it hard to believe that much lead sticks to the sticky coco beans while they're being dried just out in the open air.

I go outside too - is the same amount of lead sticking to me and my lungs?

Either we're talking super low lead levels here, or it's something else about the processing that causes this - like for example the fleet of leaded fuel powered tools being used to cut the beans down.

soco• 4 years ago

Are the beans cut down with chainsaws? very confused

sva_• 4 years ago

Chopped open with machete usually. It's a rather delicate process, as you must chop through the outer shell, but not into the beans, as it would make them extremely bitter.

spchampion2• 4 years ago

Many countries permitted leaded gasoline for a long time, and many of the countries that kept it around the longest are also places that grow a lot of chocolate. Lead from car exhaust tends to stick around in the environment for a long time - as part of the soil and the dust in the air.

In South America [1]:

The first country in South America initiating the phase-out of leaded gasoline was Brazil, moving toward alcohol fuels and unleaded gasoline from AD 1975 on, and achieving a total phase-out in 1991. On the contrary, unleaded gasoline in Bolivia, Chile, and Peru was not introduced before AD 1990–1991, and leaded gasoline was still in use until 1995 (Bolivia), 2004 (Peru), and 2005 (Chile).

In Africa [2]:

But lead was still common in fuel in Africa and the Middle East. In 2002, UNEP organized a coalition of African governments and oil companies to promote the phaseout of leaded gas, the supposed vehicular benefits of which have been found to apply only to very old cars driven in extreme conditions. Lead was history in sub-Saharan Africa by 2006, and by 2014 was found only in Algeria, Iraq, Yemen, Myanmar, North Korea, and Afghanistan.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4643815/ [2] - https://qz.com/africa/2053227/leaded-gasoline-is-now-banned-...

dehrmann• 4 years ago

Many countries permitted leaded gasoline

Avgas is still leaded in the US.

chronicsonic• 4 years ago

Cannabis has this problem as well, processing it with certain types of stainless steel can cause chromium to be absorbed into the cannabis.

Source: https://www.analyticalcannabis.com/articles/what-the-cannabi...

specialist• 4 years ago

Avoidance seems increasingly difficult. Mercury, lead, microplastics, herbicide, whatever. We're living in the toxic soup.

I hope someone(s) are working on detox solutions. Hopefully safer than the current chelation therapies used for life threatening cases.

CincinnatiMan• 4 years ago

As someone who eats about 1-2oz of dark chocolate (usually 85%) per day, this is concerning. However I have found the dark chocolate to be a great stimulant, giving me motivation without anxiety the way caffeine does. Now I’m unsure what to do.

paulbaumgart• 4 years ago

Some brands source their cacao from less contaminated areas: https://www.consumerlab.com/news/best-dark-chocolate-and-coc...

Tenoke• 4 years ago

Supposedly the stimulating effect of chocolate mostly comes from PEA (Phenylethylamine) which people just buy in pills to use as a nootropic. So you can just try that if it's only about the effect. Though you'd likely need maois and maybe something else to better recreate what you get from chocolate.

trashface• 4 years ago

You could try caffeine with L-Theanine supplements. Though I guess those could have lead too. The site I get mine from (bulk supplements) does have a lead warning when you buy, but as I understand it, they do that because lead testing is so expensive its easier to just put up the warning (which they need to be able to sell in California). Of course it could also be laden with lead for all I know. You can get L-Theanine from lots of places though and its most true teas (black, green, white, matcha, etc).

davzie• 4 years ago

I swear this site will make you a nervous wreck about eating or bringing anything into your home if you took it too seriously.

sekh60• 4 years ago

I try not to stress too much. One has to die of something after all.

Gigachad• 4 years ago

I’ve had to throw out all my non stick pans and plastic containers, stop eating sea food, avoiding seed oils, and now chocolate??

khiqxj4• 4 years ago

initially this article read as a scam (lobbying corpo "non profit" that claims to care about health and enviro but just creates a worse net effect by wasting resources) and a bit of research concludes:

CDC says [1]:

Until 2012, children were identified as having a blood lead “level of concern” if the test result was 10 or more micrograms per deciliter (µg/dL) of lead in blood.

the lobbying corpo's very own charts [2] show no lead concentration higher than 2.4µg per serving in any tested product. if you ate a serving of chocolate that contains 2.4µg of lead, you would have no more than 2.4µg/dL of lead, which is lower than the CDC's previously stated harmful level. if the lead was diluted through all the blood in your body (~5L = 50dL), your blood level of lead would be 2.4µg/50dL = 0.048µg/dL, far below the CDC's previously stated harmful level of 10µg/dL. with 10 servings, at which point you will have other issues, you will have 0.48µg/dL, still 1/20th of the harmful level.

1. https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/data/blood-lead-reference-valu...

2. https://www.asyousow.org/environmental-health/toxic-enforcem...

disclaimer: i cant do science or math, maybe i calculated something wrong

dzhiurgis• 4 years ago

Explains why only crazies like dark chocolate /s

Research reveals ways lead and cadmium in chocolate may be reduced

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